In this trade, big companies open a conversation in tonnes and small and mid-sized customers open it in kilos. Guangzhou Zhenxin does the latter: its brand is "Sunflower", it is based in Huangpu, Guangzhou, it sells into Korea and overseas markets, and a minimum order of one kilo or two is open to discussion. Perfume oils, food and bakery flavours, candle fragrances and household chemical fragrances — it works in all four directions, and most of its customers are small brands and small workshop-style factories: five fragrances at one kilo each today, maybe a one-kilo top-up tomorrow. Volumes are small, the variety is great, and delivery dates are urgent. Companies that live on big orders look down on this kind of work, but this kind of work tests real ability: a small order does not mean low requirements, and if one kilo is made badly the customer does not come back.

Each of the four directions has its own rules. For perfume oils, concentration has to be high and the scent has to last, with florals such as rose, magnolia and peony as the main line. For food and bakery, heat resistance and the ability to go into an oven matter, with pineapple, chocolate, strawberry milk and red date as regular sellers. For candles, the material has to live with the wax base and release its aroma once lit — chocolate, grape and eucalyptus leaf have all been made. For household chemicals — shampoo, shower gel, soap — what is needed is stability in a surfactant system and no stray odour. What we entered is the natural flavour materials at the top of these four lines. The first requirement on us is not volume but "able to change over": dozens of varieties a year, a few dozen kilos each, and every change of variety means cleaning the equipment again and re-tuning the parameters. That sounds trivial; done badly it is a black hole of cost, and it is also where small-batch customers get fobbed off most easily — many suppliers take the small order and then produce something different in every batch.

The two sides understand each other because both know the difficulties of the small customer. Zhenxin works with small and mid-sized customers, delivering from one kilo and negotiating prices, building the business one small order at a time; we came up the same way — thirty years ago, the first orders we took were counted in kilos too. Anyone who has done small orders knows how hard they are: the customer wants it urgently, the volume is small, the supplier schedules it last, and the wait is half a month. So we have an unwritten rule: small orders are not pushed to the back; even one kilo goes into the formal schedule, and it is not done carelessly because the volume is small. Zhenxin's people are straightforward too — when they come to our plant, the first place they go is not the meeting room but the warehouse and the dispatch area, to see how material is stacked, how it is shipped, how labels are applied.

The cooperation began with one kilo: the client placed a trial order for a variety that is not especially common, saying they would look at it first. The real problem lay in the stability of small batches. Dozens of varieties a year at a few dozen kilos each, with parameters tuned from scratch every time, means more variation than in large batches — this batch is right, the next may be a little light. The client sells finished flavour compounds, and if each batch differs, their own customers complain. We spent the better part of a year closing that hole: the process parameters of every variety were made into a parameter library, and changeovers are tuned from the library rather than "by feel"; a sample is kept of every batch, and a new batch is compared against the previous one when finished — if the difference exceeds the range, it is made again. After that, small batches achieve the same consistency as large ones.

On the technology side it comes down to the same few roads, used in different places. For exported material, the first thing to solve is "documents that pass" — on solvent residue many markets hold a hard line, and that rests on supercritical fluid extraction, low temperature throughout with no solvent entering the process, leaving no room for residue at the process level, which simplifies both customs declaration and testing. What small and mid-sized customers want is recognisability, something remembered after one smell, and that rests on Living-Fragrance physical extraction, moving the plant's original aroma structure across intact by physical means, so the aroma has personality rather than looking like everyone else's. The candle and household chemical lines are sensitive to colour, since material carrying colour changes the appearance of the product, and that rests on molecular distillation pressing colour and impurities down to make a light-coloured version. On cost control, aroma concentration enriches the actives so that less is added while performance holds, and the formulation cost of a small customer stays under control. How these roads are combined depends on variety and use, and sometimes two or three are used together.

On supply there is no threshold: one-kilo minimum orders are accepted, several varieties can be shipped together, and the client does not have to hold a pile of stock to make up a quantity; packaging and labelling follow the client's requirements — whatever drum, whatever label the client wants, we do it, without treating it as a nuisance. Service gives the "good enough is enough" set as well: small and mid-sized customers do not need dozens of pages, so we make the essential things clear — figures, usage, precautions, one page and nothing else piled on; the client's requirements for labelling, palletising and packing are carried out as given. None of this is difficult. The difficult part is doing it every time.

For the years ahead, what the two sides need to do together is clear: spread the range wider so a small customer can complete a whole order in one place; hold small-batch stability more firmly; and shorten delivery a little further. The precondition for a small order becoming a large one is simple — take the first batch seriously. That is how Zhenxin treats its customers, and that is how we treat Zhenxin.

This article was published on 2026-09-14, and last updated on 2026-09-21. The article will be continuously updated.