It’s hard to believe but counterfeit perfumes in the US are a million-dollar industry now, and you don’t want counterfeit perfumes on your home, let alone your skin considering that they have found human urine and whatnot on these products.
What Are Counterfeit Perfumes?
Counterfeit perfumes are deceptive replicas found in the market that closely mimic authentic fragrances. While appearing almost identical to genuine products, their primary objective is to lure unsuspecting consumers into purchasing them under the false pretence of being authentic perfumes.
These are different from dupes, clones, etc., because dupes, clones or inspired perfumes aim to create a perfume that smells similar or nearly similar to the original one, but at lower pricing.
Here’s a table showing the major differences between counterfeit/fake perfumes and dupes/clones.
| Counterfeit/Fakes Perfumes | Clones/Dupes/Inspired |
| Same packaging of the box, bottles, lettering, or not-easily visible discrepancies. | Easily visible discrepancies, or most often different names, packaging, and branding altogether. Sometimes the name of the perfume will say it is inspired or dupe of popular perfume. For example: Inspired by Aventus by Creed. Armaf Club de Nuit Intense(clone) Creed Avento(may come in similar packaging but they would still make discrepancy visible.) |
| You can buy it at lower prices than the retail price but the seller tells you various reasons to make you feel they are giving a heavy discount. | Prices are not lower because they are discounted, but they are lower because it is the actual price. |
| Illegal products | Legal products |
Why Should We Avoid Counterfeit Perfumes?
- They Are Risky For Your Health
Many of these counterfeit perfumes are found to include human urine and human excrement along with other bacteria and waste. This is not only dirty but also poses a threat to health risks including diseases and skin irritations.
- You Are Indirectly Supporting Crime Gangs
While businesses, consumers and the whole economy are affected and lose money as a result of counterfeit perfumes, this money instead lands in the hands of international crime gangs that are contributing towards supporting drugs and weapons.
How To Avoid Buying Counterfeit Perfumes?
Batch numbers and serial numbers are hardly enough to ensure the authenticity of perfumes because fraudsters have become smarter than that. While there are many ways a fragrance enthusiast can check whether a perfume is authentic, a better approach involves avoiding fakes altogether to avoid hassles.
This guide is a comprehensive guide where I gather insights from different forums on the internet, along with my own experience of buying perfumes. So whatever I know, you’ll know by the end of this blog.
- Return Policies and Guarantees
The reason I put this point first is because no matter where you are buying from – the chances of receiving a fake perfume are always there. Especially in situations where multiple authorities play a role in the supply chain. This is why, always educate yourself about the return and refund policy of the store – online or offline, authorised or unauthorised. So, all the points that come after will be meaningless unless you ensure return policies and guarantees.
While it is common for some retailers to not refund your money after a return, they do however have exchange policies which can be useful too in case you receive a counterfeit product, and you can point it out to the retail store.
- Authorised Retailers
This comes as another important thing to remember while buying perfumes so that you can avoid fake perfumes. Authorised retailers are established in the perfume market, which must have taken them years, and their business reputation is important. But authorised sellers are also businessmen who conduct business with ethics and morals – ensuring that whatever product you are buying from them is 100% authentic – at least to their knowledge.
Authorised retailers work with official distributors of various international brands. For example, Baccarose Perfumes & Beauty Product Pvt Ltd. is an Indian distributor of high-end beauty brands, and Nykaa, Myntra, Parcos, etc., are authorised retailers.
You can also directly buy from the brand’s official store – some of which are available online. But, understandably, it is not possible for consumers in all countries.
- Customer Reviews and Feedback
This is more suitable for situations like buying perfumes online. Several sites on the internet are reputed and known for being legit and selling authentic perfumes. Whether these sites or sellers are authorised or unauthorised, you should do your due diligence and check customer reviews and feedback on these sites.
Asking around on online forums related to perfumes is your best bet when it comes to checking if a potential seller or site sells authentic products.
Note that while sites like Amazon sell authentic perfumes most of the time if you are buying from an unknown seller, you can still have a counterfeit in your hand.
Go for sellers with higher ratings, but also read reviews of what people are saying. For example, a comparatively low-rated seller might be getting a low rating because of their slow shipping, or bad customer service, and this doesn’t have to mean their products are counterfeit.
- Packaging and Presentation
Perfume brands use fancy or hard-to-copy packaging or presentation, which may include decorations, hot stamping, embossing, etc. While the counterfeit goods, will too, have similar packaging, or almost similar packaging, there will still be some mistakes in their packaging.
Examination of packaging and presentation of perfumes is a good way to check their authenticity. But ensuring this alone will not ensure the authenticity of your perfume. The counterfeit market can use real perfume bottles that are thrown away or empty, and pour liquid that is watered down or replicated version of the real perfume. The smallest of the errors like discrepancies in the colour of labelling can hint at a perfume being fake.
One another way to check authenticity is the quantity of the bottle – you may find 30 ml perfume bottles. While some brands offer 30 ml perfume bottles, it is crucial to cross-reference this information with the official product offerings of the brand. Ensure that the specific quantity matches the brand’s authorized sizes. Counterfeit products often deviate from the officially available sizes.
Examining the packaging of the perfume, including the box and bottle, itself is not the easiest job either. If you don’t have an eye for details, you might not be the best judge.
Holograms and embossing, and spelling and labelling are a good way to start. But sometimes you might also feel that the presentation and packaging are off, without being able to put your finger on it. In such cases, it is always better to post a picture of your perfume to internet forums to get more eyes and expertise.
- Batch Codes and Serial Numbers
Batch codes and serial numbers help you identify a perfume since they can tell you details about your perfumes from which you can make out if your perfume has the probability to be a fake.
Sites like CheckFresh.com can help you with details once you properly feed the batch code onto their website. The website also has a guide on identifying where the batch code on your perfume packaging lies.
Now, this isn’t a foolproof process either for various reasons. One of the reasons is that batch codes and serial numbers can be copied too. Additionally, not all perfume brands have their batch code details available on these websites. Especially for Middle Eastern brands, it is not always possible to get the details as they aren’t registered on the same databases as designer fragrances in the EU.
- Scent Characteristics
This is a method that is more useful for perfume enthusiasts – if you are a very beginner in this journey, you can’t understand the difference. Having experience in smelling perfumes of different scent profiles, brands, quality, etc., you can develop a more intuitive understanding of what to expect from a genuine perfume.
One practical way to assess authenticity is by paying attention to the performance of a perfume – its sillage, projection, and longevity. If you’re consistently experiencing significant discrepancies compared to reviews online, where fragrance enthusiasts discuss the expected longevity of a particular brand (e.g., 6-8 hours), and you find your perfume barely lasting 1-2 hours, it could be a red flag.
Note that perfume performance can vary depending on the region or batch, but discrepancies will not be too big.You can also learn about notes and accords in Fragrantica to know what to expect from a perfume once you blind buy it.
- Too-Good-to-Be-True Deals
It is understandable that for most people, retail prices can be too high. If you are someone who is a fragrance enthusiast who wants to own a fragrance collection, retail prices could cripple you financially.
This is why, you may wait for deals, often brought by unauthorized sellers, or on sites like eBay, or sellers that say they are authorized on Amazon – for super low prices.
Some sellers would even say that they are selling stolen products so that you have an answer to ‘What’s the catch?’ for such a good deal. But remember, prices that are too good to be true can be or most often are counterfeit. This is not just strictly restricted to perfumes, but other products too.
Unauthorised products are not the same as counterfeit products, as they are still authentic.
If you want to buy perfumes at lower prices from unauthorised sellers, this seller has to be someone you trust personally, or people in the fragrance community already vouches for.
To discover legit unauthorised sellers, you can visit Reddit subs that are fragrance related, and learn people’s trusted sellers for fragrances. While there are endless Instagram sellers available, note that they have a high probability of being frauds.
Even when you see this seller has 1M followers, you still need to do your due diligence and ask around for their authenticity. Because followers can be bought, and sometimes people just follow a seller because they are saving to buy from them later – which means if they are fake, customers haven’t experienced it yet.
Takeaway
Brands across the world are taking various anti-counterfeiting measures using techniques like gas-chromatic analysis, or battling their cases in court to protect their perfumes and brands. There have also been operations where police have confiscated Chinese counterfeits.
While these operations or measures might help the perfume industry as a whole, it is not helpful when the consumers have already bought a counterfeit and lost their money. This is why if you are buying perfume from popular or expensive brands, make sure to educate yourself about spotting fakes.
