The Holiaum Story: Why This Brand Exists

A note from our founder, Sandy

Some things you only recognise looking back — they turn out to have been quietly there for years.

It was never a sudden decision, and there was no moment of revelation. It was more that I kept finding my way back to it, again and again, without noticing.

For me, that thing is aromatherapy.

Honestly, I never set out to start a brand. There was no grand reason behind any of it. It was a private pleasure — I researched it myself, and I enjoyed myself doing it.

It began with a bottle of oil from my aunt. I had spent six months living in mainland China, and the air pollution left me with something that came back every year: a dry cough that lasted one or two months. My aunt said this oil might help.

I remember thinking it was remarkable. I liked the smell. But it had never occurred to me that essential oils could do anything for the body or the mind — wasn’t it just something that smelled nice? And it certainly never occurred to me that this one bottle would quietly become part of my life.

Plenty of people unwind after work with a series, dinner with friends, an hour on their phone. I did all of that too. But I also started reading about what plants actually do. I spent hours on the differences between species, on where they come from, on extraction methods and how a scent changes. I made my own skincare. I blended oils for my family.

The curiosity came on its own, and so did the drive behind it. Nobody asked me to do any of this. By 2026, I had been at it for eleven years without ever deciding to be.

The turning point: catching the thought before it passed

At the end of 2023, a thought surfaced out of nowhere: you’ve been doing this for so long — why not get certified as an aromatherapist?

And I thought: right. Why had that never crossed my mind?

I’ve always believed that we each have an instinct, and some form of guidance we can’t quite name. But that voice is usually gone in a second. Whether it turns into anything depends on whether you took it seriously in the moment — whether you caught it.

That time, I caught it. And I acted on it.

I went on to earn two of the most respected qualifications in the field: IFA international aromatherapist certification, and NAHA Level 3, the highest in the United States.

While I was studying, I started helping the people around me more systematically — with more precise knowledge, with better formulations. I sat with them through physical tension, through the kind of tiredness that has no obvious cause, through that state where something is off and you can’t say what.

Every piece of positive feedback gave me real satisfaction, and real joy. And each one made me more certain: this isn’t just an interest. This is a path I want to take seriously. This is the contribution I want to make.

By that point, starting a brand was no longer something I was weighing up. It was simply the next thing. Because what I wanted to do had grown past the people I happened to know — I wanted more people to encounter aromatherapy as it really is, and to see how plants can accompany us back toward ourselves.

Why frankincense, myrrh and Taiwan red cypress?

The brand’s most fundamental choice has always come back to a few plants: frankincense, myrrh, and Taiwan red cypress.

We chose them because they are, in essence, the same thing the brand is for: ancient wisdom that crosses civilisations, used as a way for people today to reconnect with themselves.

Some things don’t need to be fashionable. They just need time to prove what they’re worth.

These three have been doing exactly that for thousands of years — like someone who has been through a great deal and is still, unmistakably, themselves.



Before humanity had really separated into East and West, frankincense and myrrh were already there in the ancient world. They belonged to ritual, to medicine, to trade, to spiritual life, and they accompanied countless people across countless eras. And Taiwan red cypress — the ancient, protected tree of my own home — carries the memory of these mountains, of this land, and of time.

What this brand is trying to do

Looking back, the reason I could hear that inner voice at that particular moment — the reason I could make the decision to start a brand — is that essential oils had kept the channel between me and myself open the whole time.

That is something I only understood by living it.

What the brand wants to do is actually simple: in an era this busy, offer a way to slow down and come back to yourself, through ancient plant wisdom. Not a brief escape from your life. A reconnection with it.

Eleven years ago I thought I was just playing around. But the plants had their own way of bringing me here.

What I want to do now is share this path with you, and let you walk yourself. Perhaps, in some quiet moment, you’ll hear that voice of your own too.

What I want to do now is share this path with you, and let you walk yourself. Perhaps, in some quiet moment, you’ll hear that voice of your own too.

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