A small studio,
a long story

I grew up in San Diego County in a house that did not really smell of anything. Then in 2014 I spent six weeks travelling between Muscat, Salalah and Sharjah for an unrelated work project — and I came home obsessed with a smell I could not name. It turned out to be bakhoor: small bricks of compressed wood, resin and oil that you light over a brass burner before guests arrive. Every house I had visited used it. Every shop. Every elevator in every old hotel.

For four years I tried to recreate that feeling at home. I bought online, I bought from importers, I bought from friends bringing things back. Nothing was right. Most of what reaches the U.S. is mass-produced, heavily perfumed, or — honestly — fake oud. So in 2018, with my wife’s patient encouragement and a tiny initial order from a supplier in Salalah I had met in person, we started Al Bahiya.

The first year we sold 312 units, almost all to friends and friends-of-friends. The second year we hit 2,800 and I quit my day job. Today we ship across all 50 states and to a handful of boutique hotels in California, Arizona and Texas. We are still three people. We still pour every candle by hand. The studio is still on Wohlford Drive.

What I want Al Bahiya to be is the opposite of how home fragrance is usually sold in America: not loud, not synthetic, not seasonal. Just a few things, made well, from materials we can trace, in scents that have been comforting human beings for two thousand years.

— William Jolley
Founder · Escondido, California