In 1983, approximately sixty million dollars were expended for more than eight million pounds of perfume for toilet soap in the United States. Was this money spent wisely? Did the manufacturers who produce toliet soap, such as Procter & Gamble, Lever Brothers, Armour-Dial, Colgate-Palmolive and Andrew Jergens get full value from the perfumes used in their soap products? Probably not.
Our research has shown that many perfume raw materials used in soap perfumery today are of little technical value related either to odor performance or odor stability or both. In fact, 27% of the commonly used perfume raw materials evaluated in this research was found to either exhibit poor odor performance in toilet soap or was found to have poor odor stability. Leaving aside aesthetics for the moment, the technical value of these materials in soap perfumery is definitely questionable.
In addition, another 44% of these materials exhibited only fair performance or stability, again raising some question as to their real technical value in soap perfumery. A quick arithmetic calculation will tell you that only 29% of the materials tested in this research has unquestionably good or better odor performance and odor stability.
