Through scent, Saan Saan founder Mark Zavalla explores memory, rootedness and the gentle pull of slower living. Working from a quiet studio in Manila, he weaves personal narratives into each fragrance &mdash; thoughtfully made to carry you elsewhere, wherever that may be.

There&rsquo;s something quietly compelling about <a href="https://saansaanph.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Saan Saan</a>. What began as a personal experiment in scent and storytelling has grown into a Manila-based fragrance studio known for its transportive blends and intentional craft. Founded in 2018 by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/markzavalla/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Zavalla</a>, the brand is about candles, sure, but it is also about evoking memory, place and presence&hellip; one small batch at a time.
Zavalla, who previously worked in tech and business, found his way to scent through a desire to tell stories differently. For him, fragrance became less about fragrance itself and more as a narrative. Today, Saan Saan runs from a humble studio that serves as both its workshop and store, where scale isn&rsquo;t the goal &mdash; connection is.
Ahead, we speak to Zavalla about scent as a storytelling tool, how sustainability is quietly woven into every part of the brand, and what it means to grow a business without chasing scale.

What first drew you into the world of candle making? Was there a particular moment when you realized you wanted to turn it into a business?
I think I first got fascinated with the idea of using scents to tell a story. And then the idea of using candles as one of the methods to do it came to me in the process of putting the scent-storytelling idea and potentially opening a shop together, and so, I was thinking about it already as a business.
I was on the cusp of leaving a career in tech and business at the time to pursue a life as a creative, and this was what showed up at my door. If I were being bolder, and perhaps, a bit more na&iuml;ve too, I was dreaming of getting into travel writing and photography back in 2018. But that didn&rsquo;t happen and I channeled the creative energy &mdash; and I always say, I just created the same job description for me and hired myself for it &mdash; to write and photograph at Saan Saan.
When it comes to Saan Saan, you&rsquo;re all about creating a sense of place with each scent. Tell us more about that.
I realized early in the process that, while scents tell a story by making you feel something instantly, the reason that happens is through a scent&rsquo;s transportive power. It can take us places: to our favorite childhood summer trips, our lola&rsquo;s house or our favorite city. It&rsquo;s like wandering through smells.
When I made the first few scents in the collection, they were specific travel memories in Sagada, Zambales, Bohol, etc. that left a mark on me, and the prompt I gave to myself for whatever fragrance I was blending was this: to take me back to that place. And so, I found that I was still able to explore my dream of travel writing and infuse that with a multi-sensory experience now, with scent.
You mentioned that Saan Saan is about inspiring slower, more mindful living. How does that mindset influence how you approach sustainability in your work?
We hope to inspire people to savor a moment, a ritual, an object, with a little bit more understanding and attention, and I hope that in doing that, we can become gentler to ourselves, to others and the environment. I think the relationship between pace and consumption can make us forget that there is an ecological system we operate in and a balance that we should all try to be aware of, at the very least.
One of the things I&rsquo;m deliberately slow about at Saan Saan is expansion. Having been around for seven years, we have had opportunities to open new stores or expand our production capacity, but it&rsquo;s something I&rsquo;m taking a long, sweet time to mull over before deciding. We remain small-batch and handmade in our process. We keep a small inventory, sometimes embarrassingly small, in our studio, where both our workshop and store are located, with a super lean team. I think business growth, for growth's sake, is a complex opportunity and can have both positive and negative impacts on my well-being as a business owner and certainly on the world around us, so it&rsquo;s something I&rsquo;d like to be careful about.

&ldquo;If people choose to be slower in their day, connect more with something tactile and sensorial and are more thoughtful about their consumption, we&rsquo;ll be happy.&rdquo; &mdash;Mark Zavalla

What do you think people are looking for when they buy a Saan Saan product? Is there something you hope they feel or experience?
I think they have associated a Saan Saan piece as a tool to help them take their minds off something and get them to disconnect online while using their hands to light a candle or burn an incense and tune in back to themselves, with scent that transports them somewhere else. Maybe it&rsquo;s escapism!
Your past personal experiences have also influenced your scents. Does your approach to sustainability also stem from personal experiences or beliefs? How do those tie into the brand&rsquo;s larger values?
I think my personal beliefs around ecological sustainability have shifted. I used to think that actions of consumers and small enterprises, at scale, can really have an impact in improving our situation but it can&rsquo;t, and larger systems at play &mdash; perhaps designed to pass on the responsibility and evade true action and which smaller brands are prone to copying, unwittingly &mdash; and resorting to something called greenwashing. And we are careful to not become part of this.
We don&rsquo;t consciously use sustainability as a way to market ourselves and you don&rsquo;t need to purchase anything from us to help the environment. We are very much imperfect in our own methodologies in lessening our footprint, partly because of some of the other larger systems (in the supply chain) I mentioned, but we are constantly trying our best to reduce our negative impact as a business and hopefully inspire our community to understand what true ecological sustainability is.
What are some of the ways you ensure that your products align with your commitment to sustainability?
We try our best to engage with local artisans, small business owners and makers by collaborating with them on products and community-related campaigns. Wherever possible, we also source local raw materials and work with local suppliers. From early on, we had committed to reusing as much of our packaging as possible. We have always accepted empty jars for refills. Just recently, in partnership with Masungi Georeserve, we did a three-day refillery program to encourage people to look at what vessels they already have at home and get them refilled with candles. Also, wherever we have control in the supply chain and logistics process, we try to reuse and never purchase new plastic materials to use in packaging and shipping.

As a business that promotes a more mindful lifestyle, how do you see Saan Saan influencing the way people think about sustainability in their everyday lives?
If people choose to be slower in their day, connect more with something tactile and sensorial and are more thoughtful about their consumption, we&rsquo;ll be happy.
What has been the most surprising lesson you've learned so far from running Saan Saan?
That one can be as small as they want to be. I had this hypothesis quite early on: that businesses don&rsquo;t need to aspire for traditional growth. You can, if you want to, but it is not a template that everyone should follow, especially if it means trading your freedom for more revenue. That a business doesn't need to purely operate on financial metrics and growth numbers or other metrics like the freedom to do other creative pursuits, connect with the community, explore interesting and fun projects and even life metrics like how much time you can be away from operations to go on vacation or work on a new thing totally unrelated. I think if I were not careful, it&rsquo;s easy to be engulfed by work as a result of that growth and lose my vision for myself or the kind of life I want.
What do you find most rewarding about running a business like Saan Saan? What keeps you motivated?
My relationship with the brand has evolved over the last seven years, but a few years ago, I started to see it as a canvas for creative pursuits. It started as a candle brand and expanded into not just fragrance but also its intersections with local cinema, art, literature, design, history and heritage, as well as culture. It&rsquo;s truly fascinating. I am always most excited when we have an opportunity to do something new and bring an idea to fruition, and are able to collaborate with others.
What&rsquo;s next for Saan Saan? Are there any new ideas or collaborations in the pipeline that we should be looking forward to?
There will be new ways to enjoy our fragrances coming up this year, along with, of course, new collaborations!

Photography by Arabella Paner, courtesy of Saan Saan.

An Interview With Saan Saan Founder Mark Zavalla

L'OFFICIEL HOMMES PHILIPPINES JUNE 2025 - Cole Micek ₱600

An Interview With Saan Saan Founder Mark Zavalla

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