In this article, we will be looking at how you can start a perfume business in Nigeria and make profits. Recently, a co-worker of mine came to sell me perfumes. Apparently, she has been in the perfume business for quite some time now and now termed it as her side hustle.
The day she approached me, she came with different brands all packed in little bottles, and was able to persuade me to buy from her after listing many outstanding reasons why I should buy a pocket perfume. On my quest to know if she’s really making profits from the perfume business she smiled and said yes but this is just her own way of starting – her ultimate aim is to start her own perfume line and brand.
She further said she decided to go into the business because of her passion for perfumes and didn’t know how to start until someone advised her to start small by selling perfumes in tiny bottles. She said because Nigerians like to eat their cake and have it the selling in tiny bottles has been making lots of profits for her.
Many Nigerians like big perfume brands but they cannot afford them so someone thought of it one day to buy all these expensive perfume brands and sell them in small quantities (tiny bottles). The ultimate aim here is to give Nigerians what they want (ability to use any perfume brands they want by buying them in small quantities) and make money on the side.
These tiny perfume bottles come in packs ranging from 12 to 16 bottles per pack and are sold at wholesale prices for N600 to N700 per bottle – final buyers buy them at N1,000 per bottle. Perfume business in Nigeria is a kind of business anyone can go into because it’s low capital demands. With about N5,000 – N10,000 you can start your perfume business this way.
Another way of starting your own perfume business in Nigeria is to buy these designer perfumes in different brands from wholesale shops around you and sell them at retail prices to people. I will be sharing more tips on how-to you can do this easily as we move forward in the article.
Then the third and final way you can start your own perfume business in Nigeria is to make the perfumes yourself and sell. Although this is not yet common in Nigeria, it doesn’t mean it does not exist. You can start this method by first learning how to make perfume from local perfume makers in Nigeria and after learning you register your brand and start selling in mass production.
This method asides its been capital demands can also take more time to manifest. Sometimes, demanding as much as 10 – 15 years for you to get to the top – being the most popular perfume brand in Nigeria. All these methods are the most visible way you can start your perfume business in Nigeria.
Now let’s move to how you can start the business with what you have since one of the aim of this blog is to encourage small startups in Nigeria. If you get this right you can start small then after so much understanding of the business, you can then get investors to invest in the business to go on a higher scale.
How to Start Perfume Business in Nigeria
Here are steps on how to start perfume business in Nigeria.
1. Decide Type of Perfume Business
Out of all the 3 types of perfume businesses in Nigeria I mentioned earlier all are profitable it just depends on how much time you have and how much capital you are willing to invest. You need to decide out of these 3 which type of perfume business is suitable for you.
If you’re thinking about starting small with a capital of about N10,000 – N15,000 you should go for buying and selling of perfume in little bottles. Immediately you order them and they are delivered to you, you can start selling as soon as the next day.
If you’re thinking of selling the designer brands as they are in their casing themselves you will need about N50,000 – N100,000 as capital to start. To get this done you will need to go to where perfumes are sold wholesale in your area and buy.
Buy the ones you know people are more familiar with for a start to fasten your sales. You can ask the perfume dealer you are buying from to help you in selecting when you are about to buy. And if finally, you’re thinking of creating your brand – starting your own perfume company you’ll need about N500,000 to N1,000,000 as your starting capital to start.
This capital is for you to first learn how to make the perfume to yourself for mass production, second to register your perfume brand with SON, and register your perfume business with CAC. And third to buy little material and equipment for the mass production of perfumes and to employ staff for the business.
So you’ll need to decide carefully which part you want to follow in the perfume business after doing your proper findings both in and outside the market. My best advice for you here is to visit the perfume shops in the local markets both the wholesale one and the retails to hear what they have to say about the business asides from what you’ve heard on the blog.
If it’s possible to tip them and ask them the best advice they can give you as regards starting a perfume business in Nigeria. Also, ask them the best kind of perfume business you should start with and most importantly how to convince people – Nigerians to buy the perfumes.
These dealers might not be able to give you 100% answers to these questions but they will be able to answer them to some degree that kills all your insecurities. This was what I did with my co-worker I sought her counsel about the business.
Even though I was not planning to go into the business, I still wanted to know “how” so I can understand the business and asides that to be able to write an article about it to share on the blog.
2. Get the Required Capital
Capital is very important in starting any business in Nigeria and any country all over the world but getting it is actually hard and the bigger the capital the harder is it to source. Depending on where you are and how much you make monthly if you want to self-fund your perfume business it’s achievable it’s just a matter of time.
You can save towards it and if you are already a saver having some money saved up already you can take some out of the money to start. If you do not have money and can not wait to save up some you can use other people’s money to start.
Please note here I am saying you should approach complete strangers for money telling them about the business you want to start. The people I am talking about here are your family and friends. Depending on the kind of relationship you have built with them and their perceptions on the way they see you and money they might be able to borrow you more than what you think of.
But just in case you need a full in-depth article on how to do this you can read my article on “How to start a business in Nigeria with no money.” After sourcing your capital the next step for you is to go the market to buy the first batch of perfumes for your perfume business.
3. Start Selling Perfume to Customers
The ability to sell is the most integral part of any business. You have to know how to sell your perfumes first to your friends before you can now sell to strangers. Here are some of the tricks I used in selling my goods way back then when I just started with my men’s accessories business.
4. Sell Perfume Oil Online
The next step for you here is to be able to sell your perfumes online in Nigeria.
A. Sell Before Goods Arrives
The first trick I used was I started selling even before my goods arrived. Here’s how I did it. I looked for pictures on the internet similar to the good I was expecting and I started using them as my DP on WhatsApp.
I also started using it as my WhatsApp status advising friends the best products they should go for and how much they can buy it if they decided to buy from me. And soon the messages started coming in. How much is this? How much is that? Bring it to church on Sunday I will buy it. Bring it to work on Monday I will buy it.
This was the way I started selling my goods before they arrived. You can also use this method. You don’t need to wait till you buy the perfumes before you start advertising them. Start even before the business starts.
After doing this for a while and you’ve been able to gather success you can now proceed to other social media platforms to sell your perfumes. But sell first to people around you and let it be a major. If you are good at persuading your friends and family to buy you might not need to spend money on Instagram and Facebook ads.
Remember you are just starting you don’t want to do anything that will take money from your business (expenses) if there’s need be for this you want it to be as little as possible. Also, try as much as possible to keep your prices low.
Depending on how much you buy the perfumes from the wholesalers you can decide to add N300 to N2000 as your profit before selling to your potential customer. Let’s give an example here. Let’s say you bought the perfumes for N500. You can decide to add N300 to sell instead of adding N500 to sell at N1,000.
These little sales tweak will make people patronize you more. If you bought the perfumes N5,000 for one you can sell it for N6,500 or N7,000 instead of the usual N8,000 price from other perfume sellers. The goal here is for people to think of buying from you first before thinking of going to the market.
B. Market Perfume oil on Jiji
This platform is for those that have been in any business for a while and have scaled higher and are now looking for customers beyond their friends and family. You can use Jiji to advertise to customers both in your area and outside your area. You can advertise on the platform for free or do a paid advert – anyone you prefer.
Their website is also fully optimized with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so if anyone googles perfume dealer or seller in your area or location your profile on Jiji will pop up to the persons. However, you need to keep in mind that the price of your perfumes on Jiji will have to increase in other for you not to go into loss when the orders start coming in.
Asides cost of the perfumes, cost of profit you will need to add delivery cost as well to pay for waybill. You need to factor all this in so that in the end you and the buyers will not lose. Everyone will go home smiling.
C. Sell Perfume on Konga and Jumia
The world has moved on to eCommerce so is Nigeria. Do you know you can also sell your products – perfume on Jumia or Konga? Just in case you don’t know how it is done here’s how you can go about it. All you have to here is to go Jumia.com.ng or Konga.com and register as a seller there.
Within a short while, your perfumes will be displayed on the websites for consumers to see and buy. However, this is not free I heard there are some charges.
5. Increasing Perfume Oil Sales
At this stage, you need to know how to increase sales in your perfume oil business and also know how to maintain your perfume products – making them potent till they are bought from you. So here are bonus tips on how you can do this successfully.
Bonus Tips
A. Sell to Yourself First
Do me a favor, don’t be like the guys who say they sell clothes and put on rags in Lagos. Do not look like the cobbler who says he sells designer shoes yet put on thorn sandals. You have to look like what you sell. Don’t say you sell perfumes yet you do not put on any brand.
No! Spoil yourself! Try different brands if not for anything but to understand perfumes in general and to speak for these brands when they are criticized.
B. Keep Perfumes away from Sunlight
Try as much as possible to keep your perfume oil away from direct sunlight in other to retain its potency. Also, try to keep the casing as clean as they came. Do not allow people in the disguise of buying to spoil their boxes. What you can do here is to always help in opening perfume casings for customers.
C. Promote your Perfume Products
As a sole proprietorship, your business is you and you are your business until when the business has grown and now beyond you (no longer needing you to survive). Until then never think of separating your business from you.
Always talk about perfumes or perfume oils anywhere you go and why people should smell nice. This makes people know this is what you’re into even though they are meeting you for the first time.
Conclusion
There’s is no one-size-fits-all as regards the perfume oil business in Nigeria. You either choose the path that is already available or you create your own yours. Finally, perfume business is not a magical business that once you; start you making millions.
It takes time to achieve this and consistency. In fact, this is not only for perfume business in Nigeria it goes for any other kind of business in Nigeria. Has this article given you ideas on how you can start a perfume business in Nigeria? Please give us a thumb up by sharing it on social media. This is another way you can support us.
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Hi! Your article was indeed helpful. I’m looking at starting this business myself. It has been a thing of interest to me but I don’t really know how to go about sorting the products. How to differentiate between original perfumes products from the fake ones. Please can you shed more light on this?
Hi, Chelsea! The only way you can differentiate between these 2 kinds of perfume as a fresher into the perfume business is to visit a popular perfume dealer in the clothing market around you or you can visit as many as possible. Open up to them and tell them you want to start a perfume business and you need their help on how to go about it – differentiating fake one from original perfumes. Tell them if they are able to advise you well they will be your supplier. With this, they will tell you everything you need to know. They will even tell you how to spot these fake perfumes easily.
Wow! I really love this post but I got scared at the point where you said to own my perfume brand I have to save up to 500k to N1 Million.
I really want to start but right now, I have just 15k saved with me (I’m still a student). And for the part you gave the idea of buying expensive brands and selling them in small bottles is a good Idea but won’t it be piracy and would I need to register that too?
Also in my school, everyone sells perfume oil. I don’t want to base on perfume oil again I want to change brand of perf. I just need advice sir
Hi, Faith! It is not piracy if you sell these big brands in small quantities. You will not be sued as long as your perfume business is yet to be registered under CAC. You can start your perfume business by buying in large quantities and selling in small bottles. Considering you are in school and your main customers are students you will even make profits because students can afford your perfumes.
As for the perfume oil. It doesn’t really matter as long as you know how to sell (convince people to buy) but if you feel the perfume oil business is over-flogged in your school, you can opt for a different kind of perfume business.
Best of luck!
Hello! This article was indeed very helpful but I do have two questions. What are the requirements or starter pack? Can I opt for branded nylons and a business card when I’m just beginning?? What’s the best way to talk to a stranger about my business??
Requirements or starter pack? I don’t understand that Mercee. As for the introduction of branded nylons and a business card at the beginning of your business, that is good if you can afford that. There’s no best way to introduce your business to strangers. Just make it simple by telling people your name and the kind of business you are into. Also, make sure you wear perfume anytime you are going out because sometimes the best way to sell your business is to sell yourself.
Wow, I really gain from this article, I have an interest in perfume business, I want to start small, I have 50,000 naira with me but I don’t know where to locate a wholesaler in Ibadan, Oyo state. Thank you!
Wow! This information you have given is really helpful and it gives me more ideas. Thanks a lot! I can now start my perfume business now.
I need more emphasis on the part that says buy big brands and sell in small quantities. Please can you explain?
Olaide, you know all those big perfumes brands that are sold at costly prices, you can buy them and sell them to people in tiny perfume oil bottles.
I am a worker and I sell my perfume and body spray on credit till month end but my profit is not growing. Please help me out on this.
Olamide, you already mentioned the problem. You said you were selling you perfumes on credit. There is no business that ever grows on credit. To increase your profits and grow the business gradually you need to stop selling your perfumes on credit and look at other ways you can attract your customers and increase your customer base. Start with this first and let us see how it goes.
The tips are very informative… Thanks.
This is very helpful but my question is how do I get the tiny bottles?
Go to any cosmetic shop in the market to ask of it.
I am really blessed through your article sir. but I am not used to selling and buying of perfumes at all. I really desire to be producing it, and I thought I should study cosmetic in school so that I can understand it better. I want ask if this decision is okay sir, Thanks sir. I don’t know if I can get your WhatsApp number too?
You can also go into the manufacturing of perfumes Jesusmodel. Some people want the short process which is to buy and sell, while some want the long process which is to produce themselves. This is also good.
Sir, do you think oil perfumes can be imported?
Yes, Blessing.
This is a very good write-up. Well done sir. Please, how do I have access to this write up, because I couldn’t finish up with the reading, so as to go through it at my leisure time. Thanks.
Well, there are two options. You can use your browsing history to visit our blog again anytime or bookmark our blog.
This was very helpful. Well sir, I’m just a starter. I’ve gotten some info from your advice but after all should I start by buying a designed nylon or a box? And sir should there be a logo or name on the bottle of my perfumes oil?
It all depends on the capital you have at hand Chineye. If you have enough you can go ahead and do everything.
This is the most helpful article I’ve read so far on perfumery.Thanks a lot.
You are welcome Jerusha.
Thanks for the article sir. It’s really makes a great impact on my understanding about perfume business though I haven’t started but I’m starting very soon. Sir, I would like you to recommend a good place I can buy my goods in bulk. Thanks.
Hi Opeyemi, for now I do not have any supplier I can suggest to you. Just go to any clothing market around you and ask for perfume sellers.