Selling 1,000 bottles of perfume when nobody loves you

    (This message is a continuation of my blog and email from 8/8/19 which is now posted as a blog article here.)

    I have said that by selling 1,000 bottles of perfume you can make $10,000 in profit -- if you produce ONLY 1,000 bottles of your perfume so that your profits aren't dragged down by the money you spent on the bottles you didn't sell. But to sell those 1,000 bottles you need a market where people love you and are happy to buy your perfume. The question is how can you start your own perfume business and become a perfume entrepreneur if you don't have your own market of people who love you?

    The solution that has worked well for major fragrance houses is joint venture. They provide the perfume (which they don't make themselves), the joint venture partner provides the buyers. These arrangements are called "licensing agreements" because the legal implications of a true joint venture would take them somewhere they would not want to go. It will be the same for you but instead of a forty page licensing agreement you'll generally do quite well with a simple "letter of agreement." A good writer can reduce the essential nuts and bolts to a single page.

    To launch your perfume venture with this strategy you must be able to identify a joint venture partner who has a following that could, without too much difficulty, be led to buy your perfume (although it's likely they won't know it's your perfume they are buying.)

    The other piece of the puzzle is to sell this "entity with a following" on the concept of doing this deal with you -- you supplying the perfume, they providing the buyers. The ease with which you'll be able to sell your project will depend a lot on how confident your proposed "partner" is with their ability to sell your perfume to their customers or followers.

    You won't be breaking any new ground with this plan. Look behind the scenes at your local perfume counter and you are likely find that none of the companies selling their perfume created and produced that perfume. The companies that created those perfumes and control their formulas (but are restricted from marketing them) are not named on the packaging. Where you can break ground will be in applying this strategy to small, carefully targeted markets.

    You have to ask yourself, "is this an idea that could work for me?" But before you walk away from it -- or jump on it -- let me get in a few more words. Marketing requires imagination. The great marketers are those who can take the germ of an idea they picked up (not thought up!) and mold that idea into something that works gangbusters for them. Great promotions never come ready made.

    Likewise, in producing your perfume you need imagination to guide you to reliable vendors of the components and service you need who will give you rock bottom prices. You have to work at it. Nobody is going to hand you their best prices on a silver platter.

    It helps to study what others have done but to make it happen for you, you have to take what is given you and give it a spin that will make it uniquely suitable for your market. Remember, you are the one who has the most interest in getting the perfume produced and sold!

    Now here are my plugs for my books that can help you --

    Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup!

    How To Make Your First Perfume For Under $500 (free download, no email required)

These small opportunities can be your big opportunity

    It is entirely reasonable to expect a $10,000 profit from selling 1,000 bottles of perfume. That's ten dollars per bottle profit after production, marketing, and administrative expenses. To do it you produce only 1,000 bottles of perfume, not one bottle more.

    A market where you know you can't sell more than 1,000 bottles of your perfume may seem like a small opportunity. But if, in that market, you have good reason to believe that you can sell 1,000 bottles, $10,000 isn't such a bad profit. You could use it to develop another perfume for another small market or perhaps develop a perfume for a slightly larger market.

    To go about this successfully you have to nail down two requirements. First you have to know your market, the people in it and their tastes, and they have to know you. Then you have to know how to produce an acceptable perfume for them at a cost per bottle that will give you the markup you need, a healthy markup indeed. (See "Creating Your Own Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup!")

    If you're not comfortable plunging into a perfume promotion, even a small one, you might find comfort in reading "How To Make Your First Perfume For Under $500". That book is free and it tells you a great deal about putting a fragrance together at a lower cost per bottle than many people believe is possible.

    Now about that small market where you can sell your 1,000 bottles of fragrance successfully. I mentioned that in addition to having to know the people in that market, they have to know you. How this works is simple for someone who already has a business such as a large retail store and meets his or her customers face to face. Likewise someone who is, say, a performer is likely to have a following and today it would be unlikely that this following could not be reached through social media. There are also a number of people who, for whatever reason, have a strong social media following. These are examples where "people who you know and who know you" are to be found.

    What about the person who is ambitious to sell their own perfume but does not have an obvious market for 1,000 bottles of perfume? I have a few thoughts on this that I am putting together in a separate blog post that I will share with you in a few days.