100, 200, even 300€ for a bottle... (Buying a perfume can be expensive and it's understandable that you think twice before taking the plunge. Especially since, between us, do you really know what you're paying for?
Prepare to be surprised! Bastille explains what's behind the scenes and tells you:
- What factors explain the price of your perfume
- What's the relationship between the price of a fragrance and its quality (spoiler: it's not necessarily what you'd expect)
- How it's done at home!
Let's start by discovering together what lies behind the cost of a perfume.
From raw materials to shelves: what really happens in a bottle
1. Raw materials and the manufacturing process: the main culprits?
The time of creation
To begin with, you should know that a perfume is the result of a creative process that can last several years: perfumers sometimes spend 2 years or more to find the right balance between raw materials! This time dedicated to research is therefore very costly in terms of financial and human resources.
All the more so as some major perfume brands also choose to launch "competitions" between the composition houses that create their fragrances... Competitions in which it is sometimes necessary to pay to be able to participate! An additional cost that the winning house may have to pass on in its sales prices.
The quality and naturalness of the raw materials
Secondly, the raw materials - whether natural or synthetic - also affect the price of your perfume. You should know that on a perfumer's organ, there are about 4000 different notes, including 90% are synthetic. These are generally less expensive than natural raw materials, although there are exceptions. More concretely, what are we talking about?
Quite simply, the natural raw materials must be patiently cultivated, harvested and then transformed into essential oils or absolutes by various distillation or extraction processes. That's quite a few steps, sometimes very costly! (To learn more about the difference between natural and synthetic raw materials, click here).
Secondly, some materials may be more expensive than others, due to :
- their rarity: oud, for example, is one of these extremely rare raw materials. Rare in that very few Aquilaria trees (one specimen in 100) contain oud resin, which is secreted by the tree when it is infected by certain fungi. This very rare raw material is obtained today by artificially inoculating this fungus into certain trees. Natural oud resin costs around €40,000 per kg.
- the conditions under which they must be harvested: for example, the Centifolia rose can only be harvested by hand because of its delicacy; the iris requires 6 years of waiting to produce a harvest of its absolute size! Count on more than 50 000€ per kg for this beauty: it is not for nothing that it is called the blue gold of perfumery.
- and finally, their yield: for example, 400 kilos of Centifolia rose petals give 1kg of concrete and 0.6kg of absolute. This explains its high price, which varies between €10 and €12,000 per kg.
Concentration of the fragrance
After the selection of the raw materials and their maturation, which can take several days, the perfume concentrate is put into alcohol. This step also plays a role in the final price of your fragrance. Here, the rule is rather simple: alcohol being much cheaper than the perfume concentrate, the higher the concentration of a perfume, the higher its price is likely to be!
Between perfume, eau de parfum and eau de toilette, your fragrance will not be offered at the same price on the shelf. To better understand :
- In a perfume, the concentrate is usually present in 15% to 30% of the finished product
- In a perfume water, between 12 and 15%.
- In an eau de toilette, between 7 and 12%.
Attention: this is a convention, i.e. a habit of the perfume houses, but there are no strict rules on the subject! Moreover, some brands have the annoying habit of artificially "boosting" their concentration by adding solvent, which is cheap and neutral in terms of smell, to their concentrate. This allows them to claim that their perfume is 20% concentrated, whereas it contains 5 or 10% solvent...
To understand the subtleties of these names, please read our article: Eau de toilette vs. eau de parfum, what is the difference?
On the other hand, even if these differences in concentration have an impact on the price, you will be surprised to learn that the water and alcohol contained in your bottles really don't cost much and that in classic perfumery, the juice generally represents less than 5% of the final price of the perfume (it is often more in niche perfumery).
And at Bastille ? Here, we plead guilty: our raw materials are extremely expensive. But why? We use organic wheat alcohol and 95% natural ingredients, which is rare in the perfume industry. In the end, we invest around 3 to 4 times more than the average in the price of our raw materials to be able to offer you, for example, an incredible Indian tuberose, elemi, etc.!
2. The bottle and the packaging: are rhinestones and glitter involved?
If the raw materials and the process are not everything, then there is something else to look for in the packaging. Some brands choose to put everything on the bottle that will contain the juice; in this case, it can have a strong impact on the final cost of the perfume. Because a different, more luxurious, more original bottle has a price.
Making a custom bottle is extremely expensive. Fasten your seatbelts: we are talking about 30,000, just to make a mould ! On the other hand, some brands go to great lengths to catch your eye with, shall we say, eccentric bottles - in the shape of a trophy, a pump or even a star. So you'll know that, in general, this type of bottle means higher costs.
On the other hand, even if the bottle can have an impact on the price, a perfume is difficult to get to the top without a marketing and advertising budget.
And at Bastille ? As we've invested heavily in our ingredients, we've opted for a high-quality, yet minimalist, Italian bottle - rather than designing our own, which would no doubt have easily added €3 or €4 to our budget per bottle. Paradoxically, the most expensive aspect of our packaging is our cases: each one is handmade in a Parisian workshop, with a step of hot gilding to dazzle your eyes. Of course, we could relocate to China to divide our costs by 4... But we're committed to "made in France" and to our title as champions of perfumery!
3. Marketing and advertising that reaches millions
Every year, around 400 new perfumes are launched around the world. To stand out from the crowd, brands use their imagination to sell us a certain dream... even if it means increasing marketing expenses, up to 30% of the final price of the perfume. Even before briefing the perfumers, the big groups in particular already have a well-honed marketing plan for the release of their fragrance!
Fragrances should tell stories, be associated with faces and symbols, ideally world-famous stars so that you can more easily identify with them.
To give you an idea: Natalie Portman was the face of Miss Dior for 3 years for 28 million dollars. Jennifer Lawrence: $15 million for 3 years at Dior as well. Cate Blanchett: $10 million for a single campaign for Armani. Brad Pitt: $7 million for a TV spot. Charlize Theron for Dior: 5 million per year. Bonus: for some time now, the directors have also been getting more and more famous - Spike Jonze for Kenzo, Sofia Coppola for Dior or Wes Anderson for Prada... With so much effort put into marketing and advertising, it's easy to see why perfume prices are soaring!
So we reassure you: it is still possible to create quality perfumes at a fair price. This is what niche perfumery is trying to prove by going back to basics, putting marketing on the back burner and focusing on the quality of the perfume. Far from Hollywood blockbusters, the money that is not spent on marketing and advertising is invested in rarer and more qualitative raw materials.
Representing today 10% of the perfumery market, these so-called confidential perfumes come to upset the trends and the model in place. Niche perfumes cost (a little) more, but they are normally a guarantee of originality and quality!
What about Bastille ? Full transparency: our marketing budget has varied from 0€ per month at the very beginning to around 1,000€ per month in 2021 (excluding occasional shoots). Granted, it's a very small budget: word of mouth did the rest! And as we don't really intend to build a machine to generate millions of clicks on our site, there's no reason for this budget to explode tomorrow morning. We'll let you know when we hire Vincent Cassel, we promise!
4. Distribution: the real reason?
This is perhaps the least visible reason for the consumer, and yet it is the one that weighs the most in the final price: distribution. The first cost item in a perfume is often the margin of the distributors who integrate it in the store. Of course, they have to make a living: it is therefore normal that they ensure a margin for the service and the stores they develop. On the other hand, with 75% of the market, 3 well-known French perfumery brands dictate the law of the market and some of them tend to push their margins far, very far... often beyond 50%! With margins negotiated according to the success and the "desirability" of the perfumes, the big distributors are perhaps finally the big winners in the perfume industry.
Moreover, when you export, you often have to go through wholesalers or agents who add their margin to that of the shops. This is the reason why prices are a little higher abroad for some brands.
Finally, if the brand decides to open its own shop, several costs must also be taken into account: between ensuring the payment of rents, the salespeople, and the need for stocks to ensure the running of a shop, the bill can quickly be reflected in the final price of the perfume.
Niche brands therefore generally choose a more minimalist distribution: they very often favour independent perfumeries, concept stores, and internet distribution.
What about Bastille ? Today, we are present at around 70 retailers carefully selected for their taste for beauty and the values we share. Fortunately, these are long-term partnerships with reasonable margins! On the other hand, the long-term viability of our business model rests on its two legs: in-store distribution, and our own online distribution. It's by combining the two that we can ensure we continue to grow!
5. The psychological importance of price: the more expensive the perfume, the better the sales?
In the luxury market, price is a guarantee of quality. Despite the fact that perfume is now a widespread product, it is still a luxury product in the mind of the consumer. And luxury is something that has to be paid for. Instinctively, we tend to think thata high price is necessarily synonymous with quality. This leads some brands to abuse our cognitive bias...
For example, some offer perfumes at 400€. You may or may not like it; we think that beyond 250-300€, we sometimes risk paying more for the "luxury" positioning than for the quality of the juice itself. It is important to remember that the price does not necessarily reflect the quality of the perfume!
Just because a perfume is expensive doesn't mean it only contains exceptional raw materials.
What about Bastille ? Short answer: our fragrances are €95 for 50ml, so we're a long way from signaling "luxury", even if this is already a high-end price. In fact, we wanted to stay below €100. This has required us to be inventive with the rest of our costs, to ensure we offer you the best at a reasonable price, and democratize access to natural perfumery.
Is it possible to get perfume at a reasonable price?
Yes, some brands have taken the gamble of offering fragrances at very affordable prices to show that they don't necessarily have to be expensive to be of quality.
But the real question is: is it possible to wear perfume at fair prices? And the answer is yes. At Bastille, we are committed to offering you sophisticated, natural and original fragrances at fair prices.
We work with French, Italian and Spanish partners for the bottle, decoration, filling and our packaging. These choices lead to higher costs, but thanks to our choice to limit our marketing and distribution expenses, we have been able to focus on what matters most to us: the juice. We invest a large part of our budget in the choice of quality raw materials and give free rein to the imagination of our perfumers, who have carte blanche to choose rare and expensive ingredients.
Our advice for making the right choice: pay attention to what the brand says. In this market, what the label says is not always proof of a quality perfume; it may reflect a desire to differentiate oneself through luxury positioning, or the cost of a brand that is too greedy in terms of marketing expenses. So ask around and the more the brand tells you, the better!
Skip the advertising campaigns, the muses, the bling bling bottles... Instead, trust your nose: open the bottle you want and let the juice convince you!
-------
Sources: Challenges.fr, La Quotidienne
Photos: Inconnus, Jules Theret, Inconnu, Nick Prideaux
Leave a comment