We met up with Bobby Duchowny in the garden outside his Cherngtalay branch – three brightly painted shipping containers which combine production, office and retail premises. They frame an airy interior dominated by colourful product displays that rest on a beautiful polished wood floor. The air is full of soothing bouquets. Just being there is relaxing.

When did you move to Phuket?
Eight years ago.

Bobby, where are you from originally?
I was born and brought up in Malibu just outside Los Angeles/Hollywood and surfed on Malibu beach as a kid. I studied photography and cinematography at UCLA and inevitably went into the movie business, just as my father and his father before him had done.

There’s a big jump from producing films to making aromatherapy products!
How did it happen?
I was working as a Screenplay Development Executive which basically involved analysing five hundred or so scripts every year and rejecting more than 95% – a depressingly low yield.

Could I break in there? I thought that these days they wrote films for a particular star.
That would be mostly terminal. Imagine you were to write ‘Mission Impossible 10’ and Tom Cruise then said he was too busy. What next?

Anyway, in the course of all this I joined a team visiting Thailand to evaluate shooting locations. Their plans didn’t pan out so the team went back home and I stayed here. The end of my movie career! That was in 1996.

By accident I then came across a group of Thai intellectuals who had embarked on organic farming – ahead of their time, back then. Through this contact I became interested in extracting pure plant oils from their crops as a commercial venture – initially Neem Oil for use as a natural insecticide. My wife and I originally made it up in the kitchen of our Bangkok apartment and sold it at Bangkok’s Chatuchak Weekend Market. We then had a stroke of luck when UNICEF in Thailand heard about us and placed large orders of mosquito repellent for use by their teams working in the field. I’d studied aromatherapy in the States so our product range expanded and we then decided on a move to a more restful environment. We set up our first outlet in 2000 on Surin Beach close to the big hotel operations which were one of our potential markets.

You are obviously doing quite well. What are your plans for the company and yourself?
Well, we now employ 38 people – almost all relatives of my wife, so it is very much a family business. We have 14 outlets – including new stores in Singapore and Australia. For all that, I am still closely involved in product development and manufacture and it remains fun to do. I never want this to change.

What’s the secret of your success?
The first of my rules is that we only use the freshest and purest ingredients available – whether it is Ayurvedic herbal essences from India or Jojoba oils from the Desert Whale in Arizona. Then, we only make small batches at a time, all by hand. With thousands of different materials, over 150 essential oils and 600 products, ranging from soaps and aromatics through massage oils to skin creams, it is the only way to ensure consistency and product freshness. We have also over the years ridden on a wave of soaring demand for these goods from top hotels, spas and the general public.

On a personal basis, one of the first things I did on arriving was to learn to speak Thai. It is, in my belief, the only way to make the cultural divide work for you.

Is what you do art or science?
A bit of both I suppose. I’ve learnt an awful lot over the years about scent combinations and what the emotional responses of the senses are to different fragrances. Aside from not smoking which would be fatal (in more ways than one, of course) I don’t think my sense of smell is naturally any more sensitive than anybody else’s – just more trained, rather like a wine taster’s palate. I can pretty well identify the constituents and makeup of an item just by smelling it. Practise makes perfect.

Tell us a little about your private life.
My wife Palita and I have a house we built in Bang Jo and we have two sons – Micah and Jonah, aged three and five. They attend the British school. I’m slightly apprehensive of the day they come home and call me a Yank! I am not planning on going anywhere else soon. No more scripts!

I believe that this is not the first time that the press has beaten a path to your door.
Time Magazine (The Best of Asia) and the New York Times (Top Pick 2008) have done pieces on Lemongrass House. The latter notably remarked that the only thing I liked about the movie business was ‘the smell of the popcorn’. Last year Condé Nast Traveler (Hot List) – the premier travel magazine in the US – listed us. ‘Shop Window on Lifestyle’ now joins their ranks.

For information about Lemongrass House contact:
Tel: +66 (0)76 271233   Email: info@lemongrasshouse.com