Scent-suous or scandalous?

Derin Odueyungbo uncovers the truth about expensive fragrances.

These days the price of perfume has become a subject of discussion, as the pocketpinching nature of this “magic juice” causes us to ask ourselves how much these fancy fragrances actually cost to make.

“Oh, don’t you smell lovely”, we hear people say, but at what cost? Some of the finest perfumes we wear can range from anything in the £40 region to well over £100. With consumers spending £640 million a year on perfume, it is no surprise that all the big sports stars and celebrities have started making their own fragrances.

We all know those who rush to the airport hours early so they can visit Duty Free and get their fragrances at a considerably cheaper price, yet even tax-free, the actual contents of a perfume bottle are the least costly thing in producing the fragrance as a whole. Astoundingly, the value of the liquid perfume in a bottle can be as little as 3 percent of the final cost.

We know that the manufacturers are making big bucks at our expense, but in a western world that is becoming more and more capitalist, aren’t these statistics pretty commonplace? As consumers, we may be paying £60 for that cheaply made bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier, but can we complain? The product we are paying for doesn’t fail to serve its intended purpose. It wouldn’t be the first thing we had paid for that costs a ridiculous amount more than its cost to manufacture. Lest we not forget about the shiny iPhones in our pockets or the designer shoes we have spent months saving for.

The majority of perfumes are manufactured on low budgets in industrial factories based in America, Japan, Switzerland and Germany. Although it may vary according to each fragrance, the packaging of a perfume costs approximately £2.50 to make, with the bottle costing around £3.50 and sometimes just £1 for the liquid concentrate.

Let’s not forget where else our money is going – manufacturer’s profit, retailer profit, marketing, royalties (in the case of celebrity fragrances) and sales commission all make up the price that we pay for our beloved fragrances.

While words such as “extortionate”, or “scam” may be used in discussions about perfume prices, it is worth remembering that the very corporate world in which we live is motivated by the drive for high profit margins – which consumers may be liable to. In this case, the consumer has a choice. Perfume is a luxury, not a necessity: if prices were unacceptably extortionate we may see this market begin to dwindle, but up until now, this has not been the case.