In today's world, rarely does a perfumer have the freedom to create a fragrance at any price he chooses, The most successful fragrance products capturing large sales usually are backed by expertly organized and planned marketing campaigns, structured to yield a desired financial return to the marketing company.
In most major world markets there are a large number of companies prepared to compete for the privilege of supplying a fragrance. The net result is that many marketing companies set low level targets for the cost price of a fragrance that severely challenge the perfumers’ creativity.
Therefore, there is a tendency to “push’ the perfumer into using the lower priced commonly available materials. The better creative perfumers give the lower priced fragrances a quality and uniqueness by adding more “exotic” intensely odored specialty products which, although of higher price, offer excellent strength to cost ratio. These materials, whether aroma chemical, or natural product, frequently comprise 80% or more of the total number of ingredients in a fragrance. In the case of fine fragrances, they often contribute the major part of the total cost. Such ingredients are beyond the scope of this paper, but will be the subject of a future article.
