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Make Money by Selling Homemade Perfume
MoneyMagpie team
12th Mar 2020
Everyone from Mariah Carey to Beyoncé is at it. Yes, it’s the new ‘sleb’ thing – bring out your own perfume so that your fans can smell like you for £8.99. Of course, the ‘slebs’ don’t make their own perfume, they just put their names to it.
But you don’t need to be on the front of OK! Magazine to start selling homemade perfume. You could make and sell your own perfume and perfume-based products for surprisingly little cost. It’s not that hard either and you can almost always find what you need at a health food store.
- How to make your own perfume
- How much can you make by selling homemade perfume?
- Start selling homemade perfume
How to make your own perfume
Before you can begin selling homemade perfume, you need to understand how to make a viable product. First, decide how strong you want your fragrance. Perfumes are the strongest, containing 15-30 per cent essential oils diluted in a base of alcohol, with a small percentage of distilled water. Less potent waters contain 5-10 per cent essential oils while colognes and body splashes may have 1-2 per cent.
What you’ll need:
- Your favourite pure essential oils (such as rose, lavender or sandalwood)
- Alcohol for cleaning
- Fixatives
- Eye-droppers
- Small vials
- Bottles or jars
The best alcohols are the highest-proof ones, as they contain the greatest concentration of ethyl alcohol: use 95 per cent grain alcohol (190 proof) or vodka (the highest proof available).
Fixatives prolong a fragrance. They are ingredients added to a composition to lend their overall rate of evaporation. Commonly used fixatives are sandalwood, benzoin, myrrh, vanilla and balsam of Peru. Other fixatives, particularly useful for oil and bath blends, creams and lotions, are tincture of benzoin, grape seed oil, castor oil, and liquid from vitamin E gel capsules.
You should use glass containers (rather than plastic) for preparing and storing perfumes. Make sure you record, date and name each blend and be prepared to wait for days or weeks once you have made your perfume as ageing is necessary to smooth out and mellow the raw-ingredient smell – allow your blend to age in a cool, dry, dark area.
After adding each new essential oil, be sure to smell the result to get an idea of how each added ingredient changes the formula and how you might like to modify it in the future. Clean the eye-dropper in alcohol or vodka between each addition of a new essential oil.
‘You can do what you want, of course, but when I’m working with new oils or new combinations, I usually start with equal amounts – for example, two drops of ginger, two drops of jasmine, and two drops of sandalwood,’ says American Sherill Pociecha, who mixes her own perfume.
If you have a background in chemistry and like technical books, The Chemistry of Fragrances by D. H. Pybus and C. S. Sell is a useful sourcebook for would-be perfume-makers.
But the actual fragrance is just a very small part of the total perfume package, as all the big perfume-makers know. You will need good packaging – attractive bottles, pretty printed labels and extras such as ribbons, dried flowers or coloured plastic wrapping and boxes. If you are artistic, or you know someone that is who will help you, this can be the really fun part about it.
It’s important to work out your marketing concept before you make your final selection of a fragrance. You want the concept – the image of the fragrance – to work in tandem with the scent. Don’t go overboard on frills. Try to find a theme and express it in a simple yet creative way – it’s easier and usually much cheaper, but is still likely to sell as well as more fussy things.
If you learn to make soap, candles and creams (none of them too difficult), you can supply a range of products in one particular scent. You can then market these as gift boxes.
How much can you make by selling homemade perfume?
The mark-up on perfumes is very high, so if you are successful you could earn thousands a month, but it will take a while to build the business up to this kind of level. Some tips to help you start are:
- Begin with a modest range.
- Keep your overheads low – make the stuff in your kitchen or your garden shed if you have one.
- Remember The Body Shop Anita Roddick used sample bottles to sell her creams and potions originally. Look for cheap but effective bottles and containers.
- Presentation is everything. Again, you don’t have to spend big money but you do need to be creative. Use ribbons, even collage using torn-out pictures from magazines, pressed flowers and buttons. All kinds of things can make the packages look attractive.
- Remember to factor in the cost of advertising, travel and marketing as well as the cost of web design and hosting, if you sell that way, plus the cost of exhibiting at fairs or markets.
- Remember that it could take months before you sell anything. Keep your own outgoings low for as long as possible.
start selling homemade perfume
Thankfully, selling homemade perfume comes with a variety of methods. You will need to market your product to gift shops – in the high street and online – and possibly independent chemist’s shops and toiletry stores. You could also sell at craft fairs, local markets and gift fairs such as Top Drawer, which takes place annually at Olympia London. Setting up your own website and selling your products direct to the public is also a good idea. Or, even easier, set up your own perfume-selling marketplace on eBay.
Thanks for sharing, I have been trying to make my own brand perfume out of 3 combined perfume oils and i think now it’s the time to take a step further.
Thanks for sharing this innovative article. Perfumes can be profitable in business.
Hi im Zanele from South Africa i’v just started doing perfume but i dont know where to sell them
Hello Jabu,
May the Lord bless you and the perfum business you wanted to start.Did you find a partner? I am interested
[email protected]
Be Well
Psalm 121
Hi people of God my name is Jabu i have a small business for making a perfumes my salf.so my problem is im not oky financial to start that business please anyone can help me.or 2 of us we start that business as a partners.
Always been into fragrances so now that I’m no longer working, I decided that would be my new hobby. Spent TONS of money on oils, bottles, beakers, fragrance strips, books, recipe cards, fragrance wheel, etc. CAME WITH AT LEAST 3 UNIQUE fragrances but CANNOT get anyone to agree to even take on consignment! Not full of myself but they ARE great & not like anything else.. Followed all the rules, adding base first, etc. JUST CAN’T GET A BREAK!!!!!
Hmm, sounds like you could do with some business advice See if there is a business network near you. You need a mentor – someone who’s been (or is) in the industry who can help you. They could put you in touch with people and also point out anything they can see that is holding you back.
I have looked into this seriously since reading this. First I tried making the perfume. You can’t buy alcohol strong enough – the essential oils just don’t mix with the strongest off the shelf vodka you can buy. So I am doing a distance learning course whcih so far is ver helpful. However, be careful. you really do need to look into the legal side. If you are selling your own cosmetics they need to be tested, no matter how small a quantity or you may find yourself in trouble. So this is not a good idea if you just… Read more »
Hi – I am trying to find out info about making perfumes to sell. Could you please give me any leads on distance courses or maybe 2nd hand books that would be helpful. Thank you. Noureldine
Money making business of course. But take a long time to set. I know how to make a perfumes and spray perfumes. I am doing wholesale. My company name perfumes world. My dad did this business. So I like to do. But My dad did this in back home. I started this in London.
Thanks to my dad
Me and my friend have made a perfume and i really am enjoying making my own perfume. I think i am going to go to eBay and sell it but i want it in markets too like Target, Walmart, Macy’s, Dillards, etc. i am only 12 years old but i really want some money so i can buy my friends a christmas presents
this was not a 9 pm i am in florida so that the time is 3 pm so ok bye
madison
hi there
i recently paid for my girlfriend to make her own perfume local to us, last saturday the 5th of september,and she loved it.i was just wondering if its possible if she cud sell it as she has quite alot of interest in it as it seems quite nice is there any books or ideas u cud give me to help us on the way thnxs
derek spicer