The list of priority spending of Western Countries released by the United Nations in 2005 showed a skewed concept of consumerism in terms of choosing what to spend most on. In European countries and in the United States, the total expenditures of its citizenry in perfumes amounted to 12B US dollars. This spending is higher than the priority spending allotted to basic education, water, and sanitation. In France and New York alone, the perceived importance of perfume has reached a high where people have already developed a special kind of fascination to perfumes and scents making these luxury items a defining factor to the countries culture. In France, bottles of luxuriously expensive perfumes such as those created by Serge Lutens are considered the perfect souvenir for travellers who wanted to impart the royal French way of living in a delicious whiff of fragrance.
In the realm of cosmetics, perfumes hold the highest wholesale value of cosmetics produced and sold in the United States and in France. In the report of more than 600 factories producing cosmetics in the US and France, the tariff that these countries pay in order to export their products is 20M US dollars. The irony on this perfume business is that a significant number of developing countries all over the world are rabid consumers of perfumes and other cosmetics such as rouges, powders, lotions, and creams on which perfume is a very important factor. Developing Latin American countries as well as Asian countries have been loyal aficionados of luxuriant perfumes with prices ranging from the modest $100 to the whooping $215,000 per bottle Clive Christian signature scent aptly named the imperial majesty. This flamboyantly bottled piece of expensive luxury reached a monetary high because of the dazzling white diamond affixed to the Baccarat crystal bottle and has been rumoured to cost almost the same as the entire cost of the perfume itself. Of the five bottles released to the market, three have been sold.바카라사이트
Most of the manufacturers of perfumes adhere to the concept of limited edition/limited stocks where only a handful of luxurious and expensive perfumes are produced and released to the market. This has been explained by Virginie Morel, the spokesperson of the International Fragrance Association as the concept of taking hold of the so-called niche perfume. She expounded that “fragrances from the big houses have been tested a lot to please the most amount of people, and women don’t want to look like their next door neighbour.” She also added that because people do not want to smell like anyone else, they go after unique things and most of them are in fact willing to pay whatever the price for the distinction provided by scents and fragrances.
This fascination to creating a scent of one’s own initiated the emergence of a specific service that allows clients to create their own perfume with the help and assistance of the store’s fragrance director. This service has been pioneered by the Guerlain boutique on Champs Elysée and was named Le Parfum Sur Mesure. Once the client has chosen his/her own personal scent, no one else can buy it although Guerlain will keep some stock of the said scent in case the stock runs out. This endeavour however is very expensive amounting to $36,000.
