Last year alone, Scent Journer sold over 8,000 of its hand-blended perfumes

For as long as she can remember, Joyce Lian has been fascinated by scents—not just how they smell, but why they smell the way they do.

That curiosity led her to enrol in Singapore Polytechnic’s perfumery and cosmetic science course in 2013, where she learned about raw materials, chemical structures, and the formulation of personal care products.

Her interest only deepened during a 10.5-month internship at global giant International Flavours & Fragrances, where she was posted to the fragrance department. With permission from the company, Joyce often stayed after work hours to experiment with small quantities of raw materials, creating her own fragrance formulations.

She painstakingly memorised the scent profile of each ingredient, building a personal knowledge base to train her sense of smell. At the time, she had committed 147 raw materials to memory.

Joyce’s passion for perfumery ultimately grew into Scent Journer, her own fragrance label selling thousands of products, including on Sephora’s online platform. We spoke with the 30-year-old who shared what it takes to build a perfume brand from scratch.

Navigating career detours

“To me, how I experience fragrance is very different from most people. I have trained myself to perceive and discern the different layers that lie in a perfume bottle,” Joyce shared while explaining her keen sense of smell that she has honed over the years.

After graduating from Singapore Polytechnic, Joyce went on to complete a Chemistry degree at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in an accelerated timeframe of just 2.5 years that ended in 2018.

The year after, she landed a job as a technical specialist at a cosmetics company, where she stayed for five months. While the role was stable, it was not what she had envisioned—her passion lay in fragrances.

But Singapore’s perfumery industry back then was small (and still is, at least according to Joyce), and opportunities were limited. Unlike her friends, she was also unable to go overseas to pursue fragrance roles due to familial constraints at the time.

Eventually, Joyce was not finding any joy in her cosmetics position. At the advice of one of her friends, she decided to try something entirely different: she joined OCBC in 2020 as a personal financial consultant.

But less than a year later, Joyce realised the role wasn’t her cup of tea either. She missed working in labs, formulating, and experimenting with different scents.

A colleague then suggested she start her own business and explore an entrepreneurship programme run by the National University of Singapore (NUS)—a suggestion that would ultimately change the course of her life.

Building Scent Journer from the ground up

In 2021, Joyce applied for the three-month Venture Building Programme at NUS together with her partner, Alex Lim, and her sister, Jacelyn Lian, where they built the stepping stones for Scent Journer.

The programme taught the trio the foundations of entrepreneurship, from validating ideas to understanding customers. One requirement was to interview at least 100 potential users to assess market demand.

What Joyce and her team uncovered was telling. Many Singaporeans only wore perfume for special occasions as they viewed it as an expensive product, while others avoided it entirely because fragrances triggered headaches or nausea. As such, only a small minority wore perfume daily.

Identifying these pain points, Joyce wanted to create perfumes that could be “worn every day in the city-state and were less likely to cause headaches or nausea, while making the various scent notes more discernible,” Joyce explained.

“I want the name of Scent Journer to speak for itself, bringing our customers on a journey through scent, with the fragrance acting as an everyday companion.”

After pitching her idea, Scent Journer was awarded the Startup SG Founder Grant in two tranches, amounting to S$50,000. NUS contributed another S$10,000, and Joyce, Alex, and Jacelyn pooled an additional S$10,000, bringing the total startup budget to S$70,000. It was a tight budget, but enough to get the business off the ground.

The brand operated online for its first eight months after incorporation in Apr 2021. Then, an unexpected opportunity arose.

In Dec, after seeing Scent Journer’s advertisements online, the now-closed Japanese-inspired French pastry shop Flor Patisserie reached out to the brand and offered it a pop-up space at its outlet for a day, for just S$50 to give the latter a chance to interact physically with potential customers.

The pop-up exceeded expectations, recording an 80% conversion rate. For Joyce and her team, it was a pivotal moment that gave them the much-needed confidence that they were onto something concrete.

Inside the perfuming process

Scent Journer launched with three fragrances and has since expanded to five, while also gradually offering other product formats like perfume sachets that can be hung in wardrobes, apart from hand sanitisers and scented candles.

On special occasions like their anniversary and Christmas, Joyce releases limited-time offerings—for example, the A New Veil fragrance with green tea notes, and the Spiced Winter Tea Candle. To celebrate Singapore’s birthday last year, the brand even came up with a kaya toast–scented candle.

Each fragrance that is released by Scent Journer undergoes six months to a year of research and development, and every one is hand-blended by Joyce to ensure quality.

She starts with a sugarcane alcohol base, combining it with other ingredients distilled into liquid form—over 85% of which are naturally derived, with no harmful additives.

Most of what she works with are sustainable or upcycled ingredients, such as carrot seed essence, and the sugarcane alcohol she uses is gentler on the senses—though significantly more expensive.

“We use high-quality, perfumery-grade natural ethanol derived from sugarcane alcohol. Conversely, mainstream perfumes use synthetic alcohols, which are more likely to be denatured by the methanol inside them and may have a higher possibility of causing users to experience nausea and headaches, especially people who are more sensitive to alcohol,” Joyce explained.

Once done, each bottle is sealed and ready for sale.

Scaling its offline presence

Over the years, Scent Journer has scaled its offline presence significantly. In 2022, the brand entered consignment spaces with stockists after Tangs reached out, followed by Metro at Design Orchard.

Since Oct 2023, the brand has been available on KrisShop, and a year later, begun retailing on Sephora’s online platform.

The brand has always been a familiar face at various pop-ups, including Boutiques Fair, Singapore’s largest design-led shopping event, having attended six events and counting.

Scent Journer has also expanded beyond Singapore, partnering with a specialty fragrance retailer in Guangzhou, China, in 2023—a milestone for its overseas growth.

“Our move into the Chinese market has been significant; there is a rising demand for niche fragrances, particularly those with unique stories and creative scent compositions,” shared Joyce. “Chinese consumers are becoming more discerning, and our focus on high-quality ingredients and immersive olfactory storytelling resonates strongly with their changing tastes.”

That said, customers from other markets can also purchase products through the brand’s website, which ships internationally. Joyce recalled being surprised when customers from France willingly paid steep shipping fees just to get their hands on the brand’s products.

Collaborations with local brands

Collaborations have also played a key role in expanding Scent Journer’s reach. Joyce has crafted bespoke fragrances for brands such as homegrown distillery Compendium Spirits and cafe Nesuto, working closely with each to translate their brand identity into scent.

For Compendium Spirits, the distillery was looking for a fragrance to accompany its Rojak Gin, and so Joyce delivered it as both a room spray and hand wash. 

“I understood that gin is nothing without juniper berries, and rojak is not one without the torched ginger lily flower. Hence, I developed a scent that turned Compendium’s Rojak Gin into a fragrance.”

The distillery also asked for an odour-neutralising solution to tackle the inevitable plumbing smells in its old Circular Road shophouse. Joyce’s team created a fragrance solvent that broke down the unpleasant odours while filling the space with Scent Journer’s signature scent.

Similarly, on a larger scale, Nesuto requested an autumn-like scent to be diffused throughout its cafe, so Joyce came up with a concoction of green tea, roasted chestnut and other ingredients that together reproduce a “warm ambience of autumn.”

The realities & rising costs of craftsmanship

Joyce’s products have been a hit—last year alone, she sold more than 8,000 bottles through retail and client projects.

Like any startup, Scent Journer has faced its fair share of challenges.

Joyce’s formulations are highly specific, and price fluctuations have a direct impact—after the pandemic, the cost of her sugarcane alcohol ingredient surged by about 70%.

Previously operating out of NUS BLOCK71, a startup incubation space, Joyce moved to her current lab in Tampines in Sep 2023, where operational costs became even more apparent.

Combined with distributor cuts, these factors left her little choice but to raise retail prices—a difficult but necessary decision to keep the business sustainable. Today, a 25ml bottle at Scent Journer costs S$128.

To manage costs, Joyce operates her lab and office on an appointment basis while running retail operations through consignment areas and pop-ups.

Currently, Scent Journer is undergoing a brand overhaul to rejuvenate the brand. Joyce’s advice to aspiring founders is simple but hard-earned: do what you love.

“Find a problem to solve rather than doing things that are trendy,” she said. “It’s hard to stand out and last, especially if you’re entering an already saturated market.”

She reflected on how many new fragrance brands gravitate towards familiar notes like pear and freesia—scents popularised by other popular brands and instantly recognisable. For Joyce, longevity lies not in imitation and chasing fleeting trends, but in carving out something quietly, unmistakably your own.

• Learn more about Scent Journer here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.