We have received a lot of questions recently about vaping Essential Oils and considering that this is not our specialty we connected with Matt Harrigan, founder of Kinin a company that produces all-natural personal essential oil diffusers for some answers.Can you please tell us a little about yourself and why you decided to go into this industry?You bet. I am a San Diego native, surfer, and father of two. I've spent the last twenty-something years as a technology company CEO, which has taken me all over the world. I first became interested in aromatherapy, botanicals, and alternative medicine at some point during my travels to south east Asia in the 1990s, and have been interested in the healing power of plants ever since.Incidentally, this is also the same timeframe when vapor technology really started to take hold. Given that essential oils have been used for both flavor and fragrance in other industries, I was curious as to whether or not we could replicate the experience of aromatherapy in a pocket-sized device. As with every great technology company I've been fortunate enough to be a part of, all the experimental work started "in the garage" and evolved from there. What is the difference between the products you offer and vaping devices? Is this an alternative to cigarettes or a vaping pen? The vape industry's primary function is to sell a nicotine delivery system to people who want to curb combustible tobacco usage. They do this by mixing artificial flavors, nicotine, propylene glycol, etc. together in order to deliver a "smoking" experience. It's an admirable goal really - help people overcome an addiction. But, it is not a fully evolved idea. First there were cigarettes - harmful. Then there were vapes, which are really about "harm reduction." What we're trying to do here is really about wellness and self-care.I would say that we share far more similarities with a household or desktop essential oil diffuser than we do with the vaping world. The goal is really to make aromatherapy portable and allow people to experience the therapeutic effects of the constituents in essential oils at their convenience, wherever they go. Its very important to recognize that vapor is a -delivery system-, not an ingredient, which is why we use the term "wellness pods." Calling everything "a vape" in an effort to stigmatize it is the equivalent of calling everything in a bottle "beer." There are many things that you can drink from bottles, as there are many things that you can vaporize.Also, I think it is critical to understand that terpenes are quite delicate. If you were to take our botanical blends and attempt to "vape" them in a big tank mod, you'd likely find the experience ineffective, extremely unpleasant, as well as potentially dangerous. All of our hardware is specifically designed to operate within acceptable temperature ranges, at specific power levels, with the appropriate resistance.We take a great deal of care to deliver products that provide the maximum amount of therapeutic value, safely.Are you saying it's more like having a personal inhaler?Exactly! We refer to it as "personal aromatherapy" or "aromatherapy optimized."Is it difficult to position yourself as an aromatherapy company since your device can easily be associated with the vaping community? With this said, would you consider this a bad thing or an advantage?Wow, yes! Its definitely a double-edged sword. On one hand, we had so many people ask us to make a pod that would help them quit vaping nicotine, which is how we created our "KININ Switch" blend (spruce, black pepper, and lemon are the main notes), so awareness by the vaping community is instrumental. About 2/3 of our customers come from the aromatherapy world, while 1/3 are former nicotine vape users looking for a healthier alternative. We have a ton of JUUL converts, presumably due to people's desire to get away from the high nicotine concentrations available in those products.It has also created a number of very frustrating moments in the development of the company. We've had accounts suspended by Stripe, Google, PayPal, Facebook, Square, Intuit, and countless others based on the broad assumption that we're a "vape company." Some of them have been very good about actually listening to us, whereas some of them simply don't care (usually payment providers). After some careful research, it seems that many of these companies share the policy of deferring to automated processes with minimal human oversight, so pleading your case can be difficult.Generally speaking, we're past all of that now. We have a great relationship with our new credit card processor, PayPal has been a great partner, and everything is right-sided with all the social networks.Do your products contain nicotine or synthetic chemicals and would you be open to discussing your ingredient list?Trust between us and our customers is a prerequisite to being in this business, so we're very open about the contents of our products. None of our products contain any nicotine or any synthetics.All of the ingredients are listed on each blend page. Our blends contain only:- Essential oils or botanical extracts (For instance - KININ Recover is peppermint, narrow leaf eucalyptus, clary sage, tea tree, petitgrain, sweet orange, frankincense, and lemon).- Palm derived, Kosher vegetable glycerin- WaterDo you work with an aromatherapist to formulate your blends? What is your blending strategy?We do, as well as people with backgrounds in organic chemistry. Eventually I'd like to have part of our onboarding process for all new employees be to complete the training for NAHA and AIA, whether those people are in sales, marketing, product engineering, support, etc.Our blend creation strategy is four parts: First we identify all the individual plants and extracts that may positively affect the mood we are trying to create with a specific blend and create what we call a master candidate list. Then we identify the most active terpenes in those blends and their related effects. For instance, clary sage has high concentrations of linalool, which can be helpful with stress relief, so it makes a great candidate for some of our relaxation blends. Then we cross-populate all the data from all the combination possibilities to see what will actually smell and taste good. We go through hundreds of iterations on each blend before we have a market ready product.Are there any people who should avoid using your products? Are you worried about long term effects on the body or the possibility of user addiction? The only thing we currently warn about is the potential for allergic reaction to any of the contents in the product. Aromatherapy has been around for 6000 years or so in various forms, so humans interacting with essential oils is fairly well understood, and neither our delivery system or blending process inherently increases any risk associated with exposure to these oils.There are no physiological additive properties to any of the blends that we've made. We'd certainly rather that someone was habitually using an Eco rather than a JUUL, cigarette, or some other nicotine-based product. Would you say it's safe to use daily?As with everything, excess is the enemy of progress. We make recommendations for 3-5 breaths, 4-5 times daily, but at the dilution levels we're talking about, there's no harm in using it more than that. One thing we do recommend is inhaling through your mouth, holding briefly, and exhaling through your nose. This maximizes contact with your olfactory system and produces the strongest effect. Do you recognize your blends as healing tools and to whom would you recommend your device? Absolutely! I think the most inspiring thing that we see routinely is when customers write in to tell us how using a specific KININ Wellness Pod has helped them. This happens most frequently with people who are experiencing anxiety or trouble sleeping. The Relax and Meditate pods are a huge hit there. People who need to go in the opposite direction and need to stay on task tend to gravitate toward Focus and Indulge.In the current regulatory environment, we've been a little hesitant to recommend specific blends for specific treatments, for much the same reason that we've been cautious on how we market the product. We are working on releasing a "per botanical" benefits section on the website so that users can assess for themselves how different plants may act in different therapeutic ways, and which blend might produce the effect they're looking for. Would I recommend using KININ Wellness Pods? I'm using one while I'm in this interview!How long would you estimate one pod to last and are the devices reusable?Each pod lasts about 30-45 days and they're $15.The KININ Eco is our rechargeable diffuser that the pods magnetically snap into, so you can change blends however often you like. Each pod typically last about 30-45 days depending on usage. The Eco charges off any USB power source (laptop, wall, etc).Reusability and sustainability are an important part of our ethos as a company. We recognize that what we do requires an inherent reliance on nature, so we try to impact it as little as possible by making our product as environmentally responsible as technology currently allows us to.What are your thoughts about this industry and the future of personal diffusers? Can we expect anything new from your company?This is a very exciting space that in the center of three distinct markets - health & wellness, aromatherapy, and vapor technology. We're constantly working on two general areas: in product - the development of new blends for our existing delivery system, and innovation in the delivery system itself. You can definitely expect new product developments from KININ in the near future. The brand is growing 25% month over month, so we're always looking for enthusiastic people that want to join a fun team and partners to help us expand.
