Sampling & decanting: The fragrance trend that should continue
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As a chronic spender myself I am in no way shape or form telling YOU how to spend your money. If you love to blind buy or you think capitalism at its finest that is your opinion to hold and make.
Let’s stick with the facts. The fact is people are not blindly buying as they used to fragrances. People would go into retail stores, smell a fragrance, or get a suggestion from someone behind a counter. There are also the cultural practices of someone making you a perfume or oil blend for your wedding (still a practice done today) that you would use made by the matrons of your or future husbands family. There are the people who go to the “oil man” who makes a custom blend based on your taste. Direct to consumer spending has been and will always be a big part of the fragrance market.
In my opinion, here’s where we will get into my opinion, things have changed since the dot.com boom and the introduction of things like QVC and most recently the Tiktok Shop. The most profitable resource in the 2020’s has to be the invention of combining the endless scrolling of social media combined with ads where at the click of a button you can shop for any item of your choice and it comes directly to your doorstep. For me, and I am speaking just for me. This is a dangerous combination. I personally have to put things into place like blocking, yes blocking, big creators and even brands themselves to stop myself from shopping their QVC style lives and seeing countless ads. The combination of boredom, doom scrolling, and the FOMO combined is not mentally good for me. I have set strict-ish rules for myself to make sure I don’t overspend.
Now, I also want to add as a content creator I do need to keep up with trends and know what things smell like. The majority of my reviews are items that I have bought, smelt, and interacted with at some point. It's hard financially so I have resorted to sampling and decanting.
When I joined Tiktok in April 2025, maybe even a little earlier, I loved watching other creators talk about perfumes. One day it finally hit me that I could do this myself but, I had to know where my limits were. I have curated a collection of over 400 fragrances. That is a collection of mostly samples, decants, and full bottles. I will eventually do an entire review of every single item I own and link them at a later date.
I also make videos and I even generate sales with my samples and decants. How, you may ask? Because I talk about fragrances genuinely that I have tried even if it's once while most creators tell you about a fragrance they just got in PR and they haven’t even opened the box. I'm very introspective and observant. I see things that irritate me and patterns. I can’t believe reviews that don’t at least try to smell the thing. So I started buying sample sets. Some of my favorite companies I will tag below with shoppable links that earn me commissions below.
[See my video here on the process of decanting]
I also shop decanters and I want to give the warning that not everyone or their product can be trusted. You can’t guarantee they got a bottle that was real (and neither can you) when you shop second hand or from unauthorised retailers. They could be cutting costs and margins to make some extra money. You have to just be careful but when they are good they are good. I can’t reveal my sources for this one (I think) because I don’t want them to get shut down but do your research. Check Tiktok first they have plenty that I don’t see their videos be struck down or get flagged. I also want to mention that I don’t want to shout out to someone and people have a bad experience.
There are tons of companies who will decant and make you samples as well.
I’ll list some of those companies that I can trust and you can more easily find online below.
I always disclose my affiliation with the links on my page so some of these I have affiliate links with commissions to.
This is my series I created talking about all the samples I purchased and using them. The videos are on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Pinterest, and I post on Lemon8 but I don’t believe the videos are on there.
I also want to add Scent Split, in particular, was my introduction to Niche perfume. I have tons of videos reviewing those which you can find in my catalog here. Its funny looking back on those videos I have upgraded some of those perfumes, gave recommendations to others, and I still have so many left to go. 1ML, of 1 fragrance, I wore for one day, and talk about it in one minute is a series I will keep doing in the future once I finish some of the projects I am working on.
If you can, try the product out preferably on skin or clothes and see how you like it. If you can’t then yeah check social media for reviews from someone you trust.
I hope that when you come across my platform that person is me.
If you’re looking for niche fragrances to try here’s a bunch of them from my series