Why is perfume so dern expensive?

Designer perfumes are so desirable partly because of how expensive and heavily marketed they are. Of course, they also put a lot more effort into the formulation and packaging than say something you'd find at Walgreens.

I hate to admit, but if I smell a $60 Dior perfume, I'd automatically like the smell better than a $10 Revlon drugstore fragrance. I guess knowing that it's expensive and made by a quality company makes me feel like it's a better product. sad but true.

Oh Oh.....

You guys have pushed my product buttons so now you will have to watch me rant and rave. LOL.

One thing that has been sooooooo enlightening to me with running the HB.com Marketplace is figuring out what everything costs. In fact, it never occurred to me (before I had the Marketplace) what it costs to actually take an order and ship it out. I thought, oh yeah, I just print the order, pick the product from the shelf, put it into a box and then the UPS guy picks up it. :-)

But then I started looking at the fact that I print orders on a PC computer with a full color laser printer that uses paper. I also have to have metal shelves and racks to store the products on and a few rolling carts to pick from. Then I need boxes that I have to pay for, to put the products in. There is also special packing tape, packing peanuts, printing labels and the UPS and other shipping computers that require paper and a human to run them. There is a phone to take orders on a toll free line that I pay the toll. PANT PANT. Then there is the warehouse rent and the special locks on the dock doors and on and on and on...........

Once I figured out what it costs me to just send out a package I realized why some companies charge a lot higher prices then me and they charge restocking fees on returns.

Also, I have some jewelry (not a lot but some) manufacturered overseas. Was that an experience or what? I learned that moi had to pay for all the customs and other tax duties to import, fill out tons of paperwork, pay for cards for the hair accessories to be put on and then there are the little plastic bags for the cards. Or the shrink wrapped packages which requires a shrink wrapper. There are also the little stickers that are required by law to show where products are imported from.

I can tell you now probably how much it costs every manufacturer to make a product from beginning to end. Or at least get pretty close. It is actually a little depressing and scary.

So now that I have ranted and raved...Jennifer has hit the nail on the head about advertising. There are a lot of invisible costs for selling and promoting a product from paying for full page insert ads in the big fashion mags to paying for a cool website and sending out all those little samples.

One other thing that most don't think about is the collateral damage. This means the damage from shoplifters and fraud where people buy a product, use it and then send it back even though there was nothing wrong with the products. That drives the costs up that results in all of us paying for the actual products we want. So when people steal or use fraud with companies, ultimately all consumers pay the price.

So yes, perfume probably is not all that expensive by itself (water, oils, glass bottle) but all the other stuff drives the costs through the roof from the cost of marketing and advertising to the prices that stores charge to cover their own costs and the collateral damage issues.

Thanks for letting me rant and rave for a little bit. I needed that.

Best wishes,
Karen

Who do they think they are anyway???

C'mon. $80 for a 1 oz bottle that is mostly water and alcohol?

I know what you're really paying for is the effort they put into the formulation... but that's why it should cost $10 or $20. Not $80! Or twice that! Or more!

Gimme a break!