Here’s How To Make Money by Selling Homemade Perfume

But you don’t need to be on the front of OK! Magazine or a huge company 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

Before you can begin selling homemade perfume, you need to understand how to make a viable product. The best way to do this is to invest a little time and money (but not much!) – Wowcher has some great perfume making workshops which will teach you the basics for under £30.

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
• Sterilised small 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.

‘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 well-designed 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.

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.

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 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.