Creating perfume for a marketing test

Weighing out 300 ml of Confusion II

    What you see on the scale in the photo above is not a large amount of juice but enough, when alcohol and water have been added, to fill 100 bottles.

    The fragrance oil in the beaker was mixed on the scale by adding the required weight of each material -- first by pouring from their containers and then, for the final few grams, by transferring the material with a disposable plastic pipette, I buy these pipettes several hundred at a time.

    From the beaker the fragrance was poured into the bottle seen at the left edge of the photo. There it will stand, at room temperature, for about 30 days. From time to time I'll shake the bottle.

    This is a small amount of fragrance oil but it is intended for a very special test in a limited market. In the event that it proves a very large success -- far more than I anticipate -- I'll contract out both the production and the filling but, realistically, the project will probably remain "in house" for at least another 12 months.

    If selling perfume is of interest to you, you should try a 3-month subscription to our Perfume Makers & Marketers Club. A trial membership is very affordable.

From drops to gallons - math for perfume production

Weighing 10 ml of "Confusion II"

This article is a continuation of my previous post.

    In front of me I have a bottle holding a small batch of a new perfume, "Confusion II." I'm working a plan to market it in a particular niche which, hopefully, will be nicely profitable. I've settled on the number of bottles I want to produce initially to test the market and my marketing concept. Now I need to produce the perfume.

    You may think this is the easy part and, in a way, it is. Once the formula has been developed, the rest is pretty mechanical. But it is also where serious money will be spent. Don't believe those who tell you that the fragrance in the bottle costs next to nothing. For a small company buying aroma materials in small quantities, what goes into the bottle costs plenty.

    So it's important to match the amount of fragrance being produced with the needs of the project. Produce too much fragrance and you eat up the profits from what you sell. Accurate calculations are important.

    First off, how many bottles do you want to fill and how much fragrance will be needed to fill those bottles?

    Suppose I want to fill 300 bottles, a small enough quantity that I can easily do by hand. And say I'm working with one ounce bottles, bottles that hold 1 fluid ounce which is about 29 ml.

    So I'll need (300 x 29) or 8700 ml -- 8.7 liters --  of the finished perfume to fill my 300 bottles.

    But I'll add another 100 ml to allow for spills and waste. My hand is reasonably steady but I know from experience that there will be spills and waste and I don't want to find, after all my bottles are lined up, that I only have enough fragrance to fill say 285 bottles -- meaning I'll now have to make a whole new batch of the perfume just to fill those additional 15 bottles.

    So for this example I'll need 8800 ml -- 8.8 liters -- of perfume to fill my bottles. But now look at the composition of the perfume. Say I decide to use the fragrance at 10% -- an eau de cologne strength -- which means I'll only need  880 ml (0.88 liters) of fragrance itself and then 7920 ml -- 7.92 liters -- of alcohol. (The alcohol here may be a 90% alcohol -- 180 proof -- with 10% being water to 90% alcohol.)

    So I get ready to produce 880 ml of my fragrance. But wait. I developed my formula by WEIGHT. To calculate how much I'll need I have to determine what 880 ml of this particular formula will weigh. It's time to get out the scale.

    In the photo above, 10 ml of fragrance are being weighed. The weight for 10 ml of this particular fragrance, my "Confusion II," is 9.55 grams. This means 1000 ml -- one liter -- will weigh 955 grams or 0.955 kilos.

    So in order to produce the approximately one liter of fragrance needed to fill 300 1-fluid ounce (29 ml) bottles with "Confusion II" at 10% fragrance, the balance being alcohol and water, I would need to produce, by weight, 0.955 kilos of "Confusion II."

    Now, working with my formula which shows the percentage, by weight, of each required material, I can calculate the weight that will be needed of each.

    The rest is simple. Weight out the materials and combine them. Give the perfume one to four weeks to become well blended. Then, by nose, make sure it smells right. If all is okay, add the required alcohol and water and let it blend for another one to four weeks. Then it can be bottled and sold.

    These are the steps needed to convert your perfume formula measured in drops to a formula measured by weight that can easily be used to produce as much of your perfume as you want.







   

From a few drops to gallons

    I'm finalizing the formula for a new perfume. It's called "Confusion II" and it's part of a multimedia presentation surrounding a piece of sculpture called "Confusion II." Music is being composed and recorded, a video is in the works, and the formula for the perfume is being converted from dropper bottle drops to grams, kilograms, liters, and gallons. This is the essential step in getting the formula ready for production.

    When I develop my formulas I use bottles with eyedroppers, writing the formula by the number of drops, 1/2 drops, and traces of each material I have used. This method has the advantage of allowing me to develop fragrances using very small amounts of aroma materials as the expense of these materials can add up quickly. On the other hand, drops are not an accurate measurement, only an approximation. So for a production formula the drops have to be converted to grams. This is how I do it.

Weighing out "drops" formula to convert is to grams

    Say my formula calls for just 30 drops total of all the materials I've used. This is too small an amount to get an accurate weight using an electronic scale. So I multiple the formula by ten or twenty or more, then make it up with drops while the container is on a scale. As each material is added I note the weight of the material. Once I've done this, I do it again. Why? To see if the weights recorded for the second batch are very close to those recorded for the first batch. It's easy to goof up when counting out a few hundred drops and you want to catch any errors you have made.

    If the first formula by weight closely matches the second formula by weight, I'll average each material out for my final formula. If the weight of any one material differs greatly from one batch to the next, I'll weight out another batch -- and keep doing this until the weights of each material are consistent from batch to batch.

    Then I'll check the final batch with my nose, to make sure the fragrance is what was intended.

    This is the first step in getting the formula ready for production.

Love scents, explore scents, use scents

    Part of perfumery -- an important part -- is a love for scents and being what you might call "a scent detective" as well as a scent collector.

    I'm coming into the final rounds with a fragrance I'm calling "Confusion II." You can read more about the concept here.

    I've made no secret of the fact that I sketch out my fragrances using the 26 "A-Z" bases from the PerfumersWorld K26 kit. But the world is full of many more than 26 scents and, for the perfumer, there are hundreds -- thousands -- of aroma materials available for use.

    But let's keep it simple. The essence of a very complex deal may be sketched out on the back of an envelop. Then lawyers fill in the next 200 pages.

    An architect may show a client a simple drawing of a house. Then 200 sheets of blueprint are prepared for the builder and subcontractors, showing where every board, pipe and wire must go.

    So too as I work with perfume. First its that simple sketch that conveys, to me, the "message" I want to convey to others. Then ... those details.

    This is where love of scents comes in. I have my "sketch." Is it enough? Or can I improve it, NOT by piling more notes into it but by making subtle adjustments to the notes I have already chosen. Should the "C" (citrus) note from the K26 kit be augmented or replaced with Kaffir Lime Leaf Oil? To make this decision I have to be familiar with the scent -- and behavior -- of Kaffir Lime Leaf Oil, which means I have to have some on hand and have to do some testing with it.

    So too it goes with each note in the formula.

    It's NOT a matter of adding more and more aroma materials to the formula. It's more like carpentry where, after putting some wood together to make, say, a bookcase, you then take sand paper and sand the sharp edges and corners until all is smooth and beautiful.

    This is where I go from my "approved" sketch. Sanding down those sharp edges -- those smells that stand out a bit too much, that are still a bit awkward and not quite right.

    So I work at smoothing them out, revising the list of materials, drawing from a larger number, working more and more toward the final beauty I am seeking.

    Building perfume is not just about the materials you need on hand. It's about having quite a few materials on hand that you might not use -- now -- but can store in your mind memory bank for future possibilities.

    And just collecting these "extra" materials and enjoying them for themselves, whether you ever use them or not, can give you much pleasure.

Spinning off a second perfume from a primary project

    I've been writing about a perfume I worked on last summer that didn't quite come together. It was close but didn't ring the bell for me although some of the trials were interesting.
   
    I had written that perhaps one of these trials might become a second perfume and now that has happened.

    I've written a bit about this second project elsewhere. It involves a multi-media presentation -- sculpture, music, perfume -- and, while I was starting up again on this first project which I'll call "Tokyo" for now, one of the trials that was not quite right for "Tokyo" was very on target for the second perfume, "Confusion II," which is also the title of the sculpture which inspired it.

    Three are two lessons in all this. The first lesson is that there are an infinite number of beautiful smells we come across or create and each of them can be called perfume. The magic isn't in getting A beautiful smell; the magic happens where you get THE beautiful smell you've imagined and have struggled to bring to life out of various aroma materials.

    Then, beyond the initial scent, whether it is "A" scent or "THE" scent, there is the need for technical skills that allow you to create a well crafted scent, regardless of whether it is the scent you were looking for or a spin off from your primary project.

    The second lesson is that in working on one perfume your nose and your notes store up a library of ideas which can be put to use for other projects.

    Developing a perfume is a learning process, regardless of how experienced the perfumer may be, and the lessons learned become tools for future work.

    "Confusion II" is almost finished but I'm still a bit short of what I want for "Tokyo" -- so I'll keep working, and I WILL get it, the way I want it!

"Perhaps a separate project"

    I wrote recently about staying on track with your perfume vision and not being put off course by the chance event that you produced a "nice" smell that wasn't the smell you were seeking.

    Don't discard that nice smell! Just separate it out from the project on hand. Perhaps at some time in the future it can become a project of its own.

    The wonder of perfumery is that, as you work, so many doors open. It's a little like doing a Google search where one interesting piece of information leads you to another. How easy it is to become distracted!

    So, as I said in the first article, it is essential to stay focused, to stay on topic, to stay the course of developing the perfume you set out to develop.

    But these other happy smells, set them aside. Let them become part of your "idea" library. At some time on the future you might recall a particular one and, FLASH, realize that it is the perfect starting point for a NEW project.

    And then, if it becomes a new project, give it the same focus and intensity you gave the original project from which it was rejected.

Time ... it takes time.

    Some things take time. If you want to make perfume, yourself, you must understand this and learn to be patient, even when you're in a rush to get on with it.

    It takes time for aroma materials to blend. More time than we want to wait in many cases. Commercial fragrance production plants have ways to speed up the process, but this may not result in the best perfume possible.

    How long does it take materials to blend? To ripen? To change from what they were when you mixed them to what they might ultimately become? In truth the mixture that had already "changed" in an hour might still be "changing" for up to a year or more. Ask yourself why is it that wines and whiskeys are aged. Chemical activity continues to go on and on, in spire of our wanting the job to be finished.

    In blending perfume we learn to be practical without being hasty. We discover that the scent of our blend after 24 hours is not the same as the scent after a week. But how long should we wait before calling the job "done"?

    I've lately been experimenting with fermentation. The demonstration can be dramatic. Start the fermentation process and plug your bottle with a cork. In the morning your cork will be missing -- shot off by the pressure of gas that has been released.

    Do this day after day. In perhaps a MONTH the fermentation will be complete. All the available glucose has been converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide (the gas whose pressure has been blowing the cork out of the bottle.) At this point you can safely cap the bottle and it won't explode. But the chemistry within the bottle will continue. Now it is your decision as to how long you will let it continue to age -- and blend -- before declaring it "finished." The limit you set is likely to be far short of the ultimate limit nature has set.

    Thus it is with perfume. On the one hand patience is required. Bottle your juice too quickly and it will play tricks on you. What you deliver to your customers may be quite different than what you put into the bottle -- for better or for worse.

    So yes, there is a commercial decision to be made. The decision as to how long to let your mixture blend before putting it to use.

    How long must it sit before it is practical to call it finished? That is a decision you must make for yourself, by testing, testing, and testing some more to see how time -- blending time -- is affecting your perfume.

    Only through this repeated testing -- and patience -- can you be reasonably assured that you are delivering, to your customer, the product you intended.