"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume"

A guide to selling your own perfume profitably, written for the home perfumer, independent perfumery, or perfume marketing entrepreneur.

Perfume is a magical product. Its fragrance enchants while it fills your bank account with money.

In 2001 I wrote "Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup!", an account of how that had never sold a fragrance before created and sold a men's cologne and earned back its $2,000 investment many times over.

In 2004 I developed our i84 cologne on an even smaller budget and wrote "Developing A Profitable New Perfume On A Budget Of Less Than $200!", a step-by-step guide explaining exactly what I had done in language so simply that almost anyone could follow these steps to come up with their own very commercial perfume.

The purpose of these books was to demonstrate to individuals and small companies that they too could create their own fragrance to sell at a very substantial markup.

But repeatedly I was asked, "Do these books tell me how to sell my perfume?" and the answer was "no."

Here's help for anyone
selling their own perfume

To make money with your perfume you must be able to sell it. If you've done your math right and are making money on each bottle you sell, the more bottles you sell, the more money you make. So help that can bring your additional sales is worth something.

People come to perfume from different backgrounds. What worked for companies I've helped in the past might not work at all for you. So, when I finally sat down and wrote "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!", I drew on all of my marketing experience and laid out suggestions for developing perfume sales along all four of the basic business models being used today to sell perfume by companies both large and small.

If your capital is limited or you are absolutely new to selling, business methods one or four offer you the greatest opportunity for success. If you are a hardened marketing veteran but unfamiliar with direct selling, you'll probably find business methods two or three to be your most comfortable starting points.

Your starting point is one of
these four basic business models

"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" was written around the four basic business models used to sell perfume. Every person and company that I know of that is successful in their efforts to sell perfume used at least one of these four business models. If you are already selling perfume, you'll quickly see where your company fits. If you have not yet begun to sell, you can see where you will want to concentrate your efforts.

Developing Your Own Retail Sales

You might be amazed to learn of the fortunes that have been made by outsiders who, after being turned down by big companies, manufactured their products themselves and sold them directly to the public by what was once called "mail order" but today is better known as "direct marketing" or "direct selling."

Sears and L.L. Bean started out as mail order businesses, manufacturing their own goods and selling them directly to the public.

But direct selling can also involve building your own chain of retail stores. This was how Victoria's Secret got started. Today they design and manufacture all of their lingerie and clothing items and sell them to the public in their own stores. (Their fragrances are also sold by other methods.)

The good news is that developing your own retail sales — by yourself — puts you in direct contact with your customers and gives you total control over the way you sell to them. Best of all, there are ways to get started with very little capital. "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" outlines a number of ways in which you can do this.

Direct selling allows you to eliminate the frustrations of having your perfume rejected by store owners and wholesales who don't understand how to sell it. It has the added benefit of allowing you to keep 100 percent of the profits on each sale rather than giving half of your profit or more to retail stores and wholesalers.

Getting your perfume into stores — and watching it sell

It's not as hard as you might think to get a store to take your perfume. The simplest way to do it is to either offer it to the store on consignment (where you get paid only for any inventory that sells) or pay the store to give you a certain amount of retail space. In the first case, the store risks nothing. In the second case, the store makes money. The key to developing a relationship with stores is to see that the stores always make money from your perfume. But you need to make money too.

In truth, a successful program of selling your perfume at wholesale to stores that will sell it at retail involves a number of "behind the scenes" elements. "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" goes to great pains to explain what they are and how you can set yourself up for successful sales to stores. Smaller stores — independent retail stores specializing in clothing, handicrafts, jewelry and such, offer a good starting point to test the waters. Only when your "behind the scenes" mechanisms are fully in place and working smoothly will you be ready to approach department stores and the smaller chains. "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" helps you position your business for this transition so that when the time comes, you will know the rules of the game and be able to play the game successfully.

Selling at wholesale to distributors ...
who will sell at wholesale to retailers

Distributors of the kind we are concerned with are generally in the business of moving large quantities of name brand merchandise to chain store. Their business depends on buying at the lowest price possible — sometimes at seemingly impossibly low prices — and reselling the goods to national chains at the highest wholesale price they can get.

Unless your perfumes become very, very successful, you are not likely to be dealing with distributors and, in the unlikely case that a distributor wants your fragrance, you may find that the distributor is able to buy it (legally!) from a source other than yourself at a price lower than what you would be willing to charge. (This can cause you some problems with your regular wholesale customers!)

"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" takes up the issue of distributors so that you will understand their function and recognize them when and if you encounter them. When your business gets to the point where distributors want your perfume, you'll know that you have really arrived!

Selling your perfume wholesale to organizations

For the individual or small perfumery, one of the ideal ways to sell perfume wholesale is to sell it direct to an organization. In "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" I discuss several different types of organizations well worth approaching, charity groups raising money being just one example.

If you are better at making and bottling perfume than you are at selling it to consumers, this method of developing sales can have great advantages for you. While you still must do some selling, now instead of selling a fragrance you are selling a "make money concept". The people you are selling to may have no clue about selling perfume but they will know exactly how to "move" your product once you lay out the "numbers" for them. "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" goes into these types of arrangements in depth because they can provide an excellent way to build both your cash flow and recognition for your perfuming abilities.

Was "61 Basic Strategies For Selling
Your Own Perfume!" written specially for you?

"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" was written in response to questions by a number of individuals who have contacted me by phone and email asking for suggestions for selling their fragrances and giving me a good deal of background on their own personal situations. Thus, "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" was written specifically to provide assistance to —

The Home Perfumer

You who love creating your own fragrances and are doing a good job of it. Your family and friends praise your creations — but now you'd like to sell what you make and see if your perfumes can't earn you some money. "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" suggests a number of ways for you to make this happen. Best of all, many of the available strategies require no more capital than what you can charge on your credit card.

Of course, once you see some money coming in, you may feel the need for a more ambitious marketing program and "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" can help you take the next steps upward.

The Independent Perfumery

You already have a perfume business and it is successful. You don't need anyone to tell you how to sell your fragrances ... but, you would be willing to listen to suggestions that might help your business become more profitable.

"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" was written to suggest to you additional profitable, sensible channels of distribution for your fragrances that could help make your business more interesting.

The Existing Business That Does
Not Yet Sell Its Own Perfume

You have a business; you have customers. Are they good candidates for perfume? Today it doesn't matter whether your customers are men or women; fashion dressers or skateboarders. Fragrance users are an expanding market internationally and, if your business has a loyal following, "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" suggests strategies you can use to extract additional profits from these customers by selling them perfume.

The Entrepreneur

You want to start your own business and make a lot of money and you've discovered that (1) perfume can be sold for many times what it costs and (2) starting your own perfume enterprise requires no more capital than what you can charge to your credit card.

"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" was written to show you how you can get started (using your desire to succeed alone!), how you can build up your bank account (from your first sales!), and how you can expand your business (and your wealth!) to a level others only dream about.

In Summary ...

"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" is NOT a pre-packaged "how to get rich" deal. Rather, it is a collection of practical strategies for people who are now selling — or would like to be selling — their own perfume and can benefit from practical suggestions for increasing sales, or developing a complete sales program.

There is no magic in this book. The "magic" comes from your own hard work — and the high markup that perfume affords you. Regardless of how successful you may already be, I believe that in "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" you will find helpful ideas, worth far more than the modest cost of this book.

"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" is published in an 8-1/2 x 11 inch format, is 55 pages in length and spiral bound for easy reading and reference. Order your copy today.

Along with your copy of "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" you will also receive a sample bottle of a perfume that we have created — to demonstrate that, not only can you sell perfume successfully, you can sell your own perfume ... a perfume that has cost but a few dollars to produce and package yet can be marked up 10 times or more over what it cost you to produce! (Now do you understand why so much money is made with perfume!)

Get both "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" and "Developing A Profitable New Perfume On A Budget Of Less Than $200!" for just $59.95! (Two samples of perfume we have made are included!)