Whenever I start feeling like I’m living in a hoarder house,
I go into a frenzy of getting rid of stuff I don’t need. My closets are in that
condition, but so are my cosmetic and perfume storage areas. Plus, it’s been
raining continuously for more than the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights, and
I’m really tired of it. So the giveaways continue.
This Monday’s prize is the last of three small fragrances I
had from an artisan brand that shall remain nameless. It’s one of those brands
that keeps releasing way too much new stuff as old stuff continually disappears,
making this prize, if nothing else, a collector’s item.
Personally, as a consumer, if I see a perfume brand’s
website with a staggering number of offerings, I tend to go look at a different
brand rather than try to sift through the entire list to see if there’s anything
interesting. This is especially true if it’s a very new company and/or if a lot
of the items are listed as “out of stock”.
An excessive “out of stock” collection is also a waving red
flag to me when I see it on big online vendors’ websites because there it seems
like a bait-and-switch tactic. I think the company hopes that a customer will
search for a hard-to-find perfume and be led to their website, which appears to
be the only source for it, at a very good price. Once there, the perfume in
question is always listed as “out of stock”. I assume the company hopes that
the customer will look at their in-stock items that can be found anywhere, and
order something. No thanks.
I know I’m guilty of having over two dozen Olympic Orchids perfumes
in production, so I’d be interested to know what you, as a consumer, think is
too large a number of perfumes for a single brand to offer. Leave a comment and
be entered in the worldwide drawing for a small bottle of a perfume that seems
to be discontinued, along with other assorted goodies.
[House-cleaning and flood graphics from Wikimedia; Out-of stock perfume image adapted from a vendor's website]

