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.