Buying Perfumes on eBay Tips

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I figured everyone ought to know some of the tips I’ve used when purchasing fragrances on eBay that have worked for me so far. Like with all else you buy online, even if you abide by all of these tips, you cannot 100% guarantee that you will never encounter or accidentally purchase a counterfeit fragrance. But you will at least reduce your risk of being scammed.

Without further ado . . .

1. Those photographs sure look fishy.

Your first and best defense against counterfeits is to know what you’re going to buy and know it really well. Always do research on an item before you drop the money for it especially if you’re looking at dropping a large amount on an item. If it’s in and around $100, you can spend some time going to a store or looking up the bottle and box online so you know what you’re supposed to be getting. Scrutinize the provided photographs and consider the following:

  • Does the seller use stock photos? I would never purchase a fragrance from a seller who only used stock photographs. You can’t know for sure what exactly the product they intend to send you will look like. So it’s either their photographs that they took themselves or it’s no sale.
  • Are the photos small and blurry? Not everyone can afford a nice camera, but as a seller, it is their responsibility to accurately describe and portray the item they intend to sell. That means, clean, clear, large photographs from varying angles. If someone’s photograph of an item is the size of a thumbnail or blurry, I ask them to take more or take better pictures.
  • Is the seller willing to comply with your request for more photographs? Should you feel the need to see more images of the product, don’t be shy or be afraid to ask for more. Remember to keep your request within reason (give me fifty more photos and I want them by tomorrow is unreasonable but asking for five more photos of different angles should be okay for most sellers). A serious seller will have no problem providing you with more original pictures of their product.
  • Do the photos even belong the seller? This one is hard to gauge, which is why you shouldn’t be too afraid to ask for more photographs. Sometimes unscrupulous sellers will steal photographs from other eBay auctions or somewhere online to use in their auction. If you’re suspicious, ask for more pictures! Or even go so far as to request the seller photograph the item with a scrap of paper with their eBay username or a word that you’ve chosen written on it.

2. Beware of brand new, sealed in box.

While not always faked, it is much harder for a potential buyer to tell if a perfume they’re going to buy online is fake or real if it’s sealed in a box. This is because counterfeiting a cardboard box and getting the details close to right is a whole lot easier than getting all the details right on the bottle inside. Also, there’s a possibility the seller took out the actual bottle from the actual box and put in a cheap knock-off instead and resealed it. Then you won’t even know until you get the bottle out of the box.

  • Are all the design elements on the box in the right place? Is everything spelled and spaced correctly?
  • Is the cellophane that encases the box neat? Is it clean? Does it look new or does it look wrinkled? If it’s wrinkled, there’s a possibility the seller may be using an actual box but has put a different, knock-off fragrance inside and tried to reseal it.
  • Again, try to get the seller to take photographs of the box. It might be weird request, but ask them to photograph the ingredients list, the logo, and the lot code on the box. With all of these photographed, you can look for typos and spelling errors, or out of place design elements. If the seller refuses to offer more photographs (remember, they don’t lose anything but a little bit of time if they do this for you) then be wary of the authenticity of their product.

3. People lie.

You have to come to accept this sad fact that some people will lie and are very good at lying. It gets even easier when they’re online where others can’t see them or hear them. So when you’re buying anything online, always keep this in mind. People lie. They will lie to get your money and they will do it very well. You should not put your trust into someone until they prove they can be trusted.

  • Check their feedback. Always, always, always, check an eBay seller’s feedback before you even consider buying anything from them. Look at the neutral feedback as well as the bad feedback and see what others have said about them. You can use Toolhaus.org to quickly check a seller’s negative and neutral feedback.
  • If the seller has zero feedback, don’t buy. Sellers with zero feedback are not necessarily counterfeiters but you just don’t know and perfumes are expensive items that cost too much to throw on a whim for a seller with zero feedback.
  • Just because they say it’s 100% authentic, doesn’t mean it is. I don’t even know why sellers bother to put 100% authentic into their item titles or descriptions anymore as any savvy buyer will just gloss over those words. In fact, every time I see 100% authentic, I get suspicious.

4. The feedback can say it all.

This ties in with the previous point about checking the seller’s feedback. Read through all of the neutral and negative responses. If you see someone say something about the seller sending them a fake or a knock-off then click away. Don’t trust a seller just because they’re a top seller, or a power seller, or most everyone else has had an excellent experience with them. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed with perfumes it’s this: Most people are not perfumistas and cannot tell a real from a fake. This isn’t a sleight against any of you, it is just a fact that if you aren’t around this stuff enough then it’s very easy to overlook a very good counterfeit.

5. There is no shame in buying used bottles or testers.

You are safer, by and large, if you purchase used bottles of perfumes or testers. There’s usually nothing wrong with these items and they are very often authentic. Think of it this way, why would a counterfeiter go out of their way to make fake items and then make them look used or look like testers? These used or tester items don’t sell for as much as brand new items so it is a waste of time and money for the counterfeiter. Therefore, this makes you safer to purchase used or tester bottles. Please note that I did not say this makes you safe–just safer.

6. Pay with Paypal, even better with Paypal attached to credit card.

Always try to pay for items through Paypal so you can contest the payment and hopefully get your money back if the seller ripped you off. If you got sent a fake, start making noise immediately. Paypal gives the buyer a certain amount of days (within 45 days) after the transaction has taken place in order to open a dispute about the purchase. Once a dispute is opened the buyer has 20 days to escalate their dispute to a claim if nothing has been done to remedy the issue or if the dispute has not been settled. Getting a counterfeit item is a perfectly legitimate reason to contest a purchase. If Paypal refuses to do anything about your issue, call up your credit card company and have them do a chargeback. Remember:

  • With Paypal, you the buyer, have 45 days from the time of the purchase (not the delivery of the item!) to open a dispute. After the dispute is open you will have 20 days to escalate the dispute to a claim. If you do not escalate the dispute to a claim after 20 days, Paypal will automatically close the dispute! So make sure you escalate if the issue is not solved in the dispute stage.
  • You can contact your credit card company to negotiate a chargeback if necessary.
  • Never give a seller positive feedback until you open the item and inspect it. When your product arrives, make sure you open it and inspect it first. Spray it to make sure it’s authentic. Also make sure it’s undamaged or as described. Only when you’re confident that everything is okay, should you give the seller your feedback.
  • Report them to eBay if they are selling counterfeits! It is against eBay’s policy for anyone to sell counterfeit items. If you see a counterfeit listed, report it to eBay so no one gets sucked into purchasing a fake.

7. This guy sure has a lot of stock.

If a seller has listed a ton (10, for example) of brand new, sealed in box full size fragrances and is not a store, it is almost guaranteed to be fake. One has to ask themselves if they come across someone like this how they got all of those brand new, sealed in box items in the first place.

8. Unbelievable deals.

It needs to be mentioned again that if you see a perfume that would normally sell for $200 in a department store, and in and around that much on a grey market discounter site, going for $10 on eBay that’s advertised as new and unused, then walk away. One has to wonder what’s wrong with this product the seller’s got that they’re willing to part with it for such a heavy discount. It could be severely damaged in some way, it could be counterfeit, sometimes there’s a chance that the seller just wants to get rid of it, but are you willing to bet your money on that. Even if it’s just $10? If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is.

Again, these tips will not make you 100% counterfeit-proof, but they should help you when you’re considering eBay as a purchasing option for fragrances. eBay is a fantastic resource for perfumistas or fragrance lovers but there’s also a lot of dishonest sellers there looking to make a quick buck. The savvier you are going in, the safer you are from being ripped off.

Perfume FAQ, Part 2

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Part 2 of the Perfume FAQ for common questions that keep coming up regarding perfume. You should not, by any means, stop your research at this page. If there’s a topic you’re interested in, Google  has opened up a very good resource for research and knowledge. If you have a perfume related question, please leave a comment.

Q. Why do perfumes give me headaches?
A. I’m not a doctor and cannot diagnose what might be a more serious condition that you have but in my experience, related entirely to perfume, people who get perfume headaches may have smelled a particularly large dose of perfume or a particularly strong perfume. If all perfumes give you a headache, you may be sensitive to scents. Some people also get headaches from perfumes that are too sweet or cloying. Others might get headaches from perfumes that are too spicy, or sharp, the list goes on. We’re all different and so are our perfume headaches. It should be noted however, that a perfume headache does not necessarily indicate a perfume allergy. Allergies can sometimes cause headaches but if all you experience when you smell a trigger perfume is a migraine an allergy may not be what you have. It should be reiterated that I am not a medical doctor and you should consult with a licensed physician if you are having any physical ailments.

Q. What’s the deal with old lady perfume?
A. I don’t know what the deal is, but here’s a run down. Poor Chanel No. 5 often gets accused of smelling like “old lady perfume” but I find that most people who often say this are also the kind of people who have never actually gone out of their way to smell Chanel No. 5 before and are just repeating a public misconception. Old lady perfume is whatever you want to make of it. Some people will call anything over-applied an old lady perfume. Some people call any perfumes old lady perfumes. Many people equate old lady perfumes to floral heavy perfumes, lavenders, nerolis, jasmines, powdery scents, bitter scents, earthy scents, cloying scents, tuberose scents, sometimes incense-heavy fragrances get lumped into this classification too. In fact, we’d save time by saying perfumes that smell like candy, cookies, cakes, or chocolate brownies, sweet fruits, massive infusions of citrus, and giant mountains of vanilla ice cream are pretty immune to being classified as “old lady”. Many of the vintage classics made earlier than the 1980s suffer from this derogatory label. If you ask me, the phrase, “old lady perfume” should be stricken from the records as it’s an ignorant classification of a certain group of people as well as an equally ignorant classification of a huge selection of fragrances and fragrance history. For a more eloquent entry on “Old Lady Perfume”, check out Perfume Shrine >>

Q. Are designer perfumes better than non-designer?
A. No. Not necessarily. Designer perfumes are sold as a brand. Unless brands matter to you, wear what you like to smell and don’t worry about it. The composition of most designer perfumes versus non-designer such as Victoria’s Secret or celebrity fragrances are not all that different.

Q. I think I have a counterfeit fragrance on my hands, how do I confirm my suspicions?
A. Get on a fragrance forum like Basenotes or Makeupalley, take several clear photographs of your suspected fake and ask people if they can identify whether or not you’ve got a counterfeit on your hands. I personally cannot identify every single bottle as I have not seen, held, or owned every single bottle of perfume available. Therefore, I may not be able to tell you if you got swindled or not but other people might.

Q. Why is there Arabic writing on some of my perfume boxes or bottles and what does it say?
A. Your perfume was imported from another country. Possibly grey market but not necessarily counterfeit. Just to re-iterate; Arabic writing on your perfume box or bottle is not one of the indicators of a counterfeit. As for what that says, I can only assume it might say something like, “For external use only” or something equally unexciting. So rest assured, you did not stumble upon a secret message that will lead you on a journey of self-discovery and hidden treasure. That would be pretty neat though. To read about the difference between grey market fragrances and counterfeits, go Here >>

Q. Someone told me that all perfumes expire after two years. Is this true?
A. No. Perfumes do not have a set expiry date. Some last for much longer than two years, other expire in even less time than that if they’re not stored properly. How long your perfume lasts depends on how well you take care of it and what kinds of components it was made with. A bottle of citrus-heavy fragrance for instance, is more volatile and prone to spoilage. Generally, the two years to spoilage date is given as a precaution, not a hard and fast date that all perfumes will expire by. The rule of thumb I go by is, if the liquid is clear, it hasn’t changed color, and it still smells the same then it’s probably fine to use. I also recommend keeping perfumes out of the sunlight and in an environment with a relatively stable temperature to prolong their lifespan.

Q. Why do people say it’s bad to spray perfume in your hair or on your clothes?
A. I’m not a hair or clothing expert but I assume spraying hair is a no-no due to the alcohol base in most perfumes which can dry out or damage your hair. As for the clothes thing, perfumes contain coloring agents so I assume if you spray enough you might stain your clothes.

Q. Is it true that perfumes contain ingredients that come from a deer’s butt?
A. You won’t believe how often this gets asked. “Deer’s butt ingredients”, more eloquently known as, natural musk,  used to be widely present in perfume. In some rare instances, musk, and other such natural animal-based ingredients still are but the use of natural musks and animal ingredients is rare in modern perfumery due to the versatility and efficiency of synthetic musks.

Q. How do you train your nose to pick out individual ingredients in scents?
A. Picking out individual smells in a fragrance is a purely subjective exercise for a hobbyist like me. But I find that as I smell more perfumes, fragrance oils and essential oils, I start to recognize these same smells in certain perfumes and can sometimes pick them out. So it’s just a matter of the more you smell, the more you know.

Got any questions not addressed in this FAQ? Please leave a comment.

Perfume FAQ, Part 1

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You spend a certain amount of time in the perfume hobby and a few things start to dawn on you that you didn’t know before. Feeling like a dummy for a few moments is the least of it until you realize that perfume and perfumery is a vast and complicated subject with a rift between the people who enjoy it and the people who enjoy it enough to sift through the how, what, and why of it. That rift is where misconceptions and confusions are born.

This FAQ was written on a bit of a whim to answer questions that keep coming up regarding perfume.

Q. What perfumes do guys/girls like?
A. This is like asking what food everybody in the whole world will like. There is a lot of variety in tastes and what people consider to be “good”. People can have more than one favorite. People might love something that everybody else hates. There’s simply no catch-all fragrance as it is all a matter of personal taste and opinion.

Q. What’s the difference between an Eau de Toilette and an Eau de Parfum?
A. Eau de Parfum has a higher concentration of fragrance oils compared to Eau de Toilette. Therefore, Eau de Parfums tends to smell stronger and last longer when used. Fragrance oils being those lovely things that give the perfume its scent. The higher the fragrance oil concentration in relation to the dilution agents, the more powerful the scent. Some houses also change the formulations between Eau de Parfum and Eau de Toilette versions, making one smell different than the other. Guerlain is known to do this with their perfumes. More info >>

Q. Is it okay to wear cologne if you’re a girl? How about wearing perfume when you’re a guy?
A. Fragrances do not have genders or gender preferences. It is the people and the marketing that assign genders to perfumes and colognes. Something can smell feminine or masculine but I treat that as a “good to know” sort of thing rather than a hard and fast rule. If you like how something smells but it happens to be marketed to the other gender then wear it anyway. As long as it smells good to you, do what makes you happy.

Q. Is this perfume better than that perfume?
A. Something being better than something else is a highly subjective topic that’s entirely personal opinion. Technically, nothing makes one perfume better than another if we’re talking about personal taste and asking someone else what makes one fragrance better is not necessarily the answer you want because they’ll be judging based upon their tastes when you should be judging based upon your own.

Q. How do I make my perfume last longer?
A. Layering. There is a reason why some perfumes come in sets with soaps, lotions and shampoos. The main goal here is to layer, layer, layer. If you wash yourself with the same scented soap and use the same scented lotion before spraying on the perfume then you gather a few more hours worth of enjoyment out of the fragrance. If a fragrance doesn’t come in a set then you can use unscented lotion on your skin to help your fragrance last longer. Also keep in mind that in hot climates, perfume will fade faster than normal no matter what you do.

Q. Are perfumes made from essential oils safer than the synthetic stuff?
A. Not necessarily because essential oil usage can be dangerous as well. Citrus essential oils can cause photosensitivity. Some essential oils are made from plants that are dangerous and harmful to humans. Certain essential oils need to be diluted or they can cause injury to whoever uses them. Synthetics have a murky reputation. But they are also tested and regulated quite stringently. Basically, you cannot assume that just because something is derived from nature, that it is automatically better than something manmade. In short, no, natural essential oils are not safer than synthetic oils. They are, however, beautiful and useful in their own ways.

Q. How do I correctly apply perfume?
A. Tons of schools of thoughts on this and there is no correct way, just preferred ways. But I’ll make it easy. Perfume will work wherever you want to spray it. Most people will spray it on their pulse points. The most popular locations are the wrists and neck. Some people also apply perfume to the back of the knees, back of the neck, the chest, and sometimes the insides of their elbows. So long as you keep it away from and out of any orifaces on your body, the perfume will work just fine.

Q. How should I store my perfumes?
A. Perfumes should be kept away from their three major enemies, light, air, and heat. Store them in a dark, cool place with a stable temperature. A dresser drawer would be okay. A closet would be okay. A fragrance fridge set to the right temperature would be ideal but expensive. Avoid sunlight especially as sunlight is powerful and can break down the components in your perfume very quickly. Avoid keeping your fragrances in your bathroom as well because most people’s bathrooms will experience frequent temperature fluctuations. More info >>

Got any questions not addressed in this FAQ? Please leave a comment. I plan on doing more of these in the future.

Going Lightly, Moderating Your Fragrance Use

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One of the more troubling trends in recent years has been the banning of fragrances in public places and work places. It seems more and more work places are opting to ban perfume use and in some instances–fragrance use in general–to create a “healthy air” or “clean air” policy.

Needless to say, I’m not one of the people who subscribes to the pseudo-science that is often brought up when people want to make their case for why fragrances are dangerous. That situation is an entirely different debate that will be relegated to another post.

Let’s, for now, talk about how perfume lovers and users of fragrance can go about minimizing the possibility of having their place of work ban fragrances.

1. Realize how strong your fragrance is.

It is easy to try and trust your own nose as an indicator of fragrance strength but your nose is actually a pretty unreliable tool when it comes to determining the strength of a perfume. Try getting a second opinion, or third opinion. Or go online and see if your perfume is considered a powerhouse or not. Then make a conscious effort to go light on it. It’s better to enjoy your scent when you bring your wrist to your nose than surround yourself with a cloud of fragrance that’s impeding someone else’s space.

2. Think about where you’re going to be.

Are you going to be in an enclosed space? A place where a lot of people are packed together? An office? A school? Be considerate of others and remember that not everyone likes the same scents. So going easy on your fragrance will ensure that you can enjoy your fragrance but not assaulting someone else with it at the same time.

3. Layer instead of re-apply.

Re-applying perfume can be a tricky business. Sometimes your perfume is actually gone but sometimes it might still be there but you just can’t smell it anymore. If it’s still there, spraying it again will intensify the scent for you but also for everyone else around you. So layering comes in handy in this regard. Get yourself a nice unscented lotion (or use a companion lotion that perfumes sometimes have) before you apply your fragrance. The lotion will moisturize your skin and help hold the fragrance for a little longer, thus reducing your need to re-apply.

4. When in doubt, go light.

If you don’t know how someone’s going to react to your scent or don’t know where you’re going to end up that day, go light. Never assume that other people are going to love how you smell, no matter how inoffensive or popular your perfume is. Nothing is guaranteed when it comes to people.

5. Be considerate of those who may have allergies.

No perfume lover would purposefully wear a scent that would harm someone else but with many perfumes, it is hard to tell what exactly is in them. People can be allergic to certain components in your scent and their reactions can vary from the mild (coughing, sneezing and stuffy nose) to the severe (difficulty breathing). Now I should note that when I refer to people with allergies, I don’t mean the people who label their allergies as a blanket, “I’m allergic to all perfume. Aaaaah!” But there are people out there who have adverse reactions to certain aroma components such as jasmine essential oil. You simply don’t know who is going to react to what. It is easier to keep a reign on your fragrance if you go light on it where an allergic individual won’t have to deal with as much of it or won’t even smell it at all, rather than if you slather yourself and risk slapping someone with allergies in the face.

6. Spray sparingly.

If you know you’re going some place and need your scent to be light, ease up on the trigger finger and spray sparingly. I’ve witnessed people spritz perfume directly on themselves several times before walking out the door. And we’re talking Eau de Toilette and Eau de Parfums here and not body mists. For a lot of fragrances, several spritzes is way too much. Try to limit your spraying to three or less. With exception to some very strong fragrances, three spritzes is a generally safe bet. Don’t hold yourself to always apply three spritzes. You will sometimes need to use less and in some cases (as with Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle) even one or two sprays is more than enough.

7. Where you apply depends on how strong you smell.

Did you know that where you apply your perfume can have an effect on how strong you smell to others? For instance, most people like to apply perfume to both wrists and to the neck. This creates a sort of aura around your upper body that gives off lots of scent as the wrists and neck are considered pulse points. The pulse points on the body are a little warmer than other areas and thus the scent is released faster and may smell more potent. If you want to perfume yourself in a lighter way, try spraying the ankles or the back of the knees. This way, you’re still wearing perfume but the scent has to travel further to reach the nose of whoever is around you. This can sometimes temper the scent and make it seem lighter.

Probably the most important thing to keep in mind if you plan on using perfumes around other people is to remember that while you might love your perfume, other people may not. Perfume is a mostly personal thing. It is okay to project your scent in some instances but no matter how inoffensive a scent might be, you cannot please everyone all the time.

What’s Floating in my Perfume?

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Have you ever taken a look at your bottle of perfume and noticed some white stuff, dust, or specks floating around in it? Ever wondered what the heck that stuff is?

Me too.

As near as I can tell and presume, the following scenarios may be possible:

1. Your perfume was improperly sealed thus allowing dust or other impurities into the juice, thus producing that residue that now resides with your fragrance.

2. The bottle was not cleaned properly/enough prior to pumping the perfume into it and the residue is a result of those leftover impurities.

3. Your perfume bottle is refillable (ie. the sprayer comes off easily) and the lack of a factory seal has allowed impurities to sneak their way into your juice.

4. The components used to make up your perfumes are reacting poorly with one another and causing the residue.

5. Your fragrance is counterfeit and has been composed of poor ingredients that are reacting badly with one another, the counterfeit uses dirty water, or has been contaminated with some unknown residue.

6. The fragrance was not properly preserved or fixed by the manufacturer and that debris you see in the bottle is yucky bacteria.

As you can see, regardless of what might be happening inside with your juice, you should probably dispose of it or demand a refund. If you purchase a bottle of perfume with residue be it dust, weird white stuff, or sediment, you need to take it back and get the store to exchange it as you can’t be sure what that stuff could be.

Do Fragrances Make You More Attractive?

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Let me put this up front before we go any further and you get angry with me. This article isn’t going to tell you about a magical perfume or fragrance that will attract the opposite gender. No such thing exists.

Pheromone infused fragrances don’t work. Perfumes that costs hundreds of dollars that claim to seduce the man or woman of your dreams do not work. And no matter how much you slather yourself in the stuff, it won’t instantly turn you into a magnet for the opposite gender. Actually, slathering yourself in any perfume is a surefire way of annoying other people and make them want to put lots of distance between you and them. Sorry.

The truth of the matter is, perfume is not a magical love potion. There’s no special formula or secret agent that instantly attracts people. Well–almost none. Luca Turin said it best:

“The question that women casually shopping for perfume ask more than any other is this: “What scent drives men wild?” After years of intense research, we know the definitive answer. It is bacon.“

Well ladies and gents, here you go and good luck.

On a more serious note ,wearing a fragrance for the purpose of attracting people to you is a bad idea. In the first place, there is no guarantee that what you smell like will appeal to other people. Everyone’s taste in what they like to smell is different. Even the most benign of fragrances used in soaps and shampoos are offensive to some people. It bears repeating that you simply don’t have a catch-all answer.

Secondly, there’s no guarantee that the people who like how you smell are necessarily the kind of people you want to attract in the first place.

Finally, what if the stuff stinks to you but you keep hearing your friends rave about how girls/guys love smelling the stuff? Why wear something you hate?

Think of this way, people come in from all walks of life with all sorts of different and clashing opinions with all manner of preferences that trying to find something to appeal to a specific gender is a useless exercise. So instead of asking, “What scent drives women/men wild?” Ask, “What do I want to smell like and what do I like?”

The bottom line is this; wear what you want and forget about what anyone else thinks. If you don’t overdo it, then spray yourself in whatever makes you happy.

Scent Etiquette

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I’ve noticed etiquette is slowly being passed to the wayside in favor of being edgy and straight to the point. When did society get to be like this? Who knows, but let’s not get all bent out of shape when it comes to how we smell. A few tips for scent etiquette follows, for those of us who enjoy perfumes and those of us who do not: Vanilla Flower

1. Don’t smell.

Sometimes you can’t help the way you smell. You just had a jog, your landlord shut off your water a week ago, you’re used to how you smell and don’t realize it. But for the rest of us with running water and sedentary lives, please, don’t smell. Take a shower, observe basic hygiene, and put some deodorant on. If you have an aversion to scents, they make fragrance free deodorants too. As bad as some perfume lovers overdo their scent, I find the smell of unwashed people worse. You can’t smell like a flower all the time, I know. But please, if you are going to be in close vicinity to others in an enclosed space like an office, have the decency to observe basic hygiene.

2. Realize how strong you smell.

This one’s for you fragrance lovers out there. Perfumes are not all created equal. They all have different longevities and projections. Understand that while you love your fragrance, the people working in the cubicles next to yours may not. If you know you’re going to sit in one cramped room full of people all day, wear your heavy-duty fragrances a little lighter than you normally would. There’s no reason for you to stop wearing perfume. But there’s also no reason to be obnoxious and invade other people with your scent.

3. Your nose is not always the best judge of how strong you smell.

Your nose will become desensitized to the same scent over time. This is mostly for people who stick to a signature scent. If you find your old perfume doesn’t smell quite as nice and strong as it used to, you may be desensitized to it and need to take a break or switch it up a little. When your nose isn’t as good at picking up the scent of your favorite perfume anymore, you might find yourself thinking it’s the perfume and not you. Thus you put more on, creating a cloud of perfume strong enough to clear fields. Ask a friend if you’re coming on too strong with your scent. And when you think you might be desensitized, take a couple days off from wearing it or go perfume shopping for a new fragrance.

4. Beware when freshening up.

Like people with a signature scent whose noses get used to their perfume, you can get used to a perfume during the day too. Smell something long enough and eventually you won’t be able to smell it as much anymore. That’s why it’s important to keep this in mind when you freshen up your fragrance so you don’t end up overdoing it.

5. What you like is not universal.

Just because you enjoy smelling like a certain fragrance doesn’t mean everyone does. People like different things and different smells. You are perfectly entitled to what you like but don’t assume everyone else will.

The Grey Market and How it Works

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Most fragrance consumers are content with buying their perfumes at drugstores, Sephora, or department stores. But the more adventurous or avid fragrance junkie will soon discover that their perfume habit is getting a bit expensive. Perhaps a little too expensive. So they turn to the grey market or online perfume retailers.

When it comes to perfumes, what you pay and what you get in return isn’t always a 1:1 ratio. Given what I mentioned in an earlier article revealing an underwhelming research and development budget of 3% per perfume with the rest of said budget getting dumped into packaging, advertising, celebrity endorsements, and taxes.

Adding to that mess is the fact that perfumes are luxury items. We can safely assume that any luxury item will be sold at inflated prices. True, you pay a certain percentage toward the quality of the item but the rest of the cost is just being funneled into the idea of owning something with a famous designer’s name on it. Therefore, we can agree that chasing Chanel, Guerlain, Creed, Yves Saint Laurent and the other big name houses is going to get expensive.

It’s natural for consumers to see online discounters selling normally expensive perfume brands at 25% to 75% off as enticing. However, remember the age old problem with counterfeits and the very human reaction to something perceived to be “too good to be true”. I bet that will put a damper on anyone’s parade.

Thankfully, you can rest easy, perfume discounters are–by and large–legitimate businesses that sell legitimate brand name fragrances. So you can purchase from places like beautyencounter.com knowing that you are getting the real deal–most of the time.

So what’s the catch? Sometimes you will encounter a fake. However, legitimate fragrance discounters should accept returns (with restocking fees that range from 10% to 20%). So if you do encounter a fake, you can return it or get a refund without losing hundreds of dollars.

Now that begs the question; how do these places make any money?

Let’s use a bottle of Creed’s Green Irish Tweed (GIT) for example purposes in this article. You can expect to drop $120USD on a 50ml bottle of GIT at Neiman Marcus. How can beautyencounter.com afford to sell a legitimate bottle for $76USD? Are they taking a loss? Is it old stock? What’s going on here?

Let’s put aside the discussion about counterfeits cycling around in the grey market for a moment and just focus on how all of this works.

But first, if you didn’t know by now, perfume discounters are referred to as the grey market. How they got their name is through the means of how they acquired their stock and what their stock consists of.

How do grey market perfume sellers acquire their stock?

Put quite simply, grey market sellers acquire their stock from other countries where the perfume is being sold for less. Or, as ReferenceforBusiness.com eloquently puts it:

The gray market refers to those goods that are legitimately imported from abroad, carry a recognizable trademark or brand name, and are sold at significant discounts outside of the manufacturer’s normal channels of distribution.

Let’s pretend there’s a business out there called Joe’s Cheap Perfume, an online grey market perfume discounter. Joe frequently stocks Creed’s Green Irish Tweed. Joe usually gets his stock by importing it from–oh, I don’t know–Mustacheana, the country of unkempt mustaches. Creed Mustacheana, themselves, sell Green Irish Tweed at a reasonable price given the country’s economic climate and other forms of international economic mumbo-jumbo that my economist fiance would be able to explain but I can’t. Anyway, in very simple terms, Green Irish Tweed usually retails for $250USD in America. Whereas in Mustacheana (whose currency is called the beardie) the exact same bottle only sells for the equivalent of $50USD. Grey market sellers simply import this stock of Green Irish Tweed at a steal of a deal by buying it from foreign distributors who also make a small profit from selling it to the grey market. After Joe gets his stock he then marks it up to whatever price he feels would still net him a decent profit in America. Usually this price undercuts those that Creed intended for the American market.

So is it illegal?

No. Grey market products, how the grey market operates, and you buying from the grey market is not illegal. It is frowned upon by the original distributors and licensed importers because it goes beyond their intended channels of distribution. You can’t really blame them. Distributors make money off these products, importers make money when people buy these products from them. When a distributor sends a product to Mustacheana intending to sell it for $5oUSD, they obviously don’t want Joe to come in, buy that up and resell it in his own store for a profit. A profit he didn’t really help to distribute, create, or pay for a license to sell. Currently in the US and Canada, it is not illegal to import and sell gray market goods. in the EU it is a little more complicated, thanks ReferenceforBusiness.com:

While gray marketing is not illegal in the United States and Canada, the European Union (EU) has banned gray market goods, or parallel imports, into the EU from non-EU countries.

This is not an illegal practice because it isn’t illegal to import legal goods from one country to another. Don’t mix up grey market with black market. The grey market is grey because it goes outside of an original manufacturer’s intended avenues of sale but the products are totally legal and not restricted in terms of importing and reselling. The black market is illegal because it trades and sells illegal or restricted products.

Is it okay to buy from the grey market?

I know that fragrance houses and distributors try very hard to restrain the grey market citing things like how the grey market cuts into their profits, introduces and encourages counterfeits, puts consumers at risk when it sells merchandise that may be fake, and lowers the esteem of brand names by selling them for discount prices. Again, I’ll let ReferenceforBusiness.com field this one:

Manufacturers argue that gray marketing undermines and discourages investment in legitimate distribution channels, especially in developing nations. They also believe that gray market goods have a negative impact on the value of established brand names—brands the manufacturers have invested a lot of money in to develop.

I can only say that as a consumer, I am willing to pay for the full treatment when I go to a department store where I expect to get good service and I am also willing to take my lumps when I go to a grey market seller where service is at a minimum but the product is often cheaper.

So let me get this straight, grey market fragrances aren’t counterfeits?

Grey market fragrances are not counterfeits. Just want to make that clear. They are the legitimate fragrances only imported from another country. However, due to the means of importing, the prestige of the brands, and the lowered attention to quality control you will encounter counterfeit fragrances in the grey market more often. If you purchase through a legitimate grey market seller, the chances of you getting a fake bottle is not high but it exists at a higher percentage than if you were to buy from a licensed importer and seller like Holt Renfrew or other department stores and boutiques.

I bought a bottle of perfume on the grey market/discounter and noticed its serial/lot numbers were filed off? What gives?

Most bottles of perfume with filed off serial numbers are grey market bottles. Relax, you are not holding a counterfeit–probably not anyway. If the bottle, fragrance and box are fine despite the filed off serial number, you are probably not holding a fake. The grey market seller likely filed off the serial number to prevent tracking.

I bought a bottle of perfume and noticed there’s Arabic words on it? What gives?

Those Arabic words are probably going to translate to something along the lines of, “This product may only be sold by a licensed distributor”, “for external use only”, or something equally as mundane. Not a counterfeit. It’s likely that bottle was just meant to be sold in a middle-eastern country and it’s a good indication that the bottle you’re holding is grey market.

Where do you typically encounter grey market fragrances?

In a lot more places than you might think. There’s been reports of grey market fragrances showing up in department stores, drug stores, and definitely online. If you had the lofty idea of avoiding all grey market stuff, you may find the task a bit difficult.

Summarize this whole post in one easy to understand paragraph.

Grey market fragrances are legitimate fragrances imported from different countries. These are not the same as fakes, knock-offs, or counterfeits. It is not illegal to trade, buy, or own grey market fragrances.  However, if you do want to buy grey market, you should be prepared to deal with the inevitable counterfeit that you may encounter. Otherwise, go nuts.

Thanks to:
ReferenceforBusiness.com
Basenotes.net

Pronouncing Fragrance House Names

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If you’re like me and you lack any sort of French language skills, you’ll probably find yourself at one point struggling to figure out how to pronounce some of the fragrance house names. If you’re also like me, you’ll go through the majority of your young life saying it wrong and liberally confusing everyone you try to communicate with as you tell them the fragrance you’re wearing is by “Theory Muggler”.

Here’s a guide on how to pronounce some of the fragrance house names. Please understand that I am not a French speaker and how I pronounce these names is as close an interpretation as I can get to the actual pronunciations. If you have a better suggestion or have a correction, please let me know.

Annick Goutal: “An-neek Goo-Tahl”, (Aneek Gootahl).

Chanel: “Shan-elle”, (Shannel).

Givenchy: “Jee-Vohn-Shee”, (Jeevohnshee).

Guerlain: “Gyehr-Lan”, (Gyerlan).

Hermès: “Air-Mez”, (Air Mez).

Houbigant: “Oo-Bee-Gahn” (Oobeegan).

Jean Paul Gaultier: “Zohn Pall Go-Tee-Ahy”, (Zohn Pall Goteeay). “Zohn” (like zone with emphasis on the “oh”), Pall, Goteeay (like goate then “eh”).

Thierry Mugler: “Tea-arry Mew-Glehyr”, (Teearry Mewglehyr).

Yves Saint Laurent: “Eve San Lor-rohn”, (Eve San Lorron).

Got any corrections? Suggestions? Leave a comment.

For more (and in audio) pronunciations check out Frag Name of the Day.

Perfume Expiring? How to Preserve Perfumes

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The bewildered look on someone’s face when you tell them perfume goes bad is one of those strange moments in a person’s life where they realize a few things:
1) Most people don’t realize fragrances expire.
2) Most people don’t know how to prolong or preserve their fragrances.
3) Most people just don’t really care that much, nor do they own so much that they should.

Here’s some food for thought, perfumes and fragrances in general have three enemies. They are, light, heat, and air. Let’s do a rundown of how these three components can work against your perfumes.

Light: Probably one of the biggest culprits that cause perfumes to go bad is light. Particularly sunlight. Most people with a bottle of perfume make the ultimate, but very common, mistake. They display the bottle on their vanity, or tabletop, and allow them to be exposed to the sun. This causes some of the more volatile components in perfumes to break down, or alter. Eventually, the fragrance will change on you and oftentimes, this is not for the better.

Now, can you really blame anybody for doing this? Some perfume bottles are downright beautiful and to not display them seems like a shame. But did you know that direct contact to sunlight can start deteriorating a perfume within a manner of hours? So while you’ve got a beautiful bottle on your vanity, that stuff inside of it isn’t doing so well.

Heat: Though heat is a big one, you shouldn’t allow your perfumes to get so cold it freezes either. Despite the logic that if heat is bad for fragrances then cold should be better. The truth is, your perfumes do best in cool temperatures and neither being too hot or too cold is good for it. One of the worst places people keep their fragrances (aside from the vanity) is in the bathroom.

The bathroom has a fluctuating temperature and humidity level. And if you’re like the average person you bathe or shower once a day. This means those perfumes in your bathroom are being exposed to rapid change in environmental temperature on a regular basis. Every time you take a shower or draw a bath, you are probably making the environment in that little room hotter and more humid. Heat can also deteriorate your fragrances like sunlight.

Air: Most people who own bottles of perfumes probably own the spray bottle type with a sprayer nozzle to distribute the scent. These types of bottles do a good job at reducing air exposure which can lead to perfume deterioration. However, if you own parfum extraits, oil pased perfumes, or splash bottles, you’re in a doozy of a time.

It is impossible to prevent air from contacting your perfume if you own a perfume bottle that requires you to open it. In addition, splash bottles tend to be more susceptible to in-bottle evaporation. Some of these types of perfumes hold up better than others. Older perfumes such as classic Carons may last for decades before losing their scent whereas a newer splash form perfume like Chanel Chance probably won’t have those kinds of–heh–chances. Bouquet Roses

Now that you know about the three major players leading to perfume deterioration, how do you know when your fragrances are going to expire? You don’t. And here’s the other kicker, you may never be able to find out because perfumes age according to how they were stored and what their chemical or natural compositions are.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s take Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume oils as an example. These are 5ml bottles of fragrance oils that are composed from a wide variety of different scents and compositions. All scents from BPAL will eventually age and change as they age. Some age for the better (Snake Oil), others go bad (Violet Ray). The beauty of the fragrance depends entirely on the individual but most people would probably agree that a dense vanilla-like fragrance from aged Snake Oil is more desirable than a bottle of flat, scentless Violet Ray.

It is important to keep in mind and note the top notes and compositions of fragrances because you can sometimes tell which notes will go first. Citrus notes are especially vulnerable to aging. Most of these are used as top notes and top notes are extremely delicate. Generally, the stuff you get at the bottom in the base note category should be more robust but with modern perfumery, it is still hard to tell what will and will not last. Or how long your fragrance is going to stay the same one you bought and love.

So without knowing a specific use by date, your best bet to perfume use is to ensure that you store your fragrances appropriately.

1) Get them out of the light. I know how awesome some of those bottles look but leaving them out in the open is deteriorating the juice inside. One of the most convenient containers for a bottle of perfume is the original box it came in. The box can provide the fragrance an extra layer of protection against the sun. For best results, keep your perfumes in a dark place. Put them in your closet, in a drawer, a dresser, under the bed. Whatever’s available and dark. I store my fragrances in their original boxes in a closet.

2) If you must display, use up the juice inside first. I k now some people like to collect perfume bottles because they look nice and want to display them. If you want to display your bottles of perfume, decant your scents into another bottle  first. This way you have a bottle to display and don’t have to worry about the stuff inside going bad. If you couldn’t care less about the stuff inside the bottle and just want a full looking bottle of perfume to display then have a blast, I suppose.

3) Reduce exposure to heat. I know it’s hard to keep perfumes in a steady, even and cool environment. Especially if you’re like me and your home doesn’t have air conditioning. For the average fragrance lover who uses their collection on a regular basis, storage at room temperature will do fine.  Some hard core fragrance collectors who own rare perfumes or have hundreds of bottles they don’t use regularly have refrigerators that are specifically set to preserve their fragrances. The ideal temperature for fragrances seems to be around12-14 degrees C with citrus heavy fragrances preferring lower temperatures around 4 degrees C. [Source]

4) Avoid freezing and the cold. Just like heat, cold can also damage your perfumes. If you were thinking about putting them in your regular refrigerator or even in the freezer, you can start drawing up plan B. The temperature for a regular refrigerator is too cold for most fragrances. The freezer option shouldn’t even be considered.

5) Get them out of the bathroom and off your vanity. I know the vanity is a great place for display. I know the bathroom is really convenient, but they aren’t doing your perfumes any good.

6) If you don’t plan on using the fragrance regularly or feel that you may take a while to completely use everything in the bottle, opt for a spray bottle (where possible) instead to avoid the air issue. If you do happen to own splash bottles and are concerned about preservation, start using up those fragrances or get yourself a fragrance fridge. You may never win the war against air with your splash bottles but you can at least minimize the impact by avoiding light and heat.

So how long can you keep perfumes if you store them properly? Years and years. Decades. Maybe even centuries. Some fragrances are incredibly robust as there are bottles of Chanel No.5 from the 30s and 40s that still smell the same as they did all those years ago. Likewise there are bottles of classic Carons and Guerlains that smell just as wonderful now as they did when they were first made. Heck, there was that perfume residue discovered in a bottle people think belonged to Hatshepsut that could still be analyzed and probably recomposed.

Don’t underestimate perfume’s ability to stick around, but don’t overestimate it either. Take the necessary precautions to ensure your fragrances last and you can enjoy them for many years.

In short, the best place to keep your perfumes is in a cool, dark place.

Thanks to:
ImageBase