Bottles 'n stoppers 'n crimpers, oh my!
There isn't a day that passes in this aromatic journey of mine that I don't think of packaging.I know.
It's sad.
Finding unique and beautiful perfume bottles for resale is a difficult task. Throw into that squirming basket of doubt the fact that this is an artform ~ a la Artisan Perfumer ~ and you've added to the difficulty.
Oh, I've seen my share of gorgeous bottles. Take Jalaine Fine Fragrances ~ their bottle is spectacular. Can't say anything about the contents as I've never tried it. Probably never will at a hefty price tag of $150 per 6 mls.
Velvet and Sweet Pea's Purrfumery has gorgeous bottles, too.
Ebay has pages and pages of those lovely fragile glass Egyptian handblown jobbers for sale. Why am I not seeing any natural botanical perfumers using those? Dime a dozen, is what they'll tell you. Beautiful, but not special. Besides, how do you keep those stoppers in during shipping? You package the perfume in a separate bottle for shipping, that's how. Make the 'fume truly special by including a tiny brass funnel with the order.
Some people say, "Order from Brosse!" Ok, give me the freakin' web address or link or phone number or something!
Don't even get me started on the crimper thing. They crush your bottles; oh, pooey, they don't crush your bottles ~ well, somebody is getting their perfumes out there intact in crimped bottles. But is that the way to go with Artisan Perfume?
Personally, I love ground glass stoppers, corks, colored screw tops ~ they have personality, they convey the message "I am art." Besides, I love things a little messy. Take this bottle, for instance. Now that's an Artisan Perfume bottle! And believe me, they won't be mass produced in some sweat shop in China for $1.50 a piece!
One of the very best places to find extraordinary bottles for natural botanical perfumes, surprisingly, is lab supply stores. Some of those places buy overstock items from perfume houses and resell the bottles for a fraction of what you'd pay anywhere else. Lab auctions are another source. So, you get a limited number of THAT lot of bottles, and you can't reorder ~ so what? This is original art, remember, not prints.
Yeah, yeah, yeah ~ I hear you ~ marketing consistency is important. I got it. But I'm not marketing a friggin' bottle! I'm marketing an emotion.
But I still obsess about bottles. Gah!
If you ever get to know where the beeep to find those Brosse bottles, nudge me please. I have searched high and low (I am not good t it I admit) and came up with noooooothing.
ReplyDeleteBut right now I probably ought to worry more about new perfumes, than what bottle to put them in?
Snivvelin gof to bed, need my strenght tomorrow;-)
I really really abhor bottles, at this point. They're a means to an end and I had to weigh the pros and cons of them, and decided that I'd rather be able to afford to produce the contents than the bottles themselves. Brosse is expensive. Those adorable 5 ml bottles I do the unguents in, those are a dollar apiece. I think I googled them initially and got the name for a rep in No. CA, a few years ago, but it wasn't until others ordered that I was able to do so. The minimums are a bit high.
ReplyDeleteI may or may not get ground glass stopper bottles and offer those separate. "You can purchase your fantabulous perfume in this utilitarian bottle, and get a pretty bottle to put it in!" But in the end I'm not about selling visual aesthetic so much as olfactory, so that's a leap I'm not ready to make. Grumble mutter grouse kvetch.