How We Research & Recommend Fragrances

The short version: Soundmali is an independent retailer, not a fragrance lab. Our fragrance recommendations are built from published composition data, concentration, and large volumes of wearer reports — plus sealed-stock and batch-code checks on everything we ship. We do not sell or recommend copies of designer fragrances.

Plain disclosure: Soundmali is an independent retailer. We are not an authorised dealer for Apple, Samsung, Bose, Sony, Louis Vuitton, Kilian or any other brand we stock, and we do not claim to be. We sell the products we write about, so treat our guides as an informed retailer's opinion — not as independent journalism.

Who we actually are

Soundmali is operated by Soundmali Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 15165919, incorporated September 2023). You can verify all of this yourself on the UK public register at Companies House.

We are a small team, not a media publisher and not a laboratory. Everything on this site is written and checked in-house. If you want to reach the person responsible for a page, email support@soundmali.com — a real person reads it.

How we decide what to recommend

We do not operate a fragrance lab and we do not employ perfumers. Here is the actual process behind every fragrance guide on this site:

Composition review. We work from the published note pyramid and the perfumer credited by the house, plus the concentration (EDT, EDP, extrait) — because concentration, not marketing language, is what mostly drives longevity and projection.
Wearer reports at volume. Longevity and sillage are highly skin-dependent, so a single opinion is close to worthless. We read large numbers of wearer reports and look for the consensus range rather than the loudest claim.
Comparison on shared accords, not on "clone" claims. When we say one fragrance is similar to another, we mean they share identifiable accords — not that one is a copy. We do not sell counterfeits and we do not describe any product as a replica of a designer scent.
Batch and packaging checks on our own stock. Every bottle we ship is sealed, with an intact cellophane wrap and a batch code printed on the bottle and the box. We explain what those codes can and cannot prove in our authenticity guide.
Price sanity check. A designer fragrance offered far below its normal retail band is a warning sign, not a bargain. We price inside a credible band and explain why on our product pages.

What we will never do

Claim we wore or tested a fragrance we have not.
Invent review counts, ratings or "expert panel" scores.
Present ourselves as an established suppliers for a fragrance house that has not authorised us.
Sell or recommend anything described as a copy, replica or counterfeit of a designer fragrance.

Corrections

Found something wrong? Email support@soundmali.com. We correct the page rather than quietly editing it.

Who evaluates our products and how: see Who runs Soundmali and How we research audio products. For fragrance, see How we research fragrances.