Taoasis

Taoasis is a German maker of essential oils and natural cosmetics, founded in 1991 by the author and perfumer Axel Meyer [9]. It is run as an owner-managed family business and produces natural fragrances and cosmetics from certified organic or Demeter-grown plants. What began as a one-person operation selling oils to pharmacies has grown into a company with close to a thousand products.

The full corporate name is Taoasis GmbH Natur Duft Manufaktur ("nature scent manufactory"). The company remains active, with a lavender-field and scent-garden identity that has drawn recurring regional and national press.

Axel Meyer traveled through Asia and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and in Auroville, in southern India, learned to extract essential oils from herbs and flowers. Back in Germany, he set down what he had learned. In the spring of 1991 he published Das kleine Lexikon der Düfte ("The Small Lexicon of Scents"), described as one of the first German non-fiction books on aromatherapy. Demand for the oils the book described led Meyer to begin selling them himself — initially 33 varieties, alphabetically from Anis to Zypresse — through pharmacies in Germany and Austria. He founded Taoasis GmbH Natur Duft Manufaktur the same year [9], having already run a small Taoasis book-publishing house since the early 1980s. The name points to the guiding idea the company still cites, "Leben im Einklang mit der Natur" (living in harmony with nature).

The company gives its address as Am Duftgarten 1 in Lage, in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe region [2]; some third-party descriptions instead place it in the neighbouring town of Detmold [10]. Both lie within the Kreis Lippe district.

Taoasis has stayed in the founding family. Since 2011, Meyer's son Govinda has served as co-managing director, described by the company as having "grown up between the oil bottles" [2]; Sandra Engelhardt works as operations manager. The company presents itself as an owner-managed family business and lists no outside parent.

Taoasis frames its work around living in harmony with nature, and extends that into how it measures its own performance. The company reports under the Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie ("common-good economy") framework, judging success not only by growth and profit but by the effect of its business on people and the environment. It describes itself as among the first companies in Germany to file such a balance sheet, recording 629 points in its 2015–2016 assessment [5]. Four stated values — sustainability, regionality, biodynamic cultivation and family enterprise — recur across its materials, under the tagline "Wir machen Düfte wie sie sein sollten" (we make scents as they should be).

The range spans fragrance compositions, aromatherapy oils, natural cosmetics and room fragrancing. Its aroma-cosmetics line covers facial and body care, base and massage oils, roll-ons, hydrolats, natural perfumes and body sprays, and the company also markets a Baldini natural-cosmetics line [10]. Many of the plants used — lavender, rosemary, oregano, sage, chamomile and clary sage — are grown on the company's own land in Demeter quality [7]. Taoasis runs its own distillation facility at the Lage site, using water-steam distillation, and analyses raw materials and finished products in an in-house laboratory.

The products carry a broad set of natural-cosmetics and organic certifications, among them Demeter, NATRUE, Cosmos Organic and the EU organic seal, alongside BDIH and the ISO 22716 cosmetics good-manufacturing-practice and ISO 9001 quality-management standards [6].

In 2018 the company established its own Demeter-certified farm, cultivating more than 20 hectares in the region, with its largest lavender field at about five hectares [7]. It states that it sources energy entirely from renewable supplies, favours cardboard over plastic packaging, and works to reduce waste. The fields double as pollinator habitat, and the company takes part in the BeeWild project, setting aside wildflower areas for bees and butterflies.

Regional and national press have covered the company's lavender fields and scent garden. A 2022 feature in Welt am Sonntag called the setting a "Westfälische Provence" east of Bielefeld, and local papers have run similar pieces on the Lage site and its gardens [8]. No formal awards or product-test results are documented.

Taoasis remains active. Its most recent clearly visible activity is a mid-2024 press release announcing its "Lavendelwochen 2024" [8], and it continues to run courses, events and social channels alongside its roughly one thousand products.