Sometimes trying new things is a good idea and sometimes it turns
out not to be so good. This has certainly been the case when it comes to
perfume bottles. It’s really hard to find interesting and fully functional
bottles off the rack. All of the really unique and/or attractive ones that you
see in stores are custom designed and manufactured, with minimum orders far
beyond anything a small-scale indie perfumer could afford or use.
Unusual-looking bottles are also available ready-made, on a wholesale basis,
from manufacturers in China, but they’re generally ugly and cheap-looking and
reportedly tend to malfunction in every conceivable way. I haven’t been tempted
to try them.
What I was tempted to do was to buy a bunch of 5-ml spray
bottles with metallic gold and silver cases (above photo) from a US supplier I hadn’t used
before. They cost less than the sturdy shiny black or red ones I’d been using,
and supposedly held more juice, 7.5 ml to be exact. Once I started using them, though, I
discovered that they might be able to hold 7 ml or so if one were able to fill the glass interior
bottle all the way to the brim, but that if one left enough space to
accommodate the rather bulky spray mechanism and screw it on, the available
space was back down to about 5 ml. Something ventured, nothing gained.
The other thing I didn’t like about these bottles was the
fact that the outside casing was designed to make them look like they hold more
than they actually do. Like a lot of packaging, they feature a big exterior box
with a small interior container, and take up more packing space than they need
to. A couple of the sprayers on the testers didn’t work properly, and there was no way to test the unsprayed ones before
shipping. I didn’t get any complaints about malfunctioning sprayers, and I hope
no one got one, but I’d like to minimize that possibility in future.
I’ve gone back to the old model 5-ml sprays with a sturdy
glass bottle, a shiny black casing, and a better quality sprayer. I’m holding a
special sale to sell off all of the old model sprays, including testers, so
that I can completely transition to the new bottles.
The other mistake I made was ordering a lot of 30-ml spray
bottles from the new supplier as well. They’re basically functional and
attractive, but the sprayers seem lower quality than those from my old
supplier. The cost is about the same. I just used up the last of the “new”
30-ml bottles and have transitioned back to the better ones. The difference probably
isn’t immediately obvious to the consumer, but I hope the sprayer will be more
reliable with long-term use.
Upgrading my packaging has been a continuously ongoing,
trial-and-error process over the entire three years that I’ve been in
business. A major makeover is one of the
goals, and I’m sure that, even if it doesn’t all get completed, at least some
headway will be made on this project over the coming year. I know that quality
packaging is an important aspect of perfume, and will be doing what I can, as I
can, to make sure that the packaging better reflects the quality of what’s
inside.
[Fountain of Youth painting by Lucas Cranach, 1546]
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