Packaging your perfume when you have no money -- ebook

    I've already written a bit about packaging your perfume when you have no money for packaging. I've put some of what I've already written into a small ebook that I'm selling at my website. I've added a few details that weren't in the original article along with some real world examples -- with photos -- of what I've seen done.

    The purpose of all this is to help someone -- perhaps yourself -- turn a hobby interest into a professional and commercial product. Packaging is one important step along the way.

    We are exposed to hundreds of smells daily. Walk by a perfume counter and you may be exposed to half a dozen or more fragrances. Likewise in certain public places you'll smell perfume in the air although you may not be able to determine who is wearing it.

    But do any of these smells make an emotional connection with you? When you smell a perfume you like in the air, will you go from person to person asking, "Are you the one whose perfume I'm smelling?" ... "I like it and want to know what it's called."

    It is far more likely that any emotional connection you make with a perfume will come from an emotional connection you have with the source of the fragrance -- the personality or company in whose name it is being marketed. The secondary likely factor in making that emotional connection is the "look" of the fragrance -- how it is presented in its packaging.

    You with your new perfume may not yet have a personality or brand with emotional pull so you'll need to focus on your packaging.

    If you've raised the funds to produce 10,000 bottles of your new perfume, you have, no doubt, budgeted some of your money for a box and nice graphics so that your fragrance will have a good professional, commercial look.

    If you're producing only 25, 50, or maybe 100 bottles of your new perfume, it's unlikely that you'll have money to spend for a custom-fitted, professional looking box.

    If you want to dress up your fragrance to give it a bit of push when you put it up for sale, you'll have to find another way to dress it up and that is what this small ebook is about. It's called "Packaging your perfume when you're selling to stores and you have no money for packaging" and this is a shameless pitch. But I would welcome your feedback on what information would be helpful to you when you're trying to launch your business by launching a new perfume.

Thanks.

-- Phil

   

Packaging tips for small time perfume creators with no money

    The packaging you give your perfume is important but packaging can be expensive. It can be particularly expensive if you are producing a perfume you want to market but only dare (or can afford!) to produce a handful of bottles -- a short run... or even a very short run.

    The glorious packaging you see on display at perfume counters was expensive to develop and, in most cases, expensive to produce. It is affordable only because the global companies behind these fragrances can spread their costs over hundreds of thousands of bottles and because they know that what they spend on packaging will be returned to them through greater sales.

    If your production runs are more in the range of 500 to 1,000 bottles or even less, the cost of fancy or even just typically beautiful packaging will crush you. At most you might afford a simple, printed, custom die-cut box. Then, to be effective, the artwork -- the graphics -- for this box must be excellent; well designed, well executed, well suited for your potential market. The problem will still be that if your need is for only 500 to 1,000 or even fewer boxes, your unit cost -- your cost per individual box -- will be high, perhaps even higher than the cost of your bottle or your perfume itself.

    I know of no single alternative to get around this seeming obstacle. The first step however is to recognize that you cannot match the packaging you see on global brands. And, if you try to mimic them with your pathetically anemic budget, your results are likely to be ugly.

    Some "small timer" perfumers do solve the packaging problem effectively. Their solutions are innovative, original, and cheap. They find ways to bring touches of class to their perfumes by demonstrating their artistic sense and sensitivity goes far beyond the creation of the fragrance itself.
    While I cannot suggest what might work for you, I can suggest a method for finding effective solutions. The method has four points
:
    1. Know what packaging products and supplies are available to you. Knowing what products are available to you -- and there are many that you can afford -- will give you ideas. Pour through craft supply catalogs (here's a list of some!) for ideas that can help you decorate your bottles or bag them artfully with stock packaging.

    2. Know what others with little or no money are doing and have done. Search online for small perfume creators and study how they package their fragrances. Go to craft fairs. Go to trade shows. Spend time in boutiques looking at everything. Ideas can jump out at you when you least expect it.

    3. Know your limitations. Don't overstep and make a mess of your perfume. Avoid at all costs making a sloppy presentation. Avoid trying to get too fancy when you don't have the artistic skill to carry it off. If you don't have the decorator's touch, perhaps you can find a friend who does and who is willing to work with you.

    4. Read trade and other publications (here's a list), both online and in print. Trade magazines show you what the leaders in the field are doing. While you might not be able (for a long time!) to afford what they are doing, you can pick up a sense of style and even get usable inspiration.

    Overall, when you don't have money you can still win excellent sales if you have taste, creativity, and the ability to discover and use resources and materials others haven't yet exploited -- because they haven't yet seen your perfume presentation solution!

Why making perfume without a formula could cost you thousands

    When I messed up a small production job -- because I was making a video at the same time I was producing it -- it drove home to me the importance of a formula and the need to adhere to it strictly when you're producing your perfume, whether the batch is small or large.
    Without a formula you can't repeat what you've done. Without a formula you can't match the original scent you created.
    Writing out a proper formula when creating a fragrance distinguishes the professional from the hobbiest. The hobbiest mixes a little this with a little that and calls it a perfume. Nice. But if it's good, that "good" perfume is limited in quantity to the original batch that was made (usually quite small!) because the hobbiest doesn't keep a record of what he or she has done. So more of the same cannot be produced.
    The professional keeps a record of every trial, every test, ever small adjustment. Maybe one out of twenty or even one out of one hundred of these records will survive and become a "go to market" perfume. For the hobbiest this record keeping seems too tedious. For the professional, record keeping is just a natural part of the work flow.
    Why should record keeping -- writing out an accurate formula of every variation of every fragrance you work on -- be such a burden? One issue that may never have occurred to you is equipment -- having enough mixing pots and whatever to dedicate a clean container for each new attempt to develop or modify a perfume. Each time you start an even slightly different variant of the perfume you're working on you need to start with a new, clean, mixing container.
    When you start work on a new fragrance you may have to equip yourself with dozens of small mixing pots.
    A second impediment for the hobbiest is an inadequate supply of the aroma materials being used. Say you are mixing a perfume and you've gotten to the point where your formula calls for twenty drops (from a dropper bottle) of a rose scent mixed with two drops of an herbal scent. If you want to try another version with three drops of the herbal, or four, or five, each time you make up a new trial you're using twenty drops of the rose scent.
    To test the effect of a small change in the herbal, you could be using quite a lot of the rose and, frustrating to the hobbiest, you already know (or think you know!) how much of the rose you need.
    So the hobbiest just adds a bit more herbal to the rose in the original measuring cup. It may make the fragrance better, it may make it worse, but now there is no way of comparing the two concepts because all has been entrusted to a single pot.
    The starting point for the hobbiest who wants to turn his or her creations into marketable products is the discipline of keeping precise notes, precise formulas of every step in the development, ever change of ingredients, however small. In a sense, the formula is the final goal for the professional perfume creator.

 ****

     A few more notes on this can be found here.
    The illustrative video of "the right way" is found here ... and the "wrong" way here.
   

Perfume Production Up Close (Video)

Last week I posted a video on YouTube showing the production of 900 ml of a new fragrance. The video shows both the production of the oil -- 135 ml, from a formula which is shown -- and then the mixing of the oil, water, and alcohol.

The video is posted here.

The "footnotes" to the video are posted here.

And -- for your amusement only -- a "fail" in producing the video is posted here.

Or just view it here:

Thanks for your interest.

-- Phil

Perfume Production: weight vs volume

    I posted a second YouTube video, this one showing how I converted a "drops to grams to percents" formula to a volume (milliliters) measurement to allow me to produce my fragrance by liters or gallons (or milliliters or fluid ounces).

    The point is, it is easier to develop a formula by the weights of the aroma materials you are using. But when you want to produce a few liters or gallons, it is easier to measure your alcohol and water by volume. But what about your fragrance oil?

    By knowing the weight of a liter (or milliliter, or fluid ounce, or gallon) of your oil, you can calculate the weight you'll need to produce to fill a certain volume.

    I've discussed this on my PerfumeProjects website but the video tells all:

    Thanks for your interest.

-- Phil

Perfume Production -- drops to grams

    When I develop a new fragrance, I work with dropper bottles. Because of this, my initial formula is written out in drops.

    To scale up the formula for production, I convert drops to grams and then convert then to percents. Once I have calculated the percentage, by weight, that each material contributes to the formula, I can scale up to any size batch I want.

    I've posted an article describing the "drops to grams to percents" conversion here, at my website.

    I've also posted a short video on YouTube showing how to set up an electronic balance to do the measuring.

    Thanks for your interest!

    -- Phil

Cleaning up a sour note

    I was almost finished with the new fragrance. I had my formula worked out, ready to go into some final testing.  But there was a problem. For one split second -- for less than a split second -- when I dipped a test blotter and smelled it, there was a momentary disconnect, a non-harmonious moment, before the fragrance settled down ("evolved") into what I intended it to be.

    This non-harmonious moment was very short. Perhaps a split second. But it was jarring to my nose and put me on notice that something wasn't right. Should I ignore it (since it smoothed out so quickly!) or should I obsess with trying to discover what was causing that little problem and, hopefully, fix it?

    If a perfumer tried to hand a perfume with this "problem" to Estee Lauder or Coty, he or she would be fired. Professional, full time perfumers know how to fix these issues before anyone calls the problem to their attention. I'm not that good. Still, I wanted very badly to fix this problem. Everything else about the fragrance had come together very nicely.

    For me, correcting this problem, which just barely needed correction, meant trying to find exactly what was causing the problem and then making a small change that would leave everything else alone.

    In this case I'm happy to say that I overcame that bad spot, that single sour note that was bothering me more than it might have bothered a person wearing this fragrance. It was an issue of balance. Too much of something (two somethings in this case) that had to be toned down to blend more perfectly with all the "something elses." While I may continue with a few small trials that will help me better understand what role each ingredient is playing in the formula, as for the "commercial" version, it's done.

    So what comes next? The answer: some mathematics. I have to decided how much I want to produce -- perhaps no more than 12 bottles -- and then how much of each ingredient I'll need for that production.

    Working backwards now, if I'm bottling just 12 bottles which each will take one ounce of fragrance (I already have bottles on hand), that's just 12 ounces of finished fragrance I'll need; the fragrance mixed with alcohol which, itself will be mixed with water.

    Twelve ounces of finished fragrance is a pretty small amount so, as a practical matter, I'll make up a somewhat larger batch of the fragrance oil. That amount will still be small. But I want to go through the step that will allow me, should I decide to do this later, to "scale up" and produce any size batch I want, and even be able to have a professional lab create that larger batch for me, from my formula. Here are the details on how I will do this.

12 to 60: A good perfume comes from the mind

    I've been writing a series of articles on making a profit and starting your own perfume business by producing just 12 bottles of perfume. I've covered bottles, pumps, labels, water, and alcohol. Next we need fragrance. Today's message is about fragrance but it is an interlude -- a message about the art of fragrance creation.

    A good perfume comes from the mind. Where else could it come from? It doesn't matter whether you are buying it ready made, commissioning it, or formulating it yourself. The starting point is in your head, your vision of what this perfume should be.

    Mental visions, visions that lead to a new perfume, can be of many varieties. You might have a name that seems important to you. Then you think of what that name means and create a fragrance that translates that name into a scent that brings that name to life.

    You might be starting with a name that you've derived from a visual image of something you've seen: fully, partially, or only in your imagination. This can make the development of your fragrance easier (or more difficult!) as now your formulating efforts are guided by and must match both the name and visual image.

    You can also add music to guide you. Can you imagine what tones might go with your perfume name and visual image? Sit down at a keyboard or pick up a guitar and play a few notes. Can you find notes, then chords, then perhaps a melody that reinforces your perfume's name and visual image?

    While you are not yet creating the perfume itself you are putting together a road map by which the perfume can be created. This road map will help determine what smells should go into your perfume and what smells should be left out.

    Let me give you some specifics. I was riding on a train, going through New Jersey swampland, and a certain scene caught my eye. The scene, which I only glimpsed in passing, suggested a name which was not at all what I would consider a good name for a perfume, but it was a name which captured my mental impression of the scene which had passed by so quickly.

    The combination of my mental-visual image and the name I had attached to it gave me the means to sketch out a new fragrance. To replicate that name and image in a perfume I knew I would need certain notes and would have to avoid others.

    I started with a handful of materials that I believed would work as the skeleton of my fragrance. I mixed them, smelled, and decided what needed more and what needs less, and what did not belong at all. When my skeleton started to come together, I begin to lay on the "flesh." Here it gets more complex. With one or two or three more aroma materials my design comes closer to my mental image. Gradually the skeleton is fleshed out.

    At this point, while my fragrance fit the visual image and name, and while, in a sense, it is complete, it had no personality. The trick is to create this "personality," this distinction that is recognizable, but unconsciously rather than screaming out at your face. The elements of the "personality" must blend with the flesh and skeleton but gently, and they must add something on their own. The trick to pulling off this personality is in finding just the right extra ingredient or ingredients and adding it or them in just the right amounts. This is the point I've arrived at for this project of mine.

    And even then, I still won't be finished.

    My next test is to see whether I really need all the ingredients I've used.

    This now is the tedious process of subtraction, eliminating one ingredient at a time to see whether its absence makes any noticeable difference and whether its absence might even clarify the theme of the fragrance. This step takes a lot of work.

    And still I will not be finished.

    Are the ingredients balanced? Is there too much of something? Too little of something else? You might not go through all your ingredients here but certainly you'll want to go through your major aroma components. Strip out everything you can strip out without destroying the flesh or the personality.
   
    Now back to your project.

    If all goes well, if the mental-visual image and name you started with were strong guides, you should be able to produce a perfume that harmonized with its name and image. And now, thanks to your visual image, a graphic image, and perhaps a few notes of music you wrote to go with it, not only do you have a "good" perfume, you have the start of what could be a strong promotion to sell it.

12 to 60: Getting alcohol for your perfume

This message is a continuation of a series on making a profit by making and selling just 12 bottles of perfume.

    Perfumery grade alcohol can be obtained in just about every corner of the world. But it is not always easy to find a source and it is difficult or impossible to find a source that will accept a small order -- a gallon, a liter, something along those lines. Your best (current, 3/29/17) hope of finding small quantities of  200 proof ethanol is in the U.S. or Canada. For the UK you may be relegated to a product sold as "perfumers alcohol" and sources can be found on Amazon UK.

    If you are following along with this "12 bottle production" project, a quart or liter should be all you need. Then, to get the proof you really want, you can mix it with de-ionized water.

    So there you are. In this series of articles we've covered bottles and closures, de-ionized water, and alcohol. All we need now is the fragrance.

12 to 60: Fragrance oil, alcohol, and yes, water!

     This is a continuation of a series of articles on producing a fragrance -- for profit -- with production limited to 12 bottles ("60" is when you start to grow!) Prior blogs: 12 to 60: Building a profitable perfume business, a few bottles at a time and 12 to 60: Planning your 12 bottle perfume launch.

    Having covered bottles, pumps, and labels it's time to get to the heart of the matter, the fragrance itself -- the magical fluid that goes into the bottle and makes a sale possible. That magic liquid is composed of three components: fragrance oil (the "juice"), alcohol, and water. On a bottle you may see these ingredients listed as "fragrance, SD alcohol, DI water." Today I want to write about water, a topic easily overlooked and greatly misunderstood.

    The water can be left off. You can make your perfume without it. That would leave you with just the fragrance oil and alcohol. The issues with water are "why?, "what kind?", and "how much?" Let's start with the easy question: "how much?"

    The starting point for our exploration of water is the alcohol for your perfume because the water in your perfume comes with the alcohol. Our starting point is pure, 100% ethanol -- 200 proof alcohol.

    But 200 proof alcohol has no water in it. If we want water, we have to add it. How much? I typically "water down" my alcohol to 180 proof -- 90% ethanol and 10% water -- by volume. 190 proof is also common for perfumery, 95% alcohol, 5% water -- by volume.

    So my answer to the first question, "how much?" is ten percent or less by volume, the balance being pure ethanol. Products sold as "perfumers alcohol" are generally not pure, 100% ethanol so be aware of this.

    Since these measurements are by volume, it's easy to do your blending. Say you want a liter of 180 proof alcohol, 90% ethanol and 10% water. Start with a 1000 ml (l liter) measuring cup. Fill it to the 100 ml mark with water. Then top it up to the 1000 ml mark with 900 ml of alcohol. Then be sure to store it in a clean bottle with a stopper to prevent evaporation. And be sure to label it for what it for what you made: 180 proof alcohol: 90% alcohol, 10% water.

    As for the question, "what kind of water?" the answer is de-ionized water, which is not the same as distilled water. Both distilled water and de-ionized water are high in purity. Much of the purity is the result of pre-treatments through filtration before each is subjected to its final process.

    Distilled water is produced by distillation, the same process used to make moonshine. The water is boiled, steam rises, goes through a condenser -- the cooling tube or tower -- and becomes liquid water again leaving behind various minerals.

    Even if you don't have distilling equipment you can witness this process on your kitchen stove. Boil a small pot of water until steam is released, hold a place in the path of the steam (watch your fingers, the steam is hot!) and you'll see droplets of water form on the bottom of the plate and then fall back into the pot. If you let all the water boil off, you will see a residue left on the pot. This residue is some of what your distillation process has removed from your water.

    One small problem for perfumery with distilled water. If your water contains organic materials with the same boiling point as the water, they will join the steam and end up on in your newly distilled water. For the home perfumer this may not seem like a big deal, but why cut corners?

    De-ionized water is water from which all ions have been removed. This can be done in several ways but the result is water that, chemically, is a "blank slate." It won't react with your fragrance oil. It won't change the odor, it won't change the color. It is the preferred water for perfumery. It is not expensive. You can buy it in small quantities. I've listed some sources here.

    Now, to the question, "why use any water at all?" I've written about this elsewhere but it comes down to these three points. Water softens the alcohol so it is softer on the skin. Water clings to the top notes and gives them a persistence that they would not have otherwise. And, in a spray, water intensified the effect of the perfume.

    Now you have it. A better understanding of water. The next issue I'll tackle will be alcohol, what kind you want and where you can get it.

12 to 60: Planning your 12 bottle perfume launch

    In my last post I discussed the advantages of launching a perfume with very limited production -- two dozen bottles -- yet yielding a hypothetical 400% profit. But, to make this strategy work, you must be able to produce your fragrance at a low cost per bottle. Today I'll discuss what you encounter in doing this -- producing 12 bottles of perfume at a cost of about $5.50 per bottle.

    The components you'll need are the bottle, a cap or spray (referred to as the "closure"), the label, and the fragrance itself. You have to shop carefully and, before making any purchases, plan the assembly. It is essential that your components fit together properly. Of particular importance is that the spray or cap is the correct size (called the "finish") for your bottles. Unless you are investing in a capping machine, you'll want bottles with a threaded neck in a size where screw-on spray pumps or caps are available.

    When you look for these components in matching sizes -- and small quantities -- you'll find that your choices are limited. To keep your cost down you must work with matching bottles and closures that can be purchased in small quantities at a low cost. You'll find some reasonable suppliers of bottles here. You'll find some simple guides to the selection of bottles here. Study these two pages before you start spending money on bottles.

    Getting sticker labels for your bottles is far less challenging that it once was. A number of printers will produce beautiful labels for you in small quantities at an affordable price. The only issue you may be finding a printer who offers a stock label in a size that works for your bottle. Note here that it is important to have your bottle on hand, or at least picked out, before you order your labels. And before you can settle on a bottle you must be sure that you have a source for affordable, leak-proof closures for it.

    An alternative method of producing labels for your bottles is to print your own on sheets of sticker paper. This has been my personal choice for a number of years. I design my label using desktop publishing software (Quark XPress), then fill an 8-1/2" x 11" page with as many of these labels as I can fit in the printable area. Then I place crop marks just outside the live area, two for each row, two for each column. Then it's just a matter of printing the labels with a desktop printer and cutting them apart. For this I use a #11 X-Acto blade. This blade is also good for separating the label from its carrier sheet.

    There are a number of possibilities for paper. Aside from being self-adhesive, you must select a paper appropriate for the product you will be using. Inkjet papers work with inkjet printers; laser papers work with laser printers. A mismatch will give you bad results.

    I've been using a waterproof inkjet paper from Graytex for good results. The smallest quantity available (15 sheets) can last a long time as you'll be getting multiple labels from each sheet.

    This leaves us with the issues of boxes, fragrance, and assembly -- topics for my next messages.

   

12 to 60: Building a profitable perfume business, a few bottles at a time

    The biggest mistake the perfume beginner can make is to produce too many bottles, far too many!. Look at it this way: the only bottles that make money are the ones you sell . The cost of each bottle you produce but don't sell subtracts profit.

    So if you produce 100 bottles of perfume at a cost of $5.50 per bottle and you sell 20 of them at $30 each, to calculate your profit you must now deduct the cost of the bottles you sold -- $110 (20 x $5.50 = $110) -- plus the cost of the 80 bottles you did not sell -- $440 (80 x $5.50 = $440). So your profit is just $50 -- ($600 - $110 - $440 = $50).

    But if you have made only the 20 bottles you sold, your profit would have been $490 -- ($600 - $110 = $490). Realistically, particularly at the beginning, you can't judge how many bottles you will sell but suppose you had produced two dozen (24) bottles. Now the cost of your unsold bottles would have been just $22 -- (4 x $5.50 = $22) -- and your profit would have been $486 -- ($600 - $110 - $22 = $486). That's a whole lot better than $50.

    It is an almost universal mistake of the first time perfume entrepreneur, producing too many bottles so too many go unsold. Look at the case here for two dozen (24) bottles: an impressive 400% profit from $132 invested. That's good business.

    Yes, it may seem small but with that profit you can expand. You can build, using the same strategy over and over again, gradually increasing your production without overproducing. Perfume is a business, not a casino. Don't become a gambler.

Cost effective small batch production     
    To make this strategy work profitably you'll need vendors who will sell you the components you need in small quantities. You'll find some help with this in my next message.

-- Phil Goutell

Can you overcome these obstacles to create a successful perfume?

    If you are an "unknown" trying to create your own perfume, you will encounter serious obstacles. You may be able to overcome them.

    Perfumers -- people who create perfume -- fall into three categories. First there are those who are employed by an established fragrance creation houses. Then there are the "indie" perfumers, the independents who, through their skill, experience and persistence, have carved out an audience for the fragrances they create. Then there is "everybody else" -- all those like yourself perhaps who would like to make a successful perfume but aren't sure about the right track and, at this point in life, aren't sure you really can do it. In fact, you are facing serious obstacles.

Professional Training

    Perfumers at major -- global -- fragrance  creation houses have received training, either through their employers or through advanced academic work in chemistry or through one of the elite perfumery schools that accept only a handful of students for their multi-year, full time programs. An even smaller handful may rise within a fragrance creation house by showing such exceptional aptitude that they come to the attention of a senior perfumer who is willing to train them.

    Indi perfumers for the most part develop their skills on their own, through trial and error, through long hours of experimentation, and by grasping at any educational opportunity they come across. Few people have the "nose," stamina, and business sense needed to follow this path successfully.

    The problem for the everyday unknown who would like to create successful fragrances is simply lack of an opportunity to receive professional training. Their best hope might be the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course, a home study program with materials supplied, or a PerfumersWorld 5-day (and later advanced) workshop. Unfortunately, while the workshops are generally affordable, they require travel and the freedom from other responsibilities to have these five days plus travel days available.

    Thus, while some training1 resources available to "anyone," time and money are obstacles not so easily overcome.

Raw Materials

    Professional perfumers at global fragrance houses will have easy access to 2,000 to 3,000 raw materials. Perfumers at smaller establishments may have access to fewer raw materials but the number would still be impressive and would cover all that was needed to create almost any contemporary scent.

    But what about you? What do you have to work with? And where will you get your materials? In your quest for raw materials you will encounter four difficulties. First, if you lack professional training, you may not know the names of the materials that you want to "mess around" with and if you don't know their names, you can't shop for them. Second, you don't know where to go to purchase the materials you may want. Third, you may have trouble finding a company that will take a small order from someone who is not a regular customer. Finally, the smallest order most companies will fill will be for a kilo of each fragrance material -- and a kilo is more than you may need in a lifetime; more likely you will want to purchase just want a few grams.

Money

    The professional, working for an established fragrance house, does not have to buy his or her own materials; the house supplies them. You will have to buy every raw material you want to use and many you don't know if you want to use or not until you've played with them a bit to see if they could work for your project.

    If you want to go "all natural," with the finest essential oils available, you will need a lot of money.

    There are economic ways to acquire a range of raw materials. This can involve starting your project with pencil and paper, being careful about what you will need, and understanding that your sources are limited so you select materials that are available to you from a reliable source at a reasonable cost. Even so, in developing an inventory of raw materials you can expect to spend several hundred dollars; five hundred would not be unrealistic.

Time 

    To devote yourself full time to perfume creation you must either be employed as a perfumer or you must be financially independent. For everyone else, creating perfume has to be spare time.

Some solutions

    For training, unless you have time for a 5-day workshop, the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course is your best bet. It is supervised home study; you can work it as your schedule allows, and it is open ended -- it leads you deeper into perfume creation rather than leaving you "finished" at the end of the course. All required materials are supplied with the course and it will have you creating simple but "real" perfumes, even on the first day. As you progress, your creations likely will become more sophisticated, more artistic, but even your early efforts will be quite satisfying, for you, for friends, and for customers.

    The raw materials issue can be addressed by shopping with one of two vendors who will supply raw materials in small quantities: PerfumersWorld (Bangkok, Thailand -- my prime source) and Perfumers Apprentice (Scotts Valley, California -- my secondary source). You can also try The Perfumers Studio (Los Angeles, California) that is associated with PerfumersWorld and may be able to provide supplies on request. While I sell the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course through my website, I do not stock or sell additional perfumery materials.

    The best way to be budget conscious is to think before you act and put your thoughts for your perfume down on paper before you invest in the supplies you'll need to make your trials. Also, for your first perfumes it pays to keep it simple. Using as few as five materials you can create very satisfying fragrances. consider the simplicity of a haiku.

For you, what is a "successful" perfume?

    I judge my creations by how others enjoy them. You may judge by the pleasure your own nose takes in what you've created but it's nice when others ask for one of your perfumes and even offer to pay you for it. But I've found that however good I think my "just finished" fragrance may be, I'm always a small bit dissatisfied and imagine that my next one will be better. You are likely to find this the case with the fragrances you create -- and they will keep getting better!