StanfordP Posted August 23, 2023 Share Posted August 23, 2023 Hey ya'll -- been a while since posting. I never mentioned this on the message board, but in addition to running my candle company, I'm also a lawyer. Recently, news has come down that the big fragrance manufacturers are under investigation internationally for price collusion--that possibly explains why fragrance prices have gone up so much the past few years. I'm investigating the impact of these big manufacturers on smaller entities like: candle supply companies (ex: Aztec, CandleScience, LoneStar, etc), and then indirectly on candle companies (like all of us) and the end consumer. Does anyone know if there's a way to determine where candle supply companies get their fragrance materials from, and whether it's from an international brand (Givaudan, Firmenich, IFF, or Symrise)? Feel free to chime in or message me directly! Or if you've personally experienced price increases on fragrance oils, curious to get your thoughts. Thanks, Stanford 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted August 23, 2023 Share Posted August 23, 2023 Most of the persistent issues began back in 2018. A series of suspicious and very unfortunate events marked the start of all the reformulations and norm of particularly bad fragrances. first a fire at the BASF chemical plant halted the global distribution of citral for a long while. Then a global Chinese aromachemical supplier shut down. Then another sus fire at a chemical supplier in India rounded out the problems in a very short time frame. Most of us were feeling the squeeze hard for at least a year. you would think that those issues would have been long remedied and returned to price “normality” by now 😩 essential oil components have been struggling through many crop failures which only makes the fragrance industry more volatile. Lemon crops failed. Orange crops failed. Lavender. Patchouli. The list goes on. We can’t catch a break. I’m not suggesting there is or isn’t collusion afoot, because price fixing is a definite possibility. I see a global capitalistic trend to maintain the artificial highs of the pandemic at its peak when everyone became a candle maker overnight. Now that the pandemic entrepreneurs abandoned their start ups to return back to their old comfy reality, the fragrance world can’t seem to come back down to a reasonable expectation. My labs keep ratcheting up the min order volumes, prices per lb, and annual spend. It’s disheartening. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StanfordP Posted August 24, 2023 Author Share Posted August 24, 2023 20 hours ago, TallTayl said: I see a global capitalistic trend to maintain the artificial highs of the pandemic at its peak when everyone became a candle maker overnight. Now that the pandemic entrepreneurs abandoned their start ups to return back to their old comfy reality, the fragrance world can’t seem to come back down to a reasonable expectation. My labs keep ratcheting up the min order volumes, prices per lb, and annual spend. It’s disheartening. Yup agreed! Do you know anything about the process for how fragrance companies in the US develop/source their fragrances? From what I understand, CandleScience, for example, would develop a formula based on various aromachemicals, then source them from a fragrance company to make the ultimate product. So even though CandleScience is making the finished good, the ingredients come from the fragrance manufacturer. Is that on track? And now that my wheels are turning; a similar scenario seems to have happened with wax... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted August 24, 2023 Share Posted August 24, 2023 2 hours ago, StanfordP said: Yup agreed! Do you know anything about the process for how fragrance companies in the US develop/source their fragrances? From what I understand, CandleScience, for example, would develop a formula based on various aromachemicals, then source them from a fragrance company to make the ultimate product. So even though CandleScience is making the finished good, the ingredients come from the fragrance manufacturer. Is that on track? And now that my wheels are turning; a similar scenario seems to have happened with wax... I think that is in reverse. The fragrance house provides a fragrance that the retailer stocks for sale. IME the middleman doesn’t care about the formulation details beyond if it has/doesn’t contain components that are unpopular (such as phthalates). It needs to smell close enough to prior drums to keep customers returning for more and have faith it will work well enough. with my lab relationships I suggest a theme or line in my plan, they send a collection of fragrances that seem to fit that, and at a price point range we agreed upon. I can choose any/all, or reject, or ask for modifications. the labs source the raw materials from a rather small group of global chemical providers. WhenBASF burned, global citral markets were upended. This confirmed the hypothesis that very few companies control the beginning of the fragrance supply chain. Candle science, since you mentioned them, was purchased in the last year or so by a fragrance lab. The timing was about when all of the complaints about common fragrances changing began to pop up in reviews with regulatory. the lab just subbed in their version of a named fragrance and hoped for the best. Fragrance labs of all sizes are being merged and acquired at an alarming rate. When I was experiencing this in my aerospace days, it was a way of “buying back” the same customers from competition. How many of us left retailers when we were burned, only to be stuck with the same supplier when it was acquired by another? wax…. Oh boy this is a big one… Using a popular Golden Brands example of the 4 series of soy, 415, 464, 444, the manufacturing operation was relocated to Central America a few years ago. 2017-ish is memory serves. We all noticed something was terribly wrong when one case of wax would burn ok, then the next would not stay lit at all. There was moisture being injected into the wax during hydrogenation. Simply opening a case never did fix the wax despite that being our only option to “safe” the costly crappy wax. I threw away and gave away tons of useless wax. I hold as truth to myself that Accublend’s darling coco83 was never fixed formula. (I believe that is true for many manufacturers).It varied in smell, texture and appearance early on. When supply chain issues hit their operation we saw all kinds of major things change from lot to lot. The final piece of the equation: source ingredients for all wax manufacturers changed in quality. How many members here were bit by the IGI wax variations? Hint: everyone who used 6006. 4630, 4627, 4786, etc. I firmly believe manufacturers had/have to be savvy with reformulating to stay afloat. Too bad they blame us, the end users, when their formulations do not perform as expected. it would take a team of investigators to get to the bottom of all these stories. Don’t get me started on wicks… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darbla Posted August 27, 2023 Share Posted August 27, 2023 TallTayl, the things you summarized there, that I had been reading over those years were creeping up on us, is a huge part of why I've pretty much given up on this hobby and y'all don't see me around here as much as used to. It was always a hobby that would've been nice if it had turned into a business for me, but I started seeing all that going on before I got to a business stage so I gave up. I really hate it for all of you that have a bigger investment in it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted August 27, 2023 Share Posted August 27, 2023 44 minutes ago, Darbla said: TallTayl, the things you summarized there, that I had been reading over those years were creeping up on us, is a huge part of why I've pretty much given up on this hobby and y'all don't see me around here as much as used to. It was always a hobby that would've been nice if it had turned into a business for me, but I started seeing all that going on before I got to a business stage so I gave up. I really hate it for all of you that have a bigger investment in it. It is discouraging, but we love it so much we find a way. one way is to take a risk and go out on our own bypassing the middleman. Together we can absorb the rush and costs, and get unique things. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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