Sabrina Co: Scents & Style

‘Surprisingly, not every ingredient smells good. But when you mix them all together in the right amounts and proper order, that’s when the magic starts to happen.’

MANILA, Philippines — As we travel through life, our recollection of places we’ve been to, especially those we visited in the distant past, is mostly triggered either by visual or olfactory cues. We may not recall exactly the details regarding a specific place we visited with friends and loved ones, but we somehow tend to associate certain objects, colors and scents that remind us of it.

Blessed with an acute sense of smell, Sabrina Co is one person who’s definitely ruled more by her nose than her eyes when it comes to remembering and mining the past, and reinterpreting it for the present.

As founder and creative director of Atin, a line of Philippine-made home fragrances, which includes diffusers, scented candles, and room and linen sprays, the 22-year-old Literature major from Syracuse University has produced a collection of scents. It not only distills her experiences while traveling through the Philippine countryside, but also invariably promotes Filipino pride because of the collection’s unique qualities.

“My fascination with scents started when I was a child,” says Sabrina, the eldest daughter of Manila-based entrepreneurs Arnold and Ruth Co. “I would always go to stands where they sold perfume and scented candles. I’d go there just sniffing and observing. I don’t know why, but that was how I started being drawn to places that smelled nice.”

Although her early years were spent with her parents in Canada, Sabrina was born in Manila. When she was five, she and her parents moved back to the Philippines. Despite her twang, the result of having studied in an international school in Manila for more than a decade, Sabrina is as Pinoy as dalandan and Boracay, two of the 12 inspirations behind her original line of home fragrances.

Other variants include Palawan, Baguio, Intramuros, Mango, Mangosteen and Lychee. The entire three-year-old Atin line, including a premium one consisting of six bolder, more robust scents Sabrina introduced just almost year ago, is sold at all SM Kultura branches and at Duty Free Philippines stores in Manila and Cebu. 

“Whether in the Philippines or abroad, I love to travel,” she says. “I have no memory of it, but my first trip outside the country was when my mom took me to Hong Kong when I was barely a month old.”

It was also during many of these travels that the genesis for Sabrina’s home fragrance collection started percolating. Since Filipinos love to bring pasalubong to their loved ones abroad, the then 15-year-old thought of giving them options.

At the same time, she also considered the increasing number of foreign tourists visiting the country. “What can they bring back to their respective countries that would remind them and their loved ones of the “essence of the Philippines?” she says.

Four of six variants of Atin’s premium line of diffusers, which combine two or more fragrances.

“After all, not everyone wants to bring home dried mangoes,” she says with a chuckle. “I wanted to give both Filipinos and foreigners who visit the Philippines a choice.”

She broached the idea to her parents. Although they were quite receptive to her proposal, they were also initially apprehensive about the entire idea. “You can’t really blame them,” Sabrina continues. While her grandparents were into garments, her parents are mostly into food.

“Having grown up in an entrepreneurial family, I was exposed to the fundamentals of business early on,” she adds. “But the perfume business was something totally new to all of us.”

Her parents reminded Sabrina, albeit gently, that going into business, especially one that’s totally new or alien to the entire family, was no joke. For her part, Sabrina’s enthusiasm was also tempered by the fact that the venture might not pan out. She kept it a secret even to some of her closest friends until she managed to perfect and sell the products sometime later.

“If it didn’t pan out, I could do other things because I had my whole life ahead of me,” she says. “At the same time, of course, I wanted it to succeed because I really believed in the idea.”

But what is the Pinoy essence, as captured in a scent, anyway? Can one even begin to distill the scent of a childhood experience or memory and put it in a bottle? Apparently, based on Sabrina’s experience, one could.

A few seasons after introducing the diffusers, Sabrina Co expanded her Atin line by coming up with scented candles.

During a series of focus group discussions she initially commissioned in Manila, Sabrina learned that Filipinos generally gravitate to two types of fragrances: lemongrass-based and lavender-based. That was when she finally decided to sit down with a chemist and start from scratch.

“We generally like them, but both lemongrass and lavender aren’t Pinoy,” she shares. “Lemongrass is associated with Thailand, while lavender is identified with France. I was born and raised here. I know and fully understand our culture. Why would I create something that’s so foreign? From a marketing standpoint, why would I duplicate scents that others have already done? I didn’t see the point.”

She and the chemist went through hundreds of natural oils trying to concoct scents that would remind Sabrina of, say, dalandan, Boracay, or even Palawan. While dalandan captured the quintessential citrusy smell Pinoys also love, Boracay was more reminiscent of the scent of “sun, sea and sand” Sabrina imbibed when she first visited the world-famous island.

“Actually, we were able to come up with over a hundred scents,” she recalls. “I had to narrow it down to 12 because fragrance is very personal. I want a core number of fragrances because if there are too many, people are going to get confused.”

To complete her initial venture into home items, Sabrina has added a line of decorative ceramic dishes made abroad, but designed in the Philippines.

And since everyone perceives reality quite differently, Sabrina is aware that her experiences don’t readily translate or even resonate with another person. What she offers, she says, are “suggestions or versions,” which she thinks is similar to other people’s experiences, say, while enjoying a day under the sun in Palawan or savoring a fragrant ripe mango under the shade.

To further boost her knowledge about fragrances, Sabrina, with her parents’ blessings, underwent a two-month internship program with a seasoned perfumer in Grasse, France. She learned quite a deal from her, but one of the things that really stuck to her head is learning how to mix various ingredients without neglecting the need to “balance” each element.

“For instance, there are many types of ingredients that go into a perfume,” she shares. “Surprisingly, not every ingredient smells good. But when you mix them all together in the right amounts and proper order, that’s when the magic starts to happen.”

To her surprise, her 12 original scents sold quite well that Kultura soon asked her to do more variants. Sabrina, who’s partial to strong, masculine scents, saw it as a chance to push the envelope by mixing two or more family of scents together into one perfume. Thus, Atin’s premium line was born.

While the Dalandan variant from her original line is basically citrusy, the Dalandan, say, with black pepper in her premium line offers a “different kind of kick.” Again, Sabrina, the budding perfumer, tries to achieve “balance” as she tries to fuse various elements together in one bottle.

“The variants in the premium line may offer customers lots of pleasant surprises,” she says. “But at its core, each variant is still bound by an underlying Filipino characteristic. After all, that’s the idea behind the entire brand.”