Comment by mtalantikite
3 days ago
My wife has a perfume business. She makes really high quality extrait de parfums [1] with expensive materials and great formulations. But the market is flooded with eau de parfums -- which are far more diluted than a extrait -- using cheaper ingredients, selling for about the same price. We've had so many conversations about whether she should dilute everything like the other companies do, but you lose so much of the beauty of the fragrance when you do that. She really doesn't want to go the route of mediocrity, but that does seem to be what the market demands.
> [1] https://studiotanais.com/
First, honest impression: At least on my phone (Android/Chromium) the typography and style of the website don't quite match that "high quality & expensive ingredients" vibe the parfums are supposed to convey. The banners (3 at once on the very first screen, one of them animated!), italic text, varying font sizes, and janky video header would be rather off-putting to me. Maybe it's also because I'm not a huge fan of flat designs, partially because I find they make it difficult to visually distinguish important and less important information, but also because I find them a bit… unrefined and inelegant. And, again, this is on mobile, so maybe on desktop it comes across differently.
Disclaimer: I'm not a designer (so please don't listen only to me and take everything with a grain of salt) but I did work as a frontend engineer for a luxury retailer for some time.
I am somewhat familiar with this market and would probably be turned off by this site mostly because it looks too slick and the ones I’ve seen that were this slick mostly weren’t for me (marketed to, and making perfume entirely or almost entirely for, women).
The ones for me usually look way shittier or just use Etsy.
[edit] the only exception I can come up with is Imaginary Authors, which is much slicker-looking than this, actually, but with a far darker palette—this one definitely says “this is feminine stuff” in the design. And actually I’d say IA leans far more feminine as far as overall vibe of their catalog than most others that’ve had at least one scent that worked out for me.
> [edit] the only exception I can come up with is Imaginary Authors, which is much slicker-looking than this, actually,
See, I find IA actually quite well-designed. Am I the target audience? Certainly not. But the typography is much much easier to parse.
I'm hesitant to reply because it sounds pejorative and snarky, and I will be downvoted, but... you are not the target market for this. End of story.
This design is very 2025 and the rules you're judging by have long-since been thrown out the window. Most brands run on Shopify now, marketing is via myriad social channels in ways that feel insane and unintuitive, aesthetics are all over the map.
What's old is new is old is different is the same is good is bad, and what is garish to you (strangely, honestly) isn't to most; you'll see if you hang out with some young people lol, promise.
P.S. I am not young, I'm figuring this out by watching from afar HAHAHA
Yeah, her customer is gen z or millennial women and queer men. It doesn't look like where I shop, but I'm not the target demo. A lot of the beauty and fragrance world looks like this these days, particularly as you go down towards gen z.
> Most brands run on Shopify now
That site does run on Shopify.
She should double the price so customers wonder why hers costs so much more. Then have a sales pitch explaining the difference.
Some customers WANT to pay a premium just so they know they’re getting the best product.
To he blunt
this website looks like a scam website redirecter the one where you have to click on 49 ads and wait for 3 days before you get to your link the video playing immediately makes me think that's a Google ad unrelated to what the website is about the different font styles reminds me of the middle school HTML projects we had to do with each line in a different size and font face to prove that we know how to use <font face> and <font size>. All its missing is a jokerman font
Offer an eau de parfum line for price anchoring, and market segmentation. Win win.
For sure. I suggested having an eau de parfum option, but it does make things smell totally different -- much weaker, doesn't last long on the body, and can get overpowered by the alcohol carrier. Plus as a small business it'd mean having a dozen new formulations, with the associated packaging changes, inventory, etc. which makes it harder as a totally bootstrapped business. It's definitely still something to think about though, as even fragrances like a Tom Ford or Le Labo selling for $300-400 are just eau de parfums.
Is that what the market demands, or is the market unable to differentiate?
From the site there's a huge assumption that potential customers are aware of what extrait de parfum is vs eau de parfum (or even eau de toilette!).
Might be worth a call out that these fragrances are in fact a standard above the norm.
"The highest quality fragrance money can buy" kind of thing.
> But the market is flooded with eau de parfums -- which are far more diluted than a extrait -- using cheaper ingredients, selling for about the same price.
Has she tried raising prices? To signal that her product is highly quality and thus more expensive than her competition?
She has, these prices are actually lower than they were before, as most customers don't seem to care about things like concentration. Likely it's just that most aren't that informed about the differences. They'll pay more because it's Chanel or because a European perfumer made it, not because the quality is higher.
The market can’t tell high quality vs not it’s all signaling. Wine has the same problem
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looks like they are trying native advertising first
That's actually been new for her, maybe the past two or so months after 10 years in business, and it seems to be working better than any other type of advertising she's done in the past.