The power of scent is unmatched when it comes to elevating one’s appeal. With more and more ingredients being used and unique combinations of scents being created, it is no surprise that the perfume industry is booming. Perfumers are also utilizing technology to develop new techniques and trends. Along with the scope of the fragrance market widening exponentially, we cannot help but notice how expensive perfumes are becoming. So we decided to do some digging, and turns out, there’s a lot going on behind the art of perfume-making that makes it pricey. Keep reading to find out more.
#1 Rare ingredients
Perfumers blend several ingredients together in order to create a well-rounded fragrance. One of the primary reasons why perfumes are so expensive is due to the use of multiple combinations of ingredients.
Often perfumers use rare ingredients to create new notes of scents. For example, you will need around 240,000 jasmine flowers if you want to extract an ounce of essential oil out of them. If you want to distill Oud oil, you will need the heartwood of agarwood that has been infected with a particular kind of mold. Did you know that Ambergris is extracted from a waxy substance that comes from the intestines of sperm whales? Some perfumes also contain synthetic ingredients that are expensive to manufacture. It’s quite difficult to extract all these ingredients. Thus, it goes without saying that these perfumes will be very expensive.
#2 Hundreds of attempts before getting any result
One of the key ways to stay current in the perfume industry is to come up with innovative combinations. Often these combinations of scents might seem wacky and unimaginable to us, but when we see the end result, we’re wowed by the finesse. As consumers, we are unaware of the efforts that go into the finished product that we see in stores.
Perfumers conduct rigorous testing of several ingredients and combinations to achieve this. They might have to go through numerous failures before discovering the right combination of ingredients and notes. A tremendous amount of effort and ingredients go into the making of the perfect perfume that we see. All this trial and error can contribute to the cost of the perfume.
#3 Raw materials and equipment
As we mentioned, procuring all the raw materials required to make fragrances costs a lot. Adding to this, finding good quality raw materials is a more taxing and expensive task. The methods used to extract the perfume ingredients from these raw materials keep varying due to which the manufacturing cost also fluctuates. The equipment that perfumers need for different extraction techniques also varies.
#3 Luxurious packaging
Something that makes perfumes stand apart from other self-care products is its packaging. Perfume is not just about wearing a scent, but the whole experience of wearing it, right from the part where you open your perfume bottle to walking out of your home feeling confident. Some expensive fragrances come in Baccarat crystal bottles, which consist of the finest crystals in the world. Some perfume bottles also come with gold and diamond designs. The visual appeal of a perfume bottle certainly benefits its sales.
Conclusion
Perfumes might be a tad too expensive. However, the satisfaction you get out of using fragrances with the highest-quality ingredients that have undergone countless levels of testing and failures definitely seems safer.
