by willtw
18 replies
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Does anyone have experience in selling perfume on websites like ebay or Amazon? I've been thinking of doing this as I have knowledge in the area, mainly from building my own collection. I have good knowledge on what to expect from brand to brand in terms of price and also what is popular on the market.

could someone give advice to a newbie who's thinking of selling perfume?

thanks
#perfume #selling
  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    This is an industry we are experts at, the main problem are the fakes so it depends on the sourcing and supply chain - most of the time even the OEMs can't visibly tell the difference. eBay is worse - Amazon is mostly fine but they have good buying power. You will want to combine it with your own site but then you get in to multichannel issues. You also have the usual dropship vs inventory questions as would expect you are sourcing from the secondary market.

    You will always have cash flow headaches with the marketplaces such as Amazon's hold policy and eBay being fickle with PayPal - it also depends largely on whether you are going national or international.
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    • Profile picture of the author AnthonyCapetola
      Originally Posted by serpyre View Post

      This is an industry we are experts at, the main problem are the fakes so it depends on the sourcing and supply chain - most of the time even the OEMs can't visibly tell the difference. eBay is worse - Amazon is mostly fine but they have good buying power. You will want to combine it with your own site but then you get in to multichannel issues. You also have the usual dropship vs inventory questions as would expect you are sourcing from the secondary market.

      You will always have cash flow headaches with the marketplaces such as Amazon's hold policy and eBay being fickle with PayPal - it also depends largely on whether you are going national or international.
      If you are going to create your own eCommerce site and sell products directly you would want to avoid Amazon because they take an automatic 15% from your sales.

      You would have more granular control, especially on cost, in AdWords and Google Shopping as long as its available in your selling country.
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      • Profile picture of the author serpyre
        Originally Posted by AnthonyCapetola View Post

        If you are going to create your own eCommerce site and sell products directly you would want to avoid Amazon because they take an automatic 15% from your sales.

        You would have more granular control, especially on cost, in AdWords and Google Shopping as long as its available in your selling country.
        That's make absolutely no logical sense - they can have Amazon, eBay, their own website and any other marketplace - there are no restrictions so it depends which funnel(s) are the most attractive. Anway, we will be talking at cross purposes very soon as the platform we use (derived from Magento) was modeled on Net-A-Porter & Sephora - so most of what we say goes over everyones heads - or they just get angry!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author AnthonyCapetola
    How does that make logical sense?

    Amazon see's 165 million users a quarter. Google see's 4.5 billion a quarter in probable consumer searches. Sheer volume. Your spend on Google could not only be far less but you are not bound by Amazon's required 15% forfeiture.

    When you are talking about cross-channel your also talking about raising costs and against sheer volume. You cannot argue numbers. Factor in time and cost of managing and operating cross channels. Once again you are back to measuring against volume.

    Logical sense? 8000% increases Month over Month in actual revenue (Google Shopping) that is logical sense.

    160% increase in profit against spend(Google Shopping) in 48 hours is logical sense.

    30% increase in sales and profit in less than 3 months (Google Shopping) is logical sense.

    If you are going to argue logical sense, I will give data to support it.
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    • Profile picture of the author garysvpa
      Originally Posted by AnthonyCapetola View Post

      How does that make logical sense?

      Amazon see's 165 million users a quarter. Google see's 4.5 billion a quarter in probable consumer searches. Sheer volume. Your spend on Google could not only be far less but you are not bound by Amazon's required 15% forfeiture.

      When you are talking about cross-channel your also talking about raising costs and against sheer volume. You cannot argue numbers. Factor in time and cost of managing and operating cross channels. Once again you are back to measuring against volume.

      Logical sense? 8000% increases Month over Month in actual revenue (Google Shopping) that is logical sense.

      160% increase in profit against spend(Google Shopping) in 48 hours is logical sense.

      30% increase in sales and profit in less than 3 months (Google Shopping) is logical sense.

      If you are going to argue logical sense, I will give data to support it.
      Very informative!

      Thanks for letting us know.
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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    Obviously someones been burnt by Amazon - it happens. If the figures match up for your business all channels are open - for some it will work - for some it won't. By the way, if you want to try and pull a Queen or King that's fine, the problem you have is that we always have the Ace - we work with SAP consultants who have seen it all then some. Helping with a $2mil project - for them it's just a play thing - pretty funny!

    You should watch that new Riddick film where he puts the message on the wall for them - it's pretty funny to see the people here do the same - but then people thought the earth was square a few hundred years ago!

    Anyway, back to the topic, with fragrances you want to go international, and generally diversify to makeup & skincare, increases product count. The main problem is dealing with the variations, it increases your product counts so you need good hosting. The other thing is suppliers, most will be secondary market and you need to be careful who you source from due to the fakes.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sugaba
    I looked at selling designer perfume at one point but I realise I wouldn't be able to complete with the larger suppliers
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    • Profile picture of the author serpyre
      Originally Posted by Sugaba View Post

      I looked at selling designer perfume at one point but I realise I wouldn't be able to complete with the larger suppliers
      What were the reasons you thought you wouldn't be able to compete?
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    • Profile picture of the author Sugaba
      The cost I was getting them for at wholesale cost was the same or even higher than the selling price on ebay
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      • Profile picture of the author serpyre
        Originally Posted by Sugaba View Post

        The cost I was getting them for at wholesale cost was the same or even higher than the selling price on ebay
        You are comparing with the wrong site. eBay is known for a high level of fakes as it has limited due dilligence processes, Amazon is mid-range for due dilligence. So you are not comparing like for like - you need to compare with direct end retailers and to some extent Amazon - we ignore eBay for the most part.

        There was one well known HK based fragrance site who also had a presence on eBay - we saw various reports that the customers would receive fake products - not sure of the situation now but they ran a test and even someone working at the original designer couldn't tell the difference.

        Now, people are catching on to all this and they are moving to trust based sites, so if you can guarantee the supply chain and look corporate even a higher price will now work. Never compare with eBay - you have no idea what you are comparing against!

        It's true, margins are lower as Amazon work on a 30% gross profit and 5% net profit basis - in the short term you are not going to make much day to day - the value will be in selling or floating the company. The key to this is international sales especially with beauty - hard to do properly but if you do - there are a lot of rewards.

        We have access to the technology which is designed for this environment - but you need some vision and determination as you will within a few months be running up against Sephora and Fragrance.net - that was what it was designed to do!

        Actually you can take a look Equis Beauty | Shop women's fragrance, skincare, makeup & men's grooming internationally, one of the sites we are helping with as an international department store - not launched yet - but it is designed with technology derived from SAP which increases automation by 1,000% - the backoffice gets 800-950% automation like the corporates so can run 100s thousands of products with 7-10x less staff.

        An example - all prices are stored in supplier buy price & supplier currency - in realtime it calculates the COGS, margins, discounts, and import duties for the visitors country - what you see if what you pay with local currnecy checkout - same as Net-A-Porter. That is what you need to go international, the small business tools do not allow it.

        We are looking to use the technology for digital music as the venture capitalists were willing to fund up to 90% of the cost - our problem is that you can't get the distribution rights - for beauty it is much easier! Just be warned - Quarter4 (holiday season) provides a disproportinate amount of revenue, so unless a site is launched in the coming weeks you will have a very slow build up until Q4 2015!
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  • Profile picture of the author sweetcrabhoney18
    I'd worry about counterfeit perfume. Just be sure your supplier is really good and you should be fine.
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    keep moving forward

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  • Profile picture of the author stockutopia
    stay away from the trendy real popular names.
    buy the older more rare fragrances.
    the customers are willing to pay more, the people making the fakes usually skip over them, because they want to counterfeit the biebers , gio's and Jlo's , etc.... because those names sell more bottles.
    look for original formulas for example FENDI original formula that once sold for $20 retail sells for >$150 - $200 per bottle. just an example, but there are many out there that sell at a premium, simply search ebay for these names. I sold perfume on ebay for years all real all rare. I used to go to old pharmacies that haven't been run out of business by CVS yet and would go to the perfume counter with my smartphone, look at the bottles they have then search ebay sold listings and see if it is worth it to buy..... I would end up buying 75% of their perfume counter, because these old pharmacies could not sell the perfume for years and years due to lack of traffic.... which makes the bottle old and rare. and authentic. I traveled for a few years and many hundreds of miles doing this until I bought just about every bottle I could. I sold all bottles on ebay for 500% and more mark up. Yes, I paid their retail price as well. some places had perfumes from the 1960's with a $7 price tag on it. I later sold those bottle for $85 each on ebay. so Paying retail was not a problem in my eyes. It didn't last forever , but it was a lot of fun and i profited 6 figures doing it
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  • Profile picture of the author NewParadigm
    there are plenty of fragrance houses that would work with you to develop your own fragrance line. You could build a nice following over time providing high qual fragrance at a decent price, cutting out the brand name marketing hype. not knockoffs but originals.
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    In a moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

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  • Profile picture of the author Monkmoney
    Ebay- no..not unless you have buying power to get dirt cheap wholesale pricing

    Amazon - no, same reason

    Your own website - yes, even if its higher then amazon or ebay, if your market well no biggie..as long as its not higher then retail

    My advice, since you do not have a good supplier because you said you cant compete with ebay pricing..is do affiliate website

    Or find a better product with not so much competition

    Perfume is definitely not a newbie friendly product, the competition is fierce..it takes expertise and finesse to.toe around the big guys
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  • Profile picture of the author JosephI
    Who will be your competition?

    FYI: I was having a conversation with a fashion designer couple weeks ago, about fashion shows, cost etc.
    He told me that houses like Chanel that have the shows in Paris and spend tons in promotions, they get the exposure from the shows but their real income is from perfumes.

    I have no way of vouching for that but he is a person in the know. Will you be competing with those products?
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  • Profile picture of the author AaronBurton
    I would stay away from perfume when selling on eBay. As far as amazon you have to get approved I believe to even sell in that category. Their are a lot of fake perfume out there so they crack down harder on sellers.
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  • Profile picture of the author ArtfulMaestro
    i have created 18 perfume amazon affiliate websites for my customers and they seeing great sucess
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    I have tried and wasted alot of time investing in alot of business that didn't make any REAL residual income or money.
    Now i make thousands of dollars.
    My goal is to help you make thousands of dollars also.

    http://www.jvzoo.com/products/landingpage/143045
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  • Profile picture of the author davidclarkny
    I have a cosmetic site for 3 years. The true thing is people will trust more from website than public store, so that you should build a private website to sell and get customers from public store or forum back to your site. The conversion will be better a lot.
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