Making Money Selling Your
Own Perfume To Gift Shops

By Jane Raymond, Marketing Concepts
© 2003 Jane Raymond

Gift shops and fragrances to together like hand and glove. But take warning. Most gift shops seek a line of candles, aromatherapy, soap and other scented products. However, these lines rarely include a perfume — which can be seen both as a plus and a minus for you — the aspiring marketer of your own brand of perfume.

The plus side, of course, is that your product won't compete with the array of scented products the shop owner has already taken on.

The minus side is that the shop owner may have deliberately left perfume out of her or his inventory.

But let's start at the beginning. Let's talk about gift shops themselves.

Gift Shops: What They Are
And What Makes Them Special

Gift shops sell to women. There. I've said it. It's just that simple. Women who buy from gift shops are seekers. They are on vacation (either literally or mentally) and on an endless quest for that special something and, in the thrill of finding it, price is of secondary consideration.

Women who watch every penny at the supermarket or even at their favorite clothing stores throw caution to the wind when entering a gift shop and can emerge with artifacts that toally baffle their husbands or boyfriends who are left mumbling under their breaths words such as "you traveled 1200 miles to buy that?" But the women simply don't care. They have experienced the thrill of finding the unexpected, and it is charming, delightful and just perfect for a special spot or use in the house.

From the store keeper's point of view, succeeding with a gift shop is a tough business that requires constant cheerfulness and charm. Markups of 40 to 60 percent can seem tiny when there is a lot of overhead to cover ... and a lot of merchandise (paid for already!) that sits on the shelves for a full season or more.

Like any other small retail business, shop owners are always on the lookout for "hot" items that can help make up for the many, many duds.

Your goal is to show the shop owner that your perfume can, indeed, be a hot item.

If you do your homework, you will be able to get the attention of shop owners, and you will be able to get your perfume onto their shelves.

The First Key To Your
Success: Your Product Concept

If almost goes without saying that the fragrance you develop must be very nice. You cannot expect people to buy a perfume that does not have a nice scent to it.

But a well-selected scent alone is not enough. To be able to sell your fragrance successfully to gift shops you need to back up your fragrance with a concept — an image, an idea, a mental picture that you associate with your product.

Developing the right concept for your perfume is of vital importance. The concept must ring a bell with the buyer. It must be appropriate for the gift shop environment. It must be themed for "nice" ... "household" ... "vacation memories" or such rather than, for example, bodice ripping romance.

It is very 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 together with the scent. If the concept relates to sand and sea, you don't want a fragrance that suggests mountains and forests. The more closely you can match your concept to your product, the easier it will be to sell your product.

In developing a concept for your fragrance, be very sensitive to graphics. Just as your scent itself must be appropriate for the gift shop environment, so too must be your packaging — which is to say your graphics must charm and delight, enchant and attract, reach out to the shopper with the message "Take me! Make me yours!"

You must, absolutely must, do your homework here. You must visit one gift shop after another and observe the packaging on soap and candels, aromatherapy oils and potpuri, bath fragrances and body lotions. You must absorb the ambiance. It must become so natural to you that you begin to know, instinctively, what is "right" for your fragrance and what would stand out like an ugly sore thumb.

At this point, a talented artist who can help you with your packaging design is an essential. Even if you are an artist yourself, having the input from another artist can be very, very helpful. And if you are not an artist, you must find a compatible spirit who can translate your concept into an attractive graphic design.

Look among the local crafts community for an artist who has both a talent for the type of art you need and an appreciation of the fact that you, in your own way, are a crafts person too and you are working with a very limited budget.

Don't go overboard on frills. Try to find a simple theme and express it in a simple, yet creative way. For example, james and jellies produced by local people are often displayed with no more than a simple, hand written label and an additional tag on an elastic cord around the bottle's neck that tells something about the person that made the product.

If your perfume was presented in an attractive, antiqued bottle, perhaps all you would need would be a simple label, handwritten by your artist or a caligrapher, along with a promotional tag around the bottle's neck, romancing the product and explaining your theme a bit.

Whatever you do, don't fail to put your best efforts into developing a concept for your fragrance. Think of the women who shp at the gift shops that will be your market. Think about they are looking for. Think like them — put yourself in their shoes. Absorb their shopping experience and then conceptualize your fragrance so that it will be a natural fit for their shoping experience — something that will be delightful to buy.

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