Spring Has Sprung

The anticipation of spring is probably one of the most riveting times of the year. The winds of change brings a higher rate of engagement and more openness to new and fresh ideas.

One of those ideas might be starting your very own perfume business! Natchem is well known for supplying generic oils which are inspired by leading international brands.

The idea is to make these generic perfume oils into sort after parfumes, eau de parfums or even eau de toilettes. The benefit of this is being able to sell smells which are already well known through an established brand awareness. You would be able to put your own brand name on these oils, and state what the smell is inspired by.

Getting Started

Getting your home-based perfume business into full swing requires three constituents: fine fragrance perfume oil, EVERCLEAR Ethanol (perfume base) and glass perfume bottles for filling. We can supply you with a formulation guideline on how to mix the various perfume types available on the market. The most common mix we suggest is 20% perfume oil to 80% EVERCLEAR Ethanol, which is referred to as “parfum”.

If 500ml of perfume is mixed (100g of fine fragrance oil and 400ml of EVERCLEAR Ethanol), you should get 10 x 50ml bottles of sell-able perfume out of the batch.

You can however mix at a lower level of concentration. Eau de parfum (EDP) has a concentration of fragrance which generally falls between 15% and 20%. Eau de toilette (EDT) has a fragrance concentration of between 5% and 15%.

The Numbers

There are four expenses to consider when manufacturing perfume:

Perfume Oil
Alcohol
Bottle
Label

Natchem supplies all of these :), and we are easily available to business owners for supply.

You can even have cartons made for your bottles, but this can become quite expensive and may be an unnecessary expenses for a business which is just starting up.

If we had to look at 100g of Money No.3 (Lady Million by Paco Rabanne type), 1l of EVERCLEAR Ethanol, 5 x 50ml Protea bottles and 1 x pack of labels, it will cost you R260-59 incl. VAT.
This means that 5 x 50ml bottles of Money No.3 perfume has cost you around R52-00 per bottle, incl. VAT.
A made-up 50ml bottle of Money No.3 can easily be sold for over R100-00, for a top quality fragrance.
At R100-00 per bottle, you will make R48-00 profit per bottle.
If you can sell 10 bottles of perfume a day, you can make R480-00 per day, which is a good start for your business.

This is a rough estimate on one perfume oil variant and bottle type only. The profit margins vary.

One thing that must be remembered is that not all the money made from sales is profit (ie. the R52-00 that the perfume cost you to make). The cost of the product must go back into your business. You may make R1000-00 from selling the 10 x 50ml bottles of Money No.3, but only R480-00 is profit, the rest must be used to buy more stock to sell. Continuously replenishing your stock and expanding your range is what enables you to continue making money.