Over the past few months, much has unfolded, and we’ve been excited to share it all with you.
Over the summer, we began a strategic partnership with the world’s largest private flavour and fragrance house and research facility. This collaboration aims to continue developing our plant formulations to the best standard using only natural extracts and, in parallel, to test and launch a range of wellness fragrances. These “functional” fragrances are curated to target specific emotions to help us feel better in our everyday lives.
By definition, wellness fragrances are scents specially formulated to stimulate the neural pathways associated with a specific behaviour or mood. One example may be smelling a Christmas tree candle and having that scent elicit powerful memories and emotions of home, or perhaps a spritz of lavender essential oil on a pillow to encourage sleep and calm.
As such, we know there is power in aroma’s profound immediacy of effect, and aromatic compounds are potentially the most underutilised yet potent tool in our wellness toolbox.
So what if we dared to imagine a world where functional wellness fragrances could better our lives in a scientifically measurable and material way?
What if, just like taking three sprays of valerian or passiflora each evening to improve our sleep, we could have a fragrance tailored to improve our focus? One that wakes us up, revitalising in the morning, boosts our energy midday whilst we work (helping reduce our reliance on caffeine or sugar), and helps us wind down at the end of a long day (perhaps a little lighter on the wine)?
While our sofi plant pod formulations for sleep and calm can provide noticeable benefits within 10+ days, they are there to do long-term work, offering adrenal support and gently promoting a return to homeostasis when dosed and consumed regularly.
On the other hand, wellness fragrances offer instantaneous moments of respite at different points throughout the day when changing our mood or how we feel for the better so we can make it through the day would be our primary concern.
The combination of these two highly complementary modes of delivery - a mouth spray to swallow for the plants and a fragrance spray to smell and feel - could hold the key to unlocking a brand new paradigm of natural relief, ultimately helping us improve how we feel.
SO…
Wellness fragrances will be available to Pioneers to test very soon, an opportunity which will allow us to play a vital role in furthering the frontier and promise of fragrances in wellness.
To enable the validation faster with the continuing challenges of the global supply chain (where the central pump in our product has gone from a 10 to a 45-week lead time to supply), we have decided to make some radical changes to our upcoming pioneer programs. We are redirecting the electronics and components of half of the 1,000 ashwagandhas (S3) study to the first alpha testing of a wellness fragrance at the beginning of 2023. This means that we will release our initial study in two waves, one at the beginning of 2023 and a second in the spring when we will have seen the initial results of ashwagandha from the first wave of 500 plant pioneers. So we are splitting into two studies the 1000 participants. Effectively, this means we are oversubscribed by about 50 Pioneers. The most effective solution we can think of is to prioritise those actively journaling in the leadup to the S3, thus giving the sofi brain the best chance of generating results.
The best way to maintain your position in the cue to be in the first wave would be to continue one journal a day. All those who have qualified for a sofi stick will receive one - we will simply prioritise the active journaling members into the first wave in the new year.
We will have more on this shortly, and as far as the timeline for the S3, we are looking at early February.
The expansion to test and validate beyond medicinal plants is a huge step forward for our sofi. And we wanted you to be the first to know of our plans for this. When sofi is finally available to all, she will provide the opportunity for dual relief and mood modulation, all using validated and effective natural and botanical plants and extracts.
We continue to build together.
xx
