What makes perfume so expensive

All rights reserved. Kristina Strasunske via Getty Images. The process used to make luxury and budget scents is essentially the same. But some luxury and budget perfumes can differ in quality of ingredients.

Suggest a correction. So Long, Hyaluronic Acid. Working Too Hard? Not Sleeping Enough? Experts Explain. Some flowers only bloom for one month per year, and when seasonality is not the issue, picking these flowers has to be timed to perfection.

The three most expensive flower scents on the market are jasmine, Bulgarian Rose and orris — are they found in your favourite perfumes? And that is just for the floral scents… some perfumes incorporate the seductively earthy and smokey scent provided by oud oil : an oil made from the wood of Aquilaria trees that is extremely popular in the Middle East.

What makes this ingredient difficult to make is that these trees only produce oud a dark and extremely fragrant form of resin when they are infected with a type of fungus — without insects infecting the tree with this fungus, it is pretty much odourless.

Of course, this must then be extracted by skilled artisans who are experts in their craft. Finally, some ingredients are even extracted from animals and unsurprisingly and in our opinion, fortunately , have become particularly difficult to get your hands on. Generally, cheaper perfumes compensate for the cost of ingredients by using synthetic, lab-manufactured liquids designed to resemble the original scents. Although this is a glaringly obvious fact, we sometimes forget that professional perfumers actually have to make the perfumes!

These corporations charge brands for their formulas, all of course, at a mark-up that gets passed on to the consumer. In such a competitive market, the best way for a new fragrance to stand out is by ensuring its visual appeal.

A breath-taking fragrance bottle sold in a premium box serves to reassure consumers of its value. Perfumers create the perfume. Most of them work for a few big international fragrance companies whose names most people have never heard. Related to marketing, but in a category of its own, is the licensing of a scent. Celebrity status comes at a price! Retail markups can be substantial. Reports vary, but generally it seems a markup of anywhere from 20 to 80 percent is to be expected at the retail stage.

We are happily throwing our hard-earned money at companies who have built an enormous, expensive, you might even say bloated industry around a very simple thing: scented water. Considering all this, it seems unfortunate that perfume should be so costly. Fortunately, the digital world is quickly changing the equation when it comes to perfume-shopping. We at Splash of Scent are able to avoid expenses such as brick-and-mortar retail shops and traditional marketing, so we can keep our overhead costs low.

Try comparing a fake with the real thing after hours, and the cheap perfume may smell bad or have no smell at all. Common base notes in more expensive fragrances include patchouli, vanilla, sandalwood or musk which gives perfume its lasting impression. No two people smell things the same way and no two perfumes or colognes will smell the same on your skin as it will another. Choose a scent that suits your budget, skin scent and your personality. A fragrance is all about bringing your own uniqueness to a scent and making it yours!

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