Wild honeycomb with lilac flowers and Looshi incense sticks

Press

For press and editors

How a Looshi stick is made, from the woods and the honey to the hands that roll it, with photographs, logos and a fact sheet to download.

Download the press kit
A Rewild box, vetiver, musk and redwood, on raw wood in front of the Looshi leaf mark

To use as written

About Looshi

Looshi makes hand rolled incense that smells like a place or a feeling: a forest after rain, a kitchen at dusk, the first warm evening of the year. Every stick starts as a paste of aromatic woods and wild honey, with no charcoal coating and no synthetic fragrance, so the scent comes from the materials themselves. Women artisans in Karnataka, in southern India, roll each stick by hand, and then the sticks rest for three weeks to cure. Looshi was founded by Richa, a third generation incense maker whose family has made incense since 1972. Eight scents, at hellolooshi.com.

The craft

How a Looshi stick is made

Four things go into the paste of every Looshi stick: aromatic woods, wild honey, coconut shell and aromatic oils.

  1. 01

    The woods

    Aromatic wood powders are the body of the scent, rolled around a bamboo core. The smell comes from the wood, not from a coating sprayed on at the end.

  2. 02

    The honey

    Wild raw honey binds the paste, in place of synthetic glue, and lends the scent a soft, mellow undertone.

  3. 03

    The coconut shell and the oils

    Upcycled coconut shell is mixed into the paste, so the stick burns on coconut shell, not coal. The shells are left over once coconut-oil makers take the pulp, so nothing new is cut or mined for them, and they give a soft, even burn. It is never a coating, and nothing is dipped.

    Natural aromatic oils carry the three notes that make each scent its own.

  4. A woman at a rolling table in Karnataka, rolling incense paste by hand

    04

    The hands and the time

    At the rolling table in Karnataka, women artisans shape each stick by hand, one at a time. Hand rolling keeps the finer notes that machines burn away.

    Then the sticks rest for three weeks, while the honey dries and the notes settle into one scent.

  5. 05

    The match

    After the cure, a stick is ready for a match, and the room smells of what went into it.

The founder

Richa is a third generation incense maker. Her family has made incense since 1972. In her words:

“I grew up believing there is nothing else like real incense. You strike a match, and everything the stick has been holding fills the room. No other form of aroma does that. That moment is why Looshi exists.”

Richa, founder

The range

The eight scents

Every box holds 20 hand rolled sticks, 8 inches long, about 45 minutes each.

The eight Looshi incense boxes stacked, one colour for each scent

Looshi in numbers

  • 4,000+happy customers
  • 400,000+sticks lit
  • 4.8 starsacross 160+ reviews
A lit stick in the Ring of Serenity holder with a Calm box behind it, in window light

For gift guides

Prices and samples

Boxes from $28, gift sets from $50. Samples are available on request for gift guides and reviews. Full prices are in the fact sheet.

Download

The press kit

Sixteen photographs of the sticks, their ingredients, the boxes and the holders, the Looshi wordmark and symbol (SVG and PNG), and a fact sheet with every price, in one zip.

Please credit photographs “Courtesy of Looshi”.

Download the press kit

Press contact

For interviews, samples, images and questions, write to press@hellolooshi.com, or use our contact form.