A video on the way to selling perfume

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kMLDVOqMBM

    
   As announced repeatedly, I've been working a marketing plan for a fragrance called "Confusion II," named after a piece of sculpture of the same name. Part of the plan involves producing a video for a select group of people I want  to involve in selling this fragrance, and this video is still about two weeks away from completion.

    But, in the process of doing the "real" video, I came up with a sin off that some have found entertaining -- "hypnotic" my wife called it.

    The video appears to be too much to post directly here on Blogger but you can view it directly on YouTube if you want. The title for this "entertainment" version of the video is "Confusion II Video". You might enjoy it.

Why TV commercials for celebrity perfumes may not be selling at full strength

    I wrote yesterday about memory and scent and the possibility that a multimedia promotion for a perfume might have the potential to implant a deep scent memory that could, when triggered in the future, bring back a strong desire for that particular fragrance.

    Now a logical response to this suggestion might be, "What about all the celebrity fragrance commercials on TV where the celebrity is a singer? Isn't their plan to create a memorable event for the viewer?"

    My answer is that while that may be the plan, the general result falls short and for several good reasons.

    First, look at the relationship between the celebrity and the fragrance marketer. The marketer takes a license to use the celebrity's name and image. But the license is for a fixed period of time, perhaps just three years. Only if sales targets are met will renewal be allowed.

    So a commercial that might trigger memories and desires for the perfume in four, or six, or ten years could be considered a costly, wasted effort.

    Typically even when a license is renewed, by year two the marketer is already throwing the money at a second perfume, allowing the first to fade into the background.

    Next there is a problem of rights to the music. Few celebrity performers compose their own music and so the rights issue comes up again. To use a tune to trigger memories three years down the road, the marketer must have the rights to use that music, three years down the road. And, since the marketer doesn't have a clue as to how effective the recall reaction might be in sales dollars, the gamble could be huge.

    The same problem arises in the use of music that is already associated with the celebrity. A celebrity fragrance TV commercial may run just 30 seconds. But the hits the celebrity has recorded would run considerably longer. Will the owner of the music allow it to be cut for the commercial? Will the owner allow it to be used for a commercial at all? Will the celebrity agree to record it, thus perhaps changing the association from the celebrity to the perfume?
   
    You would have to look into it, case by case.

    So you might say, why not compose music especially for the commercial? But commercials generally mix talk with music. And, while special music would generally be composed for a perfume ad, will enough effort be put behind it to make it truly memorable -- by itself -- without the talk which will be recorded over it?

    Again rights rear their head. Will the celebrity be willing to record a special song for the perfume? Will he or she get royalties from the use of this song in addition to the money made from the sale of the perfume? Will royalties continue into the future when perhaps the marketer no longer has the rights to sell the perfume?

    For the marketer of a celebrity fragrance the practical approach is to keep it simple, to avoid risks, to avoid setting up unnecessary unknowns. So maybe, just maybe, the potential for future sales is diminished but if you have to license this and that and create this and that, all without knowing if it can be of any help to you, is it worth the risk?

    On the other hand, if it was your perfume ... and you could control ALL the circumstances ... wouldn't you want to at least TRY to create that big memory, a memory that might stick with people for years, keeping interest in your perfume alive -- and profitable?

Can a multimedia experience implant a deep memory and desire for your perfume?

Can a tume trigger a desire for a scent?

    Advertisers, for years, have sought to associate popular musical works with their products. At this time of the year -- the holiday season -- we are hearing the jingle of Christmas tunes on radio and TV commercials. Why? Because the music, it is hoped, will make the listener favorably disposed toward the product.

    While "marketing through music" is a well established technique and millions are spent by marketers to license particularly compelling works of popular music, the use of scent to sell products is just now being explored.

    Anecdotal evidence suggests that certain scents, stumbled upon by accident, can (or may) trigger emotional memories from our past.

    While limited scientific evidence of this phenomenon exists, less if any evidence suggests that visual or aural stimulation can trigger the memory of a scent. But it can.

    Once, while watching a foreign film, a love scene took place in a setting that triggered a strong emotional memory for me and my immediate thought was, "there is a SMELL that goes with that setting and that smell isn't there." Without the smell -- this was a film after all -- the scene, to me, was incomplete.

    Now if asked to DESCRIBE that smell I would have difficulty. Smells can be quite difficult to describe in a way that will communicate with any accuracy to others. We really don't have a language for it and the best description I might have given would be to reference the visual setting -- what the eyes of all who saw the film saw -- and then press them to imagine what the smell would be if all those visual elements came together in physical form.

    As I saw the film I had a longing to smell once again that scent which that scene had revived in my memory.

    So is it possible to create visual and aural stimuli that, when presented to the customer, will embed themselves in  the customer's memory and later trigger a desire to purchase the perfume?

    This is what I am trying to achieve in the presentation I am developing for "Confusion II." I have the scent -- the fragrance -- and the music for it is coming together. I've already started to record the tracks and in the next two weeks I'll start shooting raw footage for the video.

    The actual presentation will be quite simple but my hope is that the video, with special music, will create an emotional experience that will "rub off" and create a desire for the perfume.

    Like the film mentioned above the video presentation will not be smellable. So the plan is to use the video in conjunction with demonstrations of the fragrance. The hope is that together the elements will create an emotional memory and that a future exposures to the video, or possibly the music alone, will trigger a desire for the fragrance.

    The relationship between scents and memories has not been well explored but as marketers we might get a jump on science. Our "proof" of success will be in sales numbers.

    If this strategy can be made to work, it could ultimately be well worth the cost of a few failures along the way.

A perfume in search of a theme

    In the process of trying to create one new perfume I came out with formulas for two new perfumes -- but neither was right for the fragrance I was trying to create.

    The first "extra" formula is about to become my "Confusion II" as the scent fits the theme perfectly. The project involves a multimedia presentation of music, sculpture, and fragrance and the elements are coming together. But "Confusion II" is a spin off of my work on a formula for a perfume which for now I'll call, "Tokyo."

    Actually the final version of "Confusion II," now in the process of being scaled up from a few drops to about 500 ml, emerged from about 15 trials, all in a search for "Tokyo." One jumped out for "confusion II." But there was another success, a really nice fragrance that was neither right for "Tokyo" nor for "Confusion II." So what do I do with that?

    The answer is simple. I hold it. I'll make up a small batch, I'll make sure I hive the formula down both in my bound notebooks and, digitally, in The Perfumer's Workbook, but I won't offer it to the public. Not now. And the reason is simple. I don't have a story to go with it.

    Before I launch a new fragrance I want to have a story to go with it, one that can be illustrated visually or musically and that will target a particular audience. This new, beautiful, unnamed fragrance doesn't have that ... yet.

    So I wait. From time to time I'll give it a sniff. I'll give a bottle to my wife and perhaps a few friends. I'll see how my thinking about it evolves over the coming months -- or perhaps years -- and perhaps, one day, inspiration will hit me and suddenly this fragrance will match up with an urgent theme -- which will produce a story which I can tell, to sell, this perfume.

    But until that happens I'll just store it away in my library of formulas that could, some day, become marketable perfumes.



   

Consumer test your fragrance, but test with the right consumers

    What happens when you've been working on a fragrance and finally begin to get samples that people like? To sell your fragrance, people have to like it, yes? Yes, the people to whom you are marketing it.

    It's not enough that many people like your fragrance. It has to be liked by the people you want to sell it to and if you're a small, independent perfumery, this might be a very small number of people. Yet they are the only people that count.
   
    So if your marketing plan envisions a particular type of consumer and a promotion built around, say, certain graphic images, the perfume has to fit that market and the people in that market have to CONNECT with your fragrance on an emotional level. That goes beyond liking. In fact, they might not really like it at all but if it makes a statement they like, you could be making nice sales.

    So if your theme is a bit dark, a bit mysterious, a bit of mental CONFUSION, a "nice," happy, cheerful fragrance would not be the answer, even if people like it when it is presented to them outside the context of your promotional message.

    But you might say, "I'll change my message and market this cheerful perfume that people like to the people who like it. But think of it. You developed your dark marketing pitch because you believed you could make headway in a PARTICULAR niche. If you want to change your marketing, you'd better be sure that you have a viable niche for it and you're not surrendering a sure shot market for one in which you will get creamed by others who have more cheerful perfumes than yours and more skill at reaching people in that particular market.

    On the other hand, do ask yourself if you can achieve controversy, a bit of confusion, and use few strange notes that seem to have come from outer space ... and still not only get people in your target market to buy it but also to wear it so the "message" (and fame) gets spread around.

    It's a challenge.

Making your business plan a more practical guide

   

     If you've written your business plan for investors, that's pretty serious business and you might not want to monkey with it. But if, as I have suggested elsewhere, you have prepared a business plan for your own use, you very much want to monkey with it, to fine tune it, to keep it current with the realities of how your business is developing.

    And so, for you, I want to make a suggestion, based on personal experience: Don't go nuts over the format.

    What I am suggesting is that you keep your business plan in a format in which it is easy to make notes, corrections, and adjustments. Don't type up your business plan with careful formatting on the computer which will be a pain to edit. A loose leaf notebook works fine. Loose sheets stapled together with a cover work fine.

    Handwritten works fine. I do a lot of typing but very little fancy formatting. When I first wrote up a business plan (for myself) I thought it would be more impressive, more "official," if I typed it nicely with headings and subheadings and check marks for bullets. My word processing program offered all these options.

    Less than three days had gone by before I wanted to make changes. Oh, the time it had taken to do that nice formatting! So I wrote my new material by hand and just stuck it in at the back, telling myself I would type it up late.

    But I never did.

    In fact, more and more I regard this plan as a living document. I refer to it regularly, make additions and corrections regularly, and now keep the stapled together pages in a simple folder.

    A business plan is only useful when it really is a plan and in the real world plans need to be updated regularly, adjusted regularly, and continually refocused on the goal. The goal alone can remain unchanged.

What to do when your business progress fails to keep up with your business plan schedule

    When a highway journey deviated from what our old GPS had laid out, we would get this message: "Recalculating ..." On some trips we heard the message frequently.

    When you prepare a business plan and your progress doesn't match the schedule you've laid out for yourself, you can (1) ignore your business plan, or (2) "recalculate" your time frames.

    Ignoring your business plan is not a good strategy. It's like trying to get somewhere in your car but not bothering to note the address you're trying to find or the route that will take you there.

    On the other hand, simply adjusting your time schedule has its own dangers. If you are working with money from investors, they will contact you over your non-compliance and may pressure you for an explanation.

    The big danger comes when you're completely on your own and there's nobody to push you, hassle you, goad you into understanding the problem and how it might be corrected. This is a danger because either you recognize there is a problem and deal with it or you let your project drift, with the goal becoming more hazy daily.

    Sometimes projects run behind schedule because the schedule itself is unrealistic. That which must be done to get from point "A" to point "B" cannot be done in the time allocated for the work. The current Obamacare software fiasco is an example of this. In time it will get worked out (probably) but first there must be some serious study of what went wrong, what is needed to correct it, and how much time -- realistically -- this might take.

    Likewise with any business plan.

    I'm thinking here of one of my own.

    In this plan I have not reached the goals I set by the dates I set to reach them. So do I adjust the dates or do I examine the way I'm working to see if I could or should become more efficient?

    Once I've dealt with these issues realistically I can adjust my business plan, realistically, all the while keeping my goal in sharp focus, even though it might now take longer to reach.


   

The top note dilemma

    Aside from all the other strategies that might be used to market a perfume, the "top note strategy," as I'll call it, is of major importance. The top note is what the customer first smells when he or she samples the fragrance. These are the strongest but most volatile notes. Upon the impression these notes make, a sale can be made -- or unmade.

    We speak of a perfume pyramid with top notes at the top, "heart" notes the middle layers, and base notes providing the foundation. If a fragrance is created with this structure, the top notes evaporate first, the heart notes next, and the base notes -- the drydown as it is called when most evaporation ends -- might retain their presence for a long while.

    The top notes, thanks to their volatility, reach our nose first. But what we are really smelling at this moment is a blend of ALL the notes. The heart and base notes are muted to our senses but they are there. In their turn they will get greater play.

    The initial rush of the top notes tends to be the decision maker for the customer. Either he or she approves or disapproves, and disapproval generally means "no sale."

    A problem the retailer faces in this situation, particularly when the perfumes are quite expensive and the buyers wealthy but unsophisticated in the ways of perfume, is that once the top notes evaporate and the perfume "changes," the customer thinks the fragrance has "gone bad" and may even return it to the shop where he or she purchased it.

    One way around this has been to create fragrances that barely change scent during the evaporation process as all the materials used have similar evaporation curves. Generally this involves using what traditionally would be base notes to create the entire perfume.

    But let's set aside the creative dilemma for today and look at the marketer's dilemma, particularly the marketer of low distribution fragrances, elite specialties intended for those who want more than what I'll call "mall fragrances." Must the marketer of an elite fragrance -- a quite original fragrance -- fall victim to the "top note strategy?"

    After conceptualizing a beautiful fragrance that unfolds hour by hour, must this marketer add a perky top note to his or her formula to make the sale? Or can the buyer be trusted to "understand" how the fragrance "works."

    I offer this question without an answer.

    Think of it this way. The top notes make the immediate impression but the perfumer's real work of art lies in the heart notes of the fragrance and, it may be that the perfumer feels that any top note rush should be suppressed or eliminated so that the real message of the fragrance can be better appreciated.

    But what if the real business of the fragrance is subtle? What if it doesn't bonk you over the skull? What if it grows on you pleasantly?

    Should this be ruined by unwanted top notes for the purpose of making more sales? Must a perfume become a carnival act to sell itself?

    Perhaps these thoughts are extreme but the fragrance I'm currently working on is all in the heart notes. I'm asking myself,  "do I want to keep it that way or should I decorate it with some intense, attention grabbing, top notes?"

    My current answer is, I'll play around with it a bit more and perhaps a solution can be found that will give instant attention -- without spoiling the intended message of the fragrance.

    Wish me luck.

Done with Justin Bieber -- back to last summers perfume project

    I've finished my "story" about the strategies behind Justin Bieber's "Someday" fragrance launch and posted it for members of the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club. Even with all I know and have written about the deal, there's a lot more that I would like to know but will never find out as, no doubt, that information is highly confidential. Leave it to say that there are deals on top of deals, multiple parties and corporate entities, and lots of cash or credit lines from somewhere.

    Essentially the story is all about promoters from the music world busting their way into the perfume world -- quite successfully. This is the wave of the future and the keys are strategic thinking and "fearless" (a word used by the promoters) action.

    Now back to a simple perfume.

    Yesterday evening I was finally able to resume work on a fragrance I started last summer, thought I had finished, then, after a few weeks, realized that, whatever it was (it was a NICE fragrance), it wasn't a match for the fragrance of my mental image -- the fragrance I had been TRYING to create.

    It's easy to create a nice smelling fragrance. It's not so easy to mentally envision a fragrance theme and then create a fragrance that pays off that theme.

    So here I was, at it again.

    Being away from this particular fragrance -- which for now I'll just call "Tokyo" -- gave me a chance to think a bit about the notes I wanted to include and those I wanted to exclude. This is a non-floral fragrance, which means it's a bit more abstract. So yesterday evening I was doing experiments, trying to pick up the direction, mixing multiple (small) samples to see if I might get back on track.

    This morning, sniffing yesterday's samples, I felt that progress was being made -- an "outline" had been created. So now it may be a matter of "decorating" that outline to complete the job -- and this means more experiments and many small trials. Patience is required.

A strategy story that's almost ready for you

    I'm going to wrap up the Justin Bieber "Someday" story today. The basic strategy was simple -- you could outline it on the back of a napkin -- but all those little details! It's always the details that are so necessary to attend to, the make the strategy work.

    I once worked with a fellow who invented grand strategies for making a few dollars but he was not a detail person and didn't have the backup of a detail person. So he would come ever so close to pulling off his deals -- but they all would crumble at the last minute because small points had not been addressed. For him, it was never going to change.

    The Justin Bieber "Someday" promotion story is sprinkled with small details that WERE attended to. When you see how this promotion was carried out and compare it to any other celebrity fragrance launch you'll quickly understated why I have so much respect for this project and feel it it worth studying.

    These guys were coming out of NOWHERE and they outsold the biggest in the business! It's a story that offers hope and inspiration for anyone who thinks they are no one but would like very much to be SOMEONE . . . and is willing to put in the work and THINKING.

    My "Someday" report will be available to members of the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club tomorrow, by 2 PM, Eastern Time. That's a promise.

    Then I'll dive back into the two perfume projects I wrote about yesterday.

A Perfume Concept In Search of The Right Scent

    At the forefront today is the Justin Bieber "strategy" project for Perfume Makers & Marketers Club members.

    But there's more to the day than that.

    I have a left over project from last summer developing a perfume that came out "not quite right" and now I have to get back onto it and bring it to completion.

    But that's not all. I have a second perfume project that has been very much on my mind but for which I am stalled on visualizing the complex scent I want to create.

    This second perfume is a multi-media experiment. I won't even TRY to sell the fragrance but I will give away a few bottles to select friends and others.

    This second fragrance, which I'll call "Confusion II," is intended to "illustrate," in scent, a small but quite heavy metal garden sculpture -- a work of "art" if you care to call it that. (See photo above.)

    But sculpture and scent are only TWO parts of this multi-media presentation. There will also be music -- also to "illustrate" the sculpture -- and that simple tune is already in the works.

    Finally, there will be MOTION. This will require a bit of an investment but hopefully will be worth it -- for the THRILL of it if nothing more.

    When all this is achieved I'll do a very short video for here and YouTube. Short. Simple. Experimental.

    Why all this? Where is the strategy? "Show me the dollars!"

    Great strategies come from injecting great energy into your work. So, while this "Confusion II" project may not be for sale, I expect it will give me a few perfume profit strategy ideas -- which I'll share with members of the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club.

Focus on Strategy

    What perfumes make it into the market and what perfumes, regardless of how good they may be, will never have a chance to present themselves to the public? While money talks, its not all about money, or connections, or luck. Strategy plays a big role.

    I've been focused on studying and writing about perfume marketing strategies for our monthly Club Newsletter. For the last few days I've been intensely focused on the circumstances and strategies surrounding the 2011 launch of Justin Bieber's "Someday." This was NOT a typical celebrity fragrance deal. Rather, it was probably the most unusual launch in recent memory. And the results? $130 million worth of "Someday" was sold -- and a second Justin Beiber fragrance was launched.

    So I've been writing about this and, in a few days, when I'm finished, the "story" -- with details and analysis -- will be available to members of the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club. You'll find it there.

   

Mimosa for Men

    What do you think about most men's colognes? Boring? (Likely!) Exciting? (Not likely!) Bland? (More likely.) What is the purpose of a man's cologne? In most cases, the purpose is to make money for the marketer. Duh!

    But why buy a man's fragrance? Let me count the reasons. First, a gift from her to him. Does she really know what she's buying? Does she really LIKE what she's buying? The marketers have made it safe for her. Their fragrances are ever acceptable. No shocks. No surprises. No offense, unless he really pours it on and then everyone stands back a bit and hurries to get off the elevator.

    But what about buying a fragrance just for the pleasure of using it? When I created Mimosa I was searching for a (very slightly) offbeat theme for a woman's fragrance. I used a few less common materials along with the traditional. Not fruity and no citrus top note. Or aldehyde. And certainly not bubblegum.

    More earthy. More wide open, 19th century California coast (in my mind) or North Africa, or rural Spain.

    So it worked. Mimosa came out about the way I had envisioned it and, on a woman, while noticeable (as planned!) it smelled great -- so great that I found myself trying it, on myself.

    And I did not get funny looks from guys. The women were not exactly ripping my pants off but still, they were pleasant to me.

    And I enjoyed the scent.

    So here I was, with what was supposed to be a girly fragrance, using it myself without causing funny vibes. So what the heck, I thought, why not bottle it for men? Which is what I did -- in a 50 ml sprinkler neck bottle. It's the same formula as Mimosa for women but nobody is going to call you on that. It's unisex without a sex thought. Just a pleasure when you use it. Pleasure for you, with no bad vibes.

    And yes, you can wear it in an elevator or on a crowded train without fear of giving offense. It was intended to be that way. Now available -- Mimosa for Men.

Formulas and line extensions

    When a new perfume is a hit (an event less common than you might imagine) the marketer wants to cash in on this success and commonly does so by creating brand extensions -- accessory fragrance products such as soaps, shampoos, and spa products. Then later, different versions of the original -- "XYZ Blue," "XYZ Summer," "XYZ 2013," and whatever. Each time trying to squeeze more profit out of the sometimes unexpected success.

    As the market expands and the product range becomes broader, adjustments must be made to the original formula. The aroma chemistry that works for a fine fragrance may not be suitable for a shampoo or body wash. Chemical conflicts are resolved by reformulating the scent to maintain the odor while eliminating the chemical conflicts.

    I've done some "line extensions" with several of my own fragrances and I'm working at going through my whole fragrance lineup, scent by scent. But I haven't gone into soap, or shampoo, or body wash, or massage oil. I've simply begun to create solid perfume samplers from my original fragrances.

    Why? Shipping simplicity is one reason. But sampling is a larger reason. Since (some) people are reluctant to buy a perfume they've never smelled from a website they don't know much about, from a person who is equally unknown to them ... I decided to make life simple. Samples that anyone can afford on an impulse buy along with shipping that is cheap and simple. But let's talk a little about formulas -- how closely do the formulas of these solid perfumes match the formulas of their originals?

From alcohol and water
to beeswax and jojoba

    My fine fragrances are made from alcohol, (sometimes) water, and fragrance. (I won't get into the "natural" vs "synthetic" argument here as my views on this topic are well known.)

    The fragrance oil in most cases (even the men's fragrances!) is 20 percent by volume of the finished fragrance, meaning the fragrance oil has been diluted so that 4 parts out of 5 are alcohol, or alcohol and water.

    But to make solid perfume I use beeswax and jojoba (which looks like an oil but really isn't.)

    In the solid perfume I'm currently using about 9 percent fragrance compound to 91 percent beeswax and jojoba. Nine percent seems (to me) to be plenty strong, although I'm still experimenting with proportions.

    But the fragrance oil being used in the solids is EXACTLY the same fragrance oil being used in the fine fragrances. There has been no change in the formula.

But, in a different medium, what do you get?

    Ethyl alcohol is used as a solvent in perfumery due to its lack of a conspicuous odor. Jojoba shares this quality.

    But beeswax -- straight from the hive (which is what I've been using) -- carries with it a slight aroma of ... honey!

    So when you use "straight from the hive" beeswax to make solid perfume, beeswax as "natural" as beeswax can get, you bring along with it a slight aroma of honey which now blends with your fragrance, changing it slightly, enhancing it perhaps, certainly not spoiling it, but creating something somewhat "different" than the original fine fragrance scent.

Overall...

    The solid perfumes I've done come out very close in scent to my fine fragrance originals and so I'm happy to offer them just as they are. Currently I have solids in three scents. Soon there will be more. You can find them at www.PGLightyears.com if you're interested. They are quite affordable.
   

What Makes The Business of Beautiful Scents Profitable?

    Do you love scent? Do you love perfume? Have you ever considered the economics of perfume? Have you ever asked yourself, "Who pays for all this?" How is it that we can have a world full of beautiful scents?

    I think fragranced products have become more importance to use today as many of us live in a world without a lot of exposure to natural scents.

    Flower gardens are wonderful but if you live in the north, you'd better have your own greenhouse if you want your own natural flower scents year round.

    And anyone living in a city? Trips to the flower shop can get expensive and most urban-surviving house plants aren't fragrant.

    So many of us today get our favorite scents from the commercial world -- perfumes and colognes at the mall or elsewhere, aromatherapy oils from gift boutiques and health food stores, scented candles and room sprays, diffusers, whatever, all provided by companies that exist to make money and can only continue to exist if they continue to make money. "Synthetic," "green," "holistic," "earth-friendly" are all dependent on SALES. Profitable sales.

What makes a fragrance profitable?

    A fragrance -- from any vendor -- can be profitable only when enough people want it, are willing and able to pay its price, and are motivated enough to go out and buy it, now. (If they love it but wait too long the vendor may go out of business. Small vendors are particularly vulnerable.)

    But what are the qualities that make people want a particular scent or scented product? Candle shops with their multitude of scented candles have become a massive presence at the malls. This has probably been a help for artisinal candle and soap makers who cater to customers who want a little more sophistication or green and definitely hand made.

    The problem for these artisinal producers is a very thin profit margin. The larger companies can buy on scale, keeping their manufacturing costs down. Then, in selling they can achieve volume, taking a small profit on each sale but making many small sales and thus an acceptable profit.

    The artisinal crafter has a requirement of using higher quality raw materials than the mass marketer but can only buy them in small quantities. Thus their production costs are high.

    With high production costs you would think that artisinal soap and candles would command relatively high prices. But, for the most part, they do not. On the one hand, they must compete with the big stores and not let their prices become too extravagant. On the other hand, they must compete with their fellow artisinal producers.

    Due to the low entry cost for this business, many have jumped in. Who survives? Those, for the most part, with the best marketing sense and business management.

Perfume -- why not?

    Perfume as a fragrance presents a different picture than soap and candles. Everybody knows that perfume carries a high markup. You can put together a bottle of perfume for a few dollars, expecting it to sell for $35, $55, or even more. So isn't this a profitable business? What can go wrong?

    Anyone who has worked on the sales side of perfume -- including all those independent perfumers marketing their own perfume and some that just jump in to it in the hopes of outsized profit -- know exactly what can go wrong. No sales.

    To be in the perfume business you need sales. The large fragrance marketers totally understand this and thus strive for good relationships (and good contracts) with designers and celebrities whose names can sell perfume. When they sign a celebrity to release the celebrity's so-called "signature fragrance," they are banking on the presumption that many fans will buy. It is the same strategy used by French couturiers from about 1910 and on -- you can't afford the dress? No matter. You can afford our perfume. And today perfumes from the celebrities are more affordable than their concert tickets, and more widely available.

    But here's the catch. The investment to produce a perfume on a small scale -- while highly affordable -- can still be considerably greater than the investment to produce a soap or candle. And with soap and candles it's almost axiomatic that you produce half a dozen scents, but very few incremental dollars are required to expand into a "line" as opposed to offering candles or soap in a single scent. Not so with perfume.

    Each new perfume scent you produce requires a certain minimum production run and while these runs may be small, their cost is not insignificant.

    So while just about anyone can produce at least a single perfume, the game begins when you go to sell it.

    So you have a market? Do you have followers? Will they buy a perfume from you? Will they buy the particular scent you have hit on?

    The most common killer of independent perfume projects is lack of market.

    The most common error of independent perfumers and perfume entrepreneurs is to invest ALL of their capital in producing a fragrance BEFORE they have explored and developed a market for it.

    It doesn't mater how good the fragrance might be. If nobody knows about it, if nobody has ever smelled it, if nobody is impressed by you and your fragrance, you make no sales.

    That's why the successful vendors, be they the big, commercial perfume marketers or the folks that sell their aromatherapy oils through health food stores have, at the beginning, carved out markets for themselves. Markets in which they can make sales.