Working on a new fragrance -- some personal notes (#1)

    Yesterday (04/20/20) I ordered some supplies I'll be using in developing a new perfume. I've already got a problem on my hands. The scent that has been evolving is out of sync with the theme I selected for the fragrance and the working name now makes no sense.

    What I want is a name and a theme and a scent that go together. The name should suggest the scent, the scent should suggest the name and together the name and the scent should fit nicely into a "story" or theme that can be used to advertise the fragrance. This is a very important starting point because it makes the whole project logical. When naming, you have the theme and the scent to guide you. When developing the scent you have the name and the theme to guide you. When developing a story for marketing purposes you have the name and the scent to guide you.
   
    But as of today, for my new fragrance, the scent doesn't fit either the working name or the story. The story doesn't really fit the working name either. So what should I do?

    To go ahead with things the way they are now, I'll be forced to force any promotional enthusiasm. Right now, while I'm still at the beginning, I think it will be better to make adjustments to my theme. This will perhaps help me with a new trend of thought for a name. Why take this approach? Because I think I have something with the fragrance itself. Maybe it just happened but at the moment it makes sense to me to go with the scent and see what kind of theme and name I can develop for it.

Audience

    Before I make changes to my theme or my working name, I have to consider my audience. Who am I going to market this fragrance to? The name, scent, and story all must be suitable for my target audience. Ideally it will have a powerful effect on them, get them aspiring (maybe even get them perspiring for my perfume!)

    Now I'll reveal a trade secret. Please don't spread it around. The only audience I'm concerned with are the men and women who visit my pglightyears.com website. This is where I'll be selling the fragrance. The audience at this web site is almost exclusively visitors who have been impressed by my writings elsewhere, my blogs, my bio-byte.com and perfumeprojects.com websites and perhaps a tweet, a Facebook posting, or a mention on somebody else's site. This will NOT be a large number of people and, as I have written elsewhere, I'll be matching my production with my anticipated sales. I'm not planning to get stuck with a ton of unsold inventory.

    So now I have to rethink this project, ask myself if the scent that is developing will be for this audience and, if so, how should I re-write my story and working name?

    I know that in my announcement for this fragrance -- the webpage I'll give it -- there will be a large photo of something -- I don't yet know what. But that photo will have to be in sync with the name of the fragrance and its story -- and the scent itself. So, as a start, I can begin to think in visual terms.

-- Stay tuned! (To be continued.)

Your raw idea might create a powerfully original -- and successful -- fragrance

    I was going over some of my own creations recently and it struck me that some of them are quite good. Now stop a minute. "Some," not all? And "good," not "excellent"? Let's get real.

    Some of my fragrances are better than others. Why pretend otherwise? But the better ones are good and here's why I say "good" rather than "excellent" or some other superlative. I simply do not have the skill that a professional perfumer, working in the fragrance industry, would have. I make no pretense about it and I admire the work of people whose skills are far advanced over mine. If one of them were to take the best of my creations they might, with a few adjustments, make it "excellent." They might add a little this, subtract a little that and smooth out the balance. They might polish the rough edges, the small, jarring transitions from one note to the the other. Even the best of my fragrances are a bit raw. But they have a strong voice. That's what makes them special.

    If you have ideas for perfumes, materials to work with, and the skills to use these materials to create the fragrances you want to create, yours too may be a bit raw. But if your concepts, your basic scent visions are "right," your fragrances will be worth producing and putting out to the public, even with their rough edges. If your vision is "right," and well executed, the rough edges disappear beneath the strength of your concept.

    In short, don't be discouraged by what you can't do. Go forward with what you can do and, if your vision is right, there's a good chance your customers will relate to it -- and want more fragrances from you!
   

This hands-on project will teach you everything about perfume

Create a perfume on your own for around $500

     If you have a fascination with perfume and aspire to become either a creator or a marketer or a perfume, this simple student project will give you a depth of understanding of perfume; its creation and its marketing. Execute this simple student project and you’ll never fear the "mysteries" of perfume again.

    Some years ago after a successful $2,000 project, I wanted to see how little money it could cost to develop a ready-to-sell perfume. My initial findings were that, at that time, it could be done for under $200. But within a few years some of the good sources of materials, bottles and pumps in particular, changed their minimum order policies and when I rewrote the book, I took $500 as the minimum it might cost you to produce a fragrance of your own, a fragrance that, potentially, you could sell.

    Today this "$500" book, How To Make Your First Perfume For Under $500, is available to you from me as a free download in pdf format. This book will walk you through the steps, guide you through vendors and materials, and give you a perfume or cologne of your own, to sell if you wish.

    To follow the steps in this book you do not need the perfumer's skill of creating a scent from raw materials. If you are a fragrance creator, you can use one of your own scents in this project but, for most, you'll want to do what major fragrance marketers do, which is to have the scent supplied by an outside vendor.

    By undertaking this simple, inexpensive student project, you'll find yourself confronting each of the decisions that must be addressed when conceptualizing and producing a perfume or cologne. Your goal in this project is not to set the world on fire with the wonders of the scent you have bottled and the beauty of the packaging you have given it. Your goal is simply to produce a real perfume or cologne, a product in a bottle you can show and share with others.

    So take advantage of the book offer. Download it, read through it, make your plan and execute this "student project." When you've done it you'll feel comfortable when challenged to develop a perfume or cologne for a project of any size, with any budget.

    And let me know how it works for you.

Could you develop a business producing and selling automobile air fresheners?

    Personally I hate them and would never want one in my car. But when someone is a heavy smoker they can clear the air a bit. But that's not the important point here. The "virtue" of automobile air fresheners is that they are a fragranced product that doesn't have a problem in going through the mail. They aren't "liquid"; they aren't "hazardous material." You can ship them to anyone, anywhere ... and they are light.

    To make a business with perfume you have to make sales. This is why so many independent fragrance companies offer soap and candles to supplement their revenue from perfumes and colognes. If you want to embrace perfume as a business it pays to explore a wide range of opportunities for getting your product "out there" profitably. Look at what producing automobile air fresheners involves.

Shape, Printing, Fragrance

    Air fresheners amount to no more than a die cut SHAPE with PRINTING and infused with FRAGRANCE. Just as there are many shops that will produce custom printed t-shirts for you, there are a number of shops that will produce custom air fresheners for you. Here is a list of a few of them.

    As with any new venture, you study it by examining what others are doing. Here, you might start by ordering small quantity of custom air fresheners. Then you can see what it's like to sell them but you can also begin to explore the possibilities of making them yourself.

    Your first step might be working with an artist to develop the graphics and shape of the air fresheners. Remember here that unknowns have come out of nowhere to make their millions selling t-shirts thanks to their unique artwork for which, of course, they register copyrights.

    While selling air fresheners produced by an existing supplier you can experiment with the elements on a small scale. Working backward, the packaging is simple shrink wrap. The paper to be infused? You'll have to do your research but by having your samples from "the other guy" you can ask around to local printers and commercial printers tend to be quite knowledgeable about papers, how they hold ink and how they will behave when infused with the scent.

    About the scents themselves, you'll have to get technical due to the special demands of this media. You'll be scenting a printed product so the scenting must coexist with the printers inks used. You will also be required to produce a fragrance that maintains its aroma over a long period of time, essentially unchanged. And you'll have to develop a fragrance that can withstand the changing conditions within an automobile. Direct sunshine can be a problem but your air fresheners will also be expected to work flawlessly in a cold automobile. Your hope lies in providing a great enough "cool factor" that can obscure some of your initial shortcomings. Then when you start making sales, you can clean up these problems.

Marketing

    A good start is to research, locally, the shops that sell automobile air fresheners. Make lists Do some of them look like they might try a new air freshener from a new vendor? You also want to research shops that don't currently sell air fresheners (because they are considered "yucky") but might take on yours if it has the right look and the right fragrance.

    And there is the business of providing custom auto air fresheners for businesses (car washes perhaps?) If your product is good, an "imprinted" air freshener could be an interesting substitute for imprinted pens.

    These are just ideas. What can you do with them? Give me your feedback here.

The effort it takes to advertise a new fragrance

    Months ago I wrote about how I was working on a new fragrance. Then, months later, I told how I was almost ready to introduce it to the world. Over the summer (2019) I said I would introduce it in the fall. I didn't want to announce the name for fear that someone would grab it and use it before me, thus taking away my trademark rights to the name. Now the ad is posted and the name is out, "Rough Day," a fragrance for men.

    Why did it take so long? It can be worth taking a look at the whole procedure. It all starts with an idea, for the scent of the fragrance or for a story that inspires the fragrance. Then you've got to make the fragrance. This means developing a formula.

    "Getting it right" almost always involves many trial batches, adding a little this, deleting a little that, then balancing the ingredients you've finally selected so that the emphasis is right. Then testing some more and then finally making a production batch. Oh, by the way, to make that production batch you will probably have to order larger supplies of the aroma materials you have chosen. This involves shipping time and money. If you haven't got the money to lay out, you can't order the materials you need so you can't make your fragrance.

    Once you've gotten your materials and made your production batch, you've got to let the juice sit and blend. Give it a full month. Then you're ready to add the alcohol and water and begin bottling.

    So you bottle and label and "package" it, if you've got a box. In this case my run was too small for a box to make economic sense. Now the fragrance is ready to sell, but how?

    In my case distribution is on a website I've set up to sell my fragrances. Orders come directly to me and all the packing and shipping is done under my supervision. Due to current shipping restrictions I can only ship by USPS surface. That means no Priority or Express mail and no international orders. USPS ground is not bad time-wise but it can be a bit unpredictable.

    Now that I’m ready to advertise my "Rough Day fragrance for men" I have to write something about it; I have to photograph it; and I have to assemble the web page that will sell it. Here is where some unexpected delays arose.

    It has been nine years since I first developed the PGLightyears.com website and in that time the digital world has evolved in a wealth of screen sizes, leaving my site a bit dated. Rather than plop a new fragrance into an outdated site, I decided to bit the bullet and "upgrade" to the current web "responsive design" standards. This involved buying and learning new software. I "learned" just enough to create the new pages. They are not yet beautiful but they are functional. Now all is ready and "Rough Day" is online, taking orders

    The reason I am sharing all this with you is that I want you to appreciate that ideas, if they are to amount to anything, usually require a good deal of effort to carry them out. Think of the skills that were involved here, all of which could have been handed over to subcontractors but in this case all was done "in house." There was the conceptualization of the fragrance, the development of the formula from which the fragrance could be produced, the purchasing of aroma materials, and the production of the fragrance. And then writing words, taking photos (more than the ones I'm currently using), creating the web page, maintaining the website, carrying inventory, booking and shipping orders.

    I've been doing it for so long it's become natural but, if you are starting out, it can seem like a lot. My advice here is to take one step at a time and not become overwhelmed. Don't set unrealistic deadlines for a launch because you don't know what obstacles might delay you. But, if you do it one step at a time, you will get your fragrance made and launched and, hopefully, it will sell.

How to make your own perfume for under $500

    These notes are about a book I wrote in 2011 and am now offering free -- as a pdf download. You don't even have to leave your email to get it.

    I have suggested that this book is "ideal for test marketing, gift giving, or just a personal project" and it can help you become a perfume entrepreneur -- without having to raise start-up money. It gives you a clear path forward.

    I wrote this book back in 2011 but reading it over again -– in 2019 –- I find it is still an excellent guide for the person who has no money and no investors but wants to be involved in selling their own perfume ... or just developing a nice gift for friends ... or have the satisfaction of having produced their own perfume in a "commercial" way.

    There are a few changes I would make if I was to revise the book today. The suggested 'fragrance to alcohol' ratio is too high. I would cut it in half. There isn't enough discussion on water in perfume but for that you can read "Water in perfume: Why? What? How much?". The "Resources" page is outdated but you can find current vendors here. The Perfume Makers Club no longer exists. I burned out after publishing the 100th issue of the Club's monthly newsletter but many of the Club's most important resources can now be found on this website. Follow the links on the main menu. And, if making perfume is of serious interest to you, the books featured below can be quite helpful. Meanwhile, you can download "How To Make Your First Perfume For Under $500" in pdf format here. It's my free gift to you.

Other books you could find helpful:

    Perfume Production Checklist
    Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup!
    Creating your own perfume from dropper bottles: Methods, mechanics, and mathematics

You might also find these (free) articles quite helpful:

    Converting grams to milliliters
    Scaling up: From drops to liters

Best wishes for your work with perfume!

-- Phil

Sketching out a new perfume

    I use dropper bottles to sketch out a new perfume. Some say this isn't "professional". They point to articles they have read by authors (writers, not perfumers!) who have been allowed to watch top perfumers sketch out their new fragrances and they report that the perfumer calls to the technician, "bring me 0.001 grams of XYZ" or "0.0007 grams of QRV." If you were allowed to see their formulas you might see eight grams of one aroma material being used and 0.0008 grams of another. They have sketched out their formula by weight. So are dropper bottles just for hobbyist, amateurs, and school children? Take a closer look.

    If you want to develop a fragrance of your own you will not be able to call  a technician to bring you very small amounts of some material you want to use. Why? Because the precision balance needed to weight these small amounts costs terns of thousands of dollars. And then you would need some way to transport these materials from their storage containers to your weighing equipment and then to your test tube or mixing pot, all without spilling the tiniest fraction of a microgram. This work requires sophisticated, expensive laboratory equipment. Don't let these realities discourage you.

    You can create fully professional fragrances starting with a sketch you've made with drops from dropper bottles. To do this successfully  you must understand how to use dropper bottles. You must understand how to work with materials that are not liquids and thus must be transformed into liquids without changing their scent characteristics. You must learn how to add that "0.0007 grams" to your formula, even though you can't weight it. You have to understand that the way you squeeze your droppers is important and that drops are not a "standard" measurement. But even after you've mastered all these techniques and can repeat your dropper formula over and over again, you'll be stalled at this point without any way to go into commercial production unless you graduate to the next level.

    The next level is where, in a sense, you rejoin those "professionals" with their high tech laboratory equipment. To attain this level you too must acquire some laboratory equipment but, if you are practical, you'll be able to purchase everything you need for less than the cost of front tires for your pickup truck. What is happening now is that you are converting your drops, which by now have been multiplied into easy to weight quantities, into grams. From this point forward it's all just measurements and mathematics and your results, the fragrance that you create, can be just as grand as any found at your local perfume counter.

    So what are all these measurements and mathematics that can transform a simple "drops" formula into a production formula by which you can produce your fragrance by the gallon or by the drum? In fact they are all quite simple but also quite important. I have written about them and described them in detail in a book called Creating your own perfume from dropper bottles: Methods, mechanics, and mathematics. While detailing these techniques in writing, I've been developing a new fragrance using these techniques. The "juice" was bottled a month ago. Today I added alcohol and water. I can't reveal the name until I've bottled some and put it on the market which may not happen until September (2019). If I reveal the name now, my name won't be (trademark) protected so I must wait until it goes on sale. (If you don't understand why this is the case, read Naming Your Perfume And Protecting Your Name.)

    If you have a good idea for a perfume and if you are willing to learn some basic  techniques, there is no reason why you can't produce it.