Perfume as a Gift

The $10 billion perfume market place needs to keep up with the consumer's desire for new fragrances.  To put a new perfume on the market costs from £500,000 to a £1,000,000.  So the scent has to reflect modern tastes in smell perception, to sell well enough to recoup initial development costs.
In 2003 alone, over 70 new perfumes were launched in the UK.  Most annual perfume sales are made in the run up to Christmas.  Yet at anytime of the year, many of you are wondering what to choose for gifts as well as at Christmas. 
Perfume, aromatherapy and luxury beauty products are often the first choice because they are special and extravagant.  They are also often novel with the 'latest' item in a trend setting designer brand product range.   Designers are warming to this novel limited selcetion idea and now in 2007 have started to make niche private collection perfume ranges.
Couple these facts with the knowledge that most perfume coffrets are sold beautifully packaged and you have a gift that says 'you are special and deserve to be pampered' to the recipient.  With the average mass consumer in mind, many such gift packages are pitched around either the £25, £35 or £49 mark and can offer excellent value for money.  
Often they contain either an EDT or EDP with some body lotion and perhaps a matching shower or bath gel, providing the perfect products for layering your scent.  Old fashioned bath cubes are no longer the item that a woman looks for in her Christmas stocking.  Layered designer fragrance has far more appeal for the modern miss.

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Television and glossy magazine advertisements for perfumes are intended to convey the message that an individual can fantasise that they are part of the glamour that is inherent in the advertisement, if they wear that particular perfume.  No wonder so many of these advertisements give an impression of being steeped in luxury with liquid gold, iridescent and silken draped materials that say exotic, erotic and expensive.  The message in a bottle is clear - wear the perfume and you have a share in the fantasy dream world of luxury.  But beware, be guided by your nose and what suits you and your personality rather than the fantasy image of the advert and the luxury of the packaging however cool it seems at a moment in time. 
Every woman has a wardrobe of about 6 or 7 scents, some will have even more.  Of the average ownership about 2 bottles are gifts, 2 are image/trend driven and a couple are self selected by the individual because they are old favourites related to their true personality.
I have just counted 9 bottles on my dressing table and know there are 2 more in a kitchen drawer for a quick spray without running upstairs, whilst a small spray sits in my handbag.  Once Christmas and the January sales come there will be several more.  When you own half a dozen bottles, you have to use those fragrances daily as they will go off if left languishing in a drawer for too long.
Some people like myself, make a point of using perfume every day.  For me it is part of getting bathed, dressed and made up.  Applying a perfume is the final act of making a signature statement for the day.  However own more than 10 and you soon find that one is likely to go off from lack of more than occasional use.
A simple way of using a fragrance daily is in bath products so you use scent almost without thinking about it.  The best way is incorporated in bath or shower gel or as routine after bath spray.  Today only a few perfume brands sell these easy and quick to use spray body oils.  It seems to me a marketing point is being missed here as I know I am representative of many women who do not have the luxury of time to rub in body lotions other than occasionally when rushing to get out of the house.  Yet I do use after bath oil sprays regularly. These few brands include Chanel No.5, Chance, Eau de Cartier, Angel, Gloria and Romance.

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