By Camel or FedEx, aromatics still travel globally

Last Christmas I was involved in some Bible studies that touched on the birth of Jesus and the story of the three kings, or "magi", from the East bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. I had a bit of frankincense from Somalia on hand and about two drops of myrrh. When I smelled the myrrh it stuck me that this indeed was the missing ingredient for a perfume I was trying to reformulate. Myrrh became a major ingredient in this fragrance, the new version of Rough Day. Myrrh became the heart.

Two notes about the Bible story. One, myrrh was, at the time of Jesus' birth, rare and expensive. Two, the kings or magi seem to have arrived on the scene several years after Jesus' birth. These points have been ringing bells with me.

First, myrrh is still quite expensive, about $3,000 per kilo of myrrh essential oil from my source. And travel time? Here's what happened when I placed an order of myrrh from the orient.

First I want to note that it was shipped FedEx and not by camel. But the routing made me wonder what route the kings had taken to find Jesus and whether they may have wandered around the Middle East and even parts of Africa before arriving in Bethlehem of Judea.

My shipment of myrrh was delivered to FedEx in Bangkok but it didn't go directly from Bangkok to the U.S. FedEx hub in Memphis. From Bangkok it traveled north in Thailand to the Samutprakarn FedEx World Service Center where it seems to have spent three days before being passed on to the FedEx Asia Pacific hub in Guangzhou, China, where it spent a day before being passed on the FedEx hub in Anchorage, Alaska. Then, by 5 AM the next morning it had bounced backward to the FedEx North Pacific hub at Sennan-shi, Japan. By that evening it was back in Alaska but quickly sent on to Memphis, Tennessee and from there immediately sent to Newburgh, New York and put out for delivery to me in Walden that same morning having traveled through four countries in ten days.

The adventures of the myrrh was a reminder that the fragrance and spice business has always been global. Before the days of sailing ships rare spices and aromatics traveled from Asia by camel. As a young man the Prophet Mohammed got his start in the trade. Later European nations developed nautical trade routes to Asia to bring back spices and aromatics. Today it's FedEx and DHL but the geography remains global. Today the fragrance industry conducts research explorations for new aroma materials all over the world in addition to developing new fragrance molecules in the laboratory.

When I get my new fragrance together I'll make announcements for it via my PGLightyears website which, potentially, will be seen by people all over the world. After all these centuries perfume remains a global business.