How well do you know your perfume bottles?

    If you're working with a filling house which will guide you through your choice of bottles, all you're really interested in is the shape -- what it looks like visually -- and the capacity -- how many fluid ounces or milliliters of fragrance it holds.

    If you're bottling your own perfume and are hoping to sell more than a few dozen bottles of your fragrance, selecting a bottle with the right neck becomes important because (a) you will have to fill it and, (b) after you've filled it you'll have to attach a cap or spray pump. If the cap and spray pump are mismatched for the bottle, either you won't be able to attach them at all or, if you are able to force them onto the bottle (which sometimes can be done) there's a good chance your improvisation will cause a difficult to remove cap or a leaking spray.

    The simplest (and cheapest) solution to close your perfume bottle is with a screw-on cap. The cap must be the same "finish" (neck size and thread configuration) as the bottle but there is also an issue with the opening of the neck. Will it be wide open, which would make it "normal," or will the neck be constricted -- a "sprinkler" neck?

    If the neck is wide open, what happens when someone wants to use your perfume? Will they pour it out? (Messy!) But if your bottle has a sprinkler neck, how will you fill it? You'll find it's not so easy.

    These are some of the issues we deal with in How To Create Your Own Fragrance With A 1700 Percent Markup!

    But now suppose you want a spray pump on your bottle. This would be the preferred choice for a woman's fragrance. Again, the "finish" of your pump must match the finish of your bottle. But, with a spray, there's more to it.

    For a screw-on spray pump, all you need do is match the finish of your bottle. But suppose a lower profile bottle catches your eye -- one that has a crimp neck finish. You can't screw a spray pump onto a crimp neck. You need a crimp-on spray ... and a crimp-on spray can only be attached with a crimp machine ... and it's unlikely you have one or are ready to spend the money to buy one (hand operated models start around $2,500 and can be awkward to use).

    But, for your low profile bottle, you could find one that takes a snap-on spray. These are not so easy to find in the United States but they can be attached to a bottle by hand -- sort of. There's a great video on YouTube of a woman attaching a snap-on pump to a bottle. She places the neck of a second bottle over the pump to be attached ... then hits the second bottle with a hammer a few times to snap the pump onto the bottle. It seems to work but it makes me a bit nervous and she warns in her video, "Be aware you may encounter a few disasters initially..."

    I am testing snap-on spray pumps, on a very small scale. And yes, I've written about them in Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup! It's not all that hard to put together a good perfume or cologne you can sell. But it does help to have some guidance.