A conversation with a fragrance founder

In this episode of The Common Scents podcast, Tamar talks with Ryan Handis, creator of Broken Anatomy Perfumes, about their journeys into fragrance, their overcoming of adversity, and the parallels between the two brands.

[00:00:16.577] – TAMAR:
Hey, everybody, super excited bringing in Episode 57 of the Common Scents podcast. And this one is going to be a different one. The reason why is Common Scents podcast really talks about stories of transformation, stories of career shifts, stories about self-care. And while we’re not going to drop that at all in this particular podcast, this particular podcast, I connected with Ryan. He is actually in the fragrance world. We connected in a completely different environment. I was super excited. He started his own thing. I started my own thing. We aligned; the stars aligned for us in that front. And I think that there’s a really good opportunity for us to talk about our journeys, learn about Ryan’s journey. I certainly don’t know yet. I’ve seen his stuff. It’s been amazing. He’s going to share that. So thank you so much for coming.

[00:01:04.667] – Ryan Handis:
Hi. Yes. Thanks for having me on here.

[00:01:07.097] – TAMAR:
Yeah. Where are you physically? Tell me a little bit more about that and what you do and who you are.

[00:01:13.097] – Ryan Handis:
My one year old back here, she’s doing good, just eating. So we’re from Cottonwood, Arizona. So we are about 15 miles east of Sedona, which a lot of people know more about than Cottonwood. So we’re in the desert, which is nice because we get lots of cool desert rains and it’s just it’s a good time. Yeah, cool.

[00:01:36.537] – TAMAR:
And tell me, what do you do? Because you work in the fragrance world. So tell me a little more about that.

[00:01:40.877] – Ryan Handis:
OK, so in the fragrance world, I am the founder and perfumer of Broken Anatomy Perfumes and I say perfumer. I haven’t gone to perfume school and I’m self trained so I’m more of a perfume artist. I guess I wouldn’t say “official perfumer by trade,” but needless to say, I do enjoy creating things that are kind of off the wall and different as well. I started reviewing fragrances in 2017 and I really just wanted to, I guess, expand on that. I kind of got bored of it and ran into some personal issues in my own life and I thought, I need a change and I think I have the tools to do this. One thing I learned in the perfume school that I was watching online was that if you want to do it, you can. And that’s the only requirement, is that you want to do it. You have the passion for it. So that’s really it. Yeah.

[00:02:38.967] – TAMAR:
Yes. That’s a good story.

[00:02:39.437] – Ryan Handis:
And we’ve been around for about a year and well, sorry, we launched last November, but I’ve been around working on this for about the past year. So it’s been it’s been a while in the making. We’ve really officially only been in business since November of last year. So we’re pretty new.

[00:02:59.177] – TAMAR:
2019 or November 2020?

[00:03:01.817] – Ryan Handis:
20. Sorry.

[00:03:02.237] – TAMAR:
Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Because I had seen your stuff and I was, I’ve been pretty impressed. I mean you have to check his packaging out. It’s just, it’s so cool. It’s like hieroglyphicky. It’s like it’s really cool stuff. Yeah.

[00:03:17.357] – Ryan Handis:
Yeah, thanks.

[00:03:17.837] – TAMAR:
My story is very—you don’t know my story so I’ll share it here. I don’t know. I wasn’t into fragrance and fragrance reviews at all. It just sort of fell into my lap. You know, as a father I guess you’ll relate maybe. I don’t know if you will. You might, you might not, but having children, I have four and I fell into a postpartum depression after the birth of my first one, but I didn’t really have the awareness of it until finally, like, I hit a rock bottom, basically due to other things and kind of external influences, that kind of like really seized my depression and made it a lot worse. And the one thing that saved my life was perfume. Perfume changed me, perfume.

[00:03:56.817] – Ryan Handis:
Wow.

[00:03:57.797] – TAMAR:
An