Paradero

Source: Scion International, Creation Lamis product line. Creation Lamis is worldwide available and has quite an amazing distribution, I have seen it anywhere in the world from Woolworth to Target to K-Mart. Paradero is from the "Deluxe" Line, which retails for more and is supposed to be of "higher quality", whatever that is supposed to mean exactly. Bought this one in Spain in a small department store for 6 Euros, which is also the price it about retails for on the internet.

Scent: This is very obviously Echo by Davidoff, Scion got it very well from the top-notes to the drydown. The stuff is really strong, the room smells like it after two sprays. I have a tester of echo at home so I am able to compare in detail. In short: there is very little difference between Echo and Paradero. Both have a synthetic smell and heavily remind me of Chrome by Azarro. They are very fresh and can well be used for business purposes. After a couple of hours, Paradero seemed to become slightly sweeter but this is quite a detail oberservance.

Lasting Power: More than 12 hours on skin, even way longer on clothes. No difference to Echo.

Packaging: Excellent, looks great with a unique design, however bottle is not overly practical.

Verdict: Definite buy for people who like the echo scent.

Random: Scion International is one of the biggest names in the imitate market. They have several product lines, with Creation Lamis, Dorall and Stitch being the most widespread. While Creation Lamis is supposed to be positioned as their top-quality line, dorall and stitch retial for even less but also usually with lower perfume concentration.

Night Blue Mission

Source: No manufacturer given, Distribution by Vetura Groupe in France. Google reveals it to be part of the "Real-Time"-Perfume-Line. Real-Time has a couple of imiates out, distributed in various store chains all over europe, for example in "kik" in Germany, such as the edt called "submarine". Real Time is extremely cheap in wholesale, so that 100ml can retail for less than 3 Euros, i bought it on a market for 2.50 Euros.

Scent: I would have had no clue what this was supposed to be like. Google claims it's Bulgari Aqua, oh well, with some imagination maybe, they didn't really get close with that. It's a quite distinct smell that does not change at all over time, it's very synthetic.

Lasting Power: 3-5hours, there are imitates that are worse lasting, Bulgari Aqua however stays considerably longer.

Packaging: Cheap paper packaging, bottle looks alright, Cap doesn't exactly fit the bottle.

Verdict: Don't buy, even at this price. Bulgari Aqua smells more pleasent and is longer lasting.

Some random notes

- I don't sell any of the products reviewed here. You'll usually find them for sale on the internet anyway.

- I have tested each of the products I write about by myself, regardless whether I post images of them or not - as sometimes I just throw them away quite fast when they are crap.

- I'm not attached to any of these manufacturers in any way.

- I'd be happy for any suggestions or experiences you have, please leave them in the comments below the posts.

- I'm interested in how good these perfumes compare to luxury brand perfumes, so each review has to be understood in terms of how good a perfume is in comparison to luxury brand equiavalents instead of in relation to the low cost price. If a perfume lasts 30minutes, then it is crap regardless whether it costs 3 or 30 euros/dollars.

- I mainly review eau de toilette for men. Bought more than 40 of these over the last two years mostly on business trips all over the world- from europe to east asia. Many were complete crap, some were good and a few were also exceptional.

- About me: I am a 36 year old male living in madrid/spain with a background in the major brand perfume industry. I claim to have a certain degree of knowledge about the industry. I am happily married with one daughter. I use certain imitate perfumes as well as majaor brand perfumes. I don't want to show, that cheap perfumes are better than the expensive ones - they usually are not - but want to highlight and review the (limited amount of) gems that are available at a budget-price.

Criterias used for reviewing

Perfumes smell to some good, some bad, it's a subjective kind of thing. What is being described in each review:

- Scent (descriptive): what does it smell like? Does it closely imitate a well-known luxury brand perfume?

- Lasting power (descriptive): How many hours does it stick on clothes/skin?

- Packaging (descriptive): is the packaging attractive?

- Verdict (overall)

- Random: Everything that didn't fit in any of the other points.

Background information

There is a lot of rumors and myths about cheap perfume on the internet. Some facts to give a broader understanding about imitates and their background:

- a luxury brand perfume, sold for about 40-70 Euros or $ for a 100ml bottle, nearly always costs less than 1 Euro/$ to manufacture as prodfuct costs. This includes the perfume as well as the packaging.

- the most expensive thing about perfume making is advertisement. Each perfume introduction of a major luxury brand costs around 100-300 million euros/dollars. This money is spent on advertisement, models, tv and magazine ads. If this number sounds high to you, go ahead and check it for yourself, you'll see that it is quite adequate.

- nearly all major luxury brand perfume are made entirely of synthetic scents. This is due to the potential of natrual scent ingredients to cause allergies. So the ingredients between luxury brand perfumes and low cost perfumes does not necessarily vary.

So overall, from a business point of view, it would be possible to produce high quality perfumes at a price around 5 Euros/Dollars, taking into account logistic costs and trade sellers profits. This blog looks at imitates in order to see how they compare with luxury brand perfumes.

Purpose of the Blog

There is a lot of interest in no-name perfumes, that cost around 3-8 Euros, respectively 5 to 10 $ and that usually try to resemble more popular luxury brand perfumes. They are often called perfume imitates, copycats or smell-a-likes. They are available everywhere but in regular perfume stores.

The quality of these products varies greatly. We can differentiate three types of imitates:
1. Frauds: An imitate claims to be some luxury perfume. Often found in tourist locations in eastern and southern europe. Near identical bottles and packaging. While the customer knows he is buying a fake due to location and price, the products obviously are fraud and a threat to the legitimate luxury brand. As they are also sold on the internet at a regular price to the user, frauds are a danger both to producers and consumers and therefore are not being reviewed in this blog. The quality of these frauds is nearly always low, that means lasting-power below 3 hours and minor sillage due to low oil concentration.

2. Imitates: Companies use a well-known luxury brand perfume as blueprint. The perfume is sold under a neutral brand name, not claiming to be the luxury brand but resembling it closely in terms of smell, sometimes also packaging and bottle. There have been various law suits against companies producing imitates with a broad range of verdicts. The quality of these products primarily depends on the manufacturer and the experience and equipment used.

3. Failures: There were countless smells produced, that did not end up under some major luxury brand. These smells are sometimes passed on to some no-name brand for production, therefore not explicitly being an imitate, as it once was supposed to be an original scent. While the term "original scent" is highly debatable, generally they don't resemble a well-known smell that closely as imitates - the line of seperation is thin.