By Megan Larsen | Founder & Director of Sodashi Skincare
I still remember one of the earliest moments that shaped Sodashi.
I had been working with botanical ingredients and seeing, up close, how differently skin responded depending on what I was using. Two products could both call themselves “natural”. Two oils could carry the same botanical name on a label. And yet one would visibly support the skin, calming it, nourishing it, helping it come back into balance, while the other would do almost nothing at all.
That was the moment ingredient integrity became non-negotiable for me.
Today, the natural skincare market is crowded with vague promises: clean, green, botanical, pure. But those words often tell you very little about whether a product is genuinely effective. The truth is, not all natural skincare is created equal. And one of the biggest reasons is something most people are never told to look for: the quality of the essential oils inside it.
For us at Sodashi, ingredient quality is not a finishing detail. It is the foundation of whether a formulation actually works. And when it comes to botanical skincare, the quality of an essential oil is one of the most important, and most overlooked, factors of all.
What Are Essential Oils Actually Doing in Your Skincare?
At Sodashi, essential oils are not included simply to make a product smell beautiful. They are formulated as active ingredients.
That distinction matters.
When an essential oil is grown, harvested and distilled with integrity, it contains a complex profile of naturally occurring compounds that can do real work within the skin. In well-crafted formulations, these oils can move through the skin’s lipid barrier and support the skin’s own natural functions. That may mean helping encourage cellular renewal, supporting moisture retention, or calming visible redness and irritation in skin that is inflamed or out of balance.
This is why essential oils have always been central to our formulations, and each Sodashi skin care product has its own unique synergy of essential oils. So instead of using high doses of individual essential oils, which can cause skin sensitivity, we use a synergy of essential oils which ensure maximum efficacy without skin sensitivity. These synergies are not decorative. They are functional.
But here is the part that is so often misunderstood: the words “essential oil” on an ingredient list do not guarantee efficacy. The origin and quality of that oil can change everything.
A high-quality essential oil has integrity at a molecular level. It has been properly grown, harvested at the right time, distilled with care, and protected from contamination or dilution. When used correctly in a formulation, it can be absorbed and interact with the skin in a meaningful way.
A low-quality or adulterated oil is entirely different. It may smell similar. It may carry the same name on the bottle. But if its composition has been compromised, it will not behave the same way on the skin. Rather than being absorbed and supporting skin function, it is far more likely to sit on the surface, offering little beyond aroma.
So, when you see “rose”, “lavender”, “geranium” or “sandalwood” on a label, the real question is not just what it is. The real question is: where did it come from, and what happened to it before it reached the formula?
The Problem with Essential Oil Adulteration
This is one of the least discussed realities in the beauty industry.
Producing genuine, high-quality essential oils is expensive. It requires healthy soil, the right climate, skilled growers, careful harvesting, expert distillation, proper storage, and time. In some cases, enormous quantities of plant material are needed to produce even a small amount of oil. True Rose Damascena for example, is precious for a reason.
That cost creates temptation.
Across the industry, essential oils are often adulterated to reduce price and protect margins. Adulteration can take many forms: diluting an oil with a cheaper carrier oil, extending it with synthetic aroma compounds, substituting part of a batch with lower-grade material, or blending oils in a way that masks inferior quality while preserving a similar scent profile.
To the average consumer, these oils can be almost impossible to distinguish by smell alone. They may still seem luxurious. They may still allow a brand to make the same ingredient claim on a label. But what is missing are the very naturally occurring compounds that give the oil its therapeutic value and its ability to genuinely support the skin.
That means the skin receives far less than the label suggests.
At Sodashi, we have never been willing to compromise here. No matter how common these shortcuts may be, they are incompatible with the standards we set for our formulations. If an ingredient cannot meet our expectations for purity, integrity and performance, it does not belong in a Sodashi product.
Megan visiting lavender fields in Provence, France.
How Sodashi Sources Its Essential Oils
Our sourcing philosophy is simple, but it requires extraordinary discipline.
We work with a carefully selected global network of suppliers who are chosen not only for the quality of their ingredients, but for their ethics, their production standards and their ability to provide full traceability from plant to product. We want to know where an ingredient was grown, how it was harvested, how it was distilled or extracted, how it was stored, and how it travelled before it reached our laboratory.
That traceability is essential. Without it, there is no real confidence in what you are formulating with.
For me, this has never been something that can be left entirely to paperwork. Documentation matters, of course. But there are moments when you need to stand in the place where an ingredient begins.
One of those places is Turkey, where I visit our rose grower and distiller.
To be there is to understand the ingredient in an entirely different way. You see the fields. You see the condition of the petals. You witness the timing of the harvest and the care taken in handling the flowers. You smell the freshness of the botanical material before distillation even begins. Then you experience the distillation process itself, how the rose is treated, how the oil is separated, how the hydrosol behaves, how the final material presents in its pure state.
There are things you can verify on-site that no certificate can fully communicate. You can sense freshness. You can observe cleanliness. You can ask questions in real time about harvest yields, seasonal shifts, storage conditions and batch variation. You can see whether the people producing the ingredient treat it as a commodity or as something precious.
These visits matter deeply to me, because the standard of care at origin directly affects what eventually touches your skin.
This same commitment extends across our ingredient sourcing more broadly. Whether it is rose, geranium, sandalwood or other precious botanicals, our approach is the same: select with discernment, verify with care, and never assume that a label claim tells the full story.
This is also why sourcing is inseparable from our research and development process. We do not begin with a marketing concept and fill in the ingredients later. We begin with the integrity of the raw materials themselves. Only then can we formulate for true performance.
What This Means for Your Skin
When Sodashi uses the word “natural”, we mean something very specific.
We do not mean that a product simply contains botanicals. We mean that the ingredients have been selected and sourced to a standard that allows them to perform. We mean that they retain the integrity needed to be absorbed by the skin and to support its natural function. We mean that every formulation choice has been made with efficacy in mind, not just label appeal.
For your skin, that translates into a tangible difference.
A beautifully sourced essential oil does not just coat the surface and disappear with the next cleanse. In the right formulation, it can interact with the skin in a way that supports balance, nourishment and renewal. It can help calm skin that is reactive, support hydration in skin that is depleted, and encourage vitality in skin that is tired or congested.
This is why our commitment to sourcing sits at the heart of every stage of our R&D process. The same standards that guide how we choose an oil also guide how we combine it, how we test it, and how we ensure the final formula delivers the experience and results we expect.
You can feel this philosophy in many areas of the Sodashi collection, particularly in formulations where essential oil plays a primary active role. From our facial skincare rituals to treatment oils and balancing blends, these ingredients are not there as an afterthought. They are there because they are doing important work.
And that is the difference ingredient integrity makes. It transforms “natural skincare” from a label into a living standard.
Why We Will Never Compromise
Sodashi was built on purity, integrity and efficacy when I founded the brand in 1999, and those principles still govern every decision we make today.
They shape how we source. They shape how we formulate. They shape what we refuse to compromise on, even when doing so would be easier or less expensive.
Because in the end, skincare is only as good as what goes into it.
For me, that has always been the heart of Sodashi: honouring the intelligence of nature by treating every ingredient with respect and creating formulations that are genuinely capable of supporting the skin in a meaningful way.
Thank you for taking the time to understand the philosophy behind our ingredients. I invite you to explore Sodashi more deeply, discover our formulations, and experience for yourself what true ingredient integrity feels like on the skin. Find our full list of botanicals in Sodashi's ingredient glossary.
With love,
Megan
