Handmade in rural Zhejiang, China
The Story Behind
Our Team
The team behind me matters deeply, and has always had my back.
ZendoDream’s blends are made by my own hands. But taking a piece from an idea to your doorstep has never been a one-person job.
Production partner
Zhang Yanan
Yanan was a student of my incense teacher, Ms. Wang, and is about my age. I met her in 2022, when my wife and I first visited Ms. Wang.
Staying in touch online, she taught me step by step how to weigh a formula, build the handwork, and find the problem whenever I got stuck. She helped me more than I can easily say.
As my skills grew, more people wanted what I made. Sales rose, but handmade incense cannot be rushed, so I asked her to be my production partner.
Yanan is decisive and knows her own mind. She brings deep experience and solid technique, and pays attention to the scents people like today. In her hands, tradition and modern taste are always weighed together.
Sachet maker · Outer pouches
Wang Dan
Dan is my wife’s older sister, and a single mother. Outside her day job, she puts her heart into sewing. She often makes small DIY bags for other people, earning a little extra to support the family. Over the years her skill has grown a great deal.
When I started ZendoDream, she was the first person I thought of. I asked her to sew the outer pouches for our sachet series.
The choice of fabric was her suggestion. The outer pouch is silk gambiered gauze, a high-grade silk fabric, lined with mugwort-dyed cotton-linen; inside sits an inner pouch of cotton-linen. Three layers, one inside the other, make the whole sachet look refined. It can hold botanicals as a sachet should, and it can carry small everyday things too.
She is sensitive and careful. She looks over the stitching and finishing of every pouch again and again before she lets it go.