Hong Kong Incense Company

Hong Kong Incense Company grew out of one person's search for a smell. Founder Aaron Tang encountered an unfamiliar fragrance at Chi Lin Nunnery in 2007, traced it to Vietnamese agarwood, and spent the following years studying incense — including a course in Japanese kōdō in 2012 under incense master Sōhitsu Isshiken Hachiya — before beginning to make his own incense and, from 2017, teaching courses in it around Hong Kong.

The company presents itself as the city's last remaining Hong Kong-made traditional high-grade natural incense factory, producing sticks, cones, coils, and nerikoh pastilles by hand using methods it describes as Han Chinese tradition. That framing sits inside a longer local history: agarwood exports were central to Hong Kong's economy for centuries, and the city's own name is widely linked to the 'fragrant harbour' incense trade that once ran through it.

Beyond production, Tang has advocated publicly for agarwood tree conservation, testifying before Hong Kong's Legislative Council, and the company runs workshops covering both Chinese incense-making and Japanese kōdō — positioning itself as much as a cultural-preservation effort as a commercial incense maker.