Fragrance: The Most Expensive Ingredient in Cosmetics?
Submitted by Beauty Brains Blog
Creme’s quandry: I have a simple question. Does the quality or amount of perfume/fragrance in a personal care product affects its price? I’ve notice that some of the more expensive stuffs are more pleasantly fragrant than those more cheaper stuffs even thought they are somewhat similar in ingredients.
The Right Brain responds: 
Good question, Creme. We’ve blogged before about fragrance in cosmetics but we’ve never discussed that fragrance may be the single most costly ingredient in some formulas.
The role of fragrance
This is not true for makeup products like lipstick, blush and eyeshadow which typically only contain small amounts of masking fragrance. It’s also not typically true for high end skin treatments like contain expensive active ingredients like hyaluronic acid or retinoid derivatives. But for shampoos, body washes, and other products that deliver a “fragrance experience,” the scent can add a pretty penny to the final product cost.
The fragrance equation
Formulators look at two variables when factoring in the fragrance cost: the cost of the fragrance itself and how much of the fragrance is used in the finished product. Let’s look at cost first. A cheap fragrance can cost as little as $4 or $5 per pound while an expensive one can cost in excess of $20 per pound or more. Spending more on a fragrance gives the perfumers more latitude in which ingredients they can use. A perfumer can make a very cheap smelling lemon fragrance (think furniture polish) for a couple of bucks per pound. For more money they can make it smell as sweet as summertime lemonade.
Next lets look at concentration, which is how much fragrance is used in the finished product. We’ll use body wash as example. In a “regular” (i.e., “cheap”) body wash the fragrance concentration can be as low as half a percent (0.5%). But for a luscious, fill-up-your-shower-stay-on-your-skin-all-day kind of fragrance, the formula may need to contain as much as 2% - 5% fragrance.
Dollars and scents
Now lets do the math on the cost. The cheap body wash (using a cheap $4.00 fragrance at 0.5%) only contains 2 cents worth of fragrance per pound of body wash. (A 15 oz bottle is slightly less than 1 pound). On the other hand, the luscious body wash (using a $15 per pound fragrance at 5.0%) contains 75 cents of fragrance! Considering that all the other ingredients in the body wash could cost somewhere between $0.25 and $.050, that’s a lot!
The Beauty Brains bottom line
In general, more expensive products spend more on fragrance. For an indulgent product like a yummy bubble bath, that could be money well spent. But if the product is purely functional (like a bar of soap) you might want to shop around for less expensive alternative.
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September 20th, 2008 at 3:58 am
Now lets do the math on the cost. The cheap body wash (using a cheap $4.00 fragrance at 0.5%) only contains 2 cents worth of fragrance per pound of body wash. (A 15 oz bottle is slightly less than 1 pound). On the other hand, the luscious body wash (using a $15 per pound fragrance at 5.0%) contains 75 cents of fragrance! Considering that all the other ingredients in the body wash could cost somewhere between $0.25 and $.050, that’s a lot!