We don't receive many complaints, when we do they are usually about something outside our direct control; a parcel delayed in transit, a traditional soap that varies slightly from an earlier batch, or a product that is not quite what the customer expected. Most can be resolved promptly or at least explained.
In the past week we have received two complaints about the fragrance.
One customer found the fragrance "unbearably strong, nobody could possibly use it, I wouldn't even give it away" whilst the other said, “Fuming!!! Absolute rubbish!!! Did you forget to put any fragrance in or what??? The shower gel is like water & smells of nothing.”
Two completely different reactions to the same product from the same batch, received within a few days of one another.
Together they are a really good example of why fragrance is so difficult to describe and buy online. The very same fragrance can be overpowering to one person and barely noticeable to another.
Are they really smelling the same thing?
Possibly not. Fragrance is personal, but there is more to it than simply liking or disliking a particular scent. We do not all detect every fragrance material equally, and some people are “scent blind” to particular molecules.
The scientific term is specific anosmia. It does not mean that somebody has a poor sense of smell generally, but that they cannot detect, or are much less or more sensitive to, one particular molecule. Someone can have an extremely good nose for fragrance and still be almost unable to smell an ingredient that is very obvious to somebody else.
There is a genetic element to this because the receptors in our noses vary from one person to another. Coriander is probably the best-known example: some people smell something fresh, green and citrusy, while others pick up a distinctly soapy note. There are similar differences with violet-like beta-ionone and some of the musk molecules widely used in fragrance. One person may detect them very strongly, another only faintly and somebody else not at all.
As a fragrance is a blend of different materials, being less sensitive to one of them can change the whole thing. If that molecule contributes an important part of the fragrance, it may smell less complete or simply different to you. Another person may notice that same part immediately and find it far too powerful.
We tend to assume that everybody is smelling exactly the same fragrance and simply has a different opinion about it, however we may genuinely be smelling different versions of it.
I have a first-hand example of this with one particular Vetiver soap. I can hardly smell its fragrance, even though I can smell the Vetiver soaps from our other makers perfectly well. Everyone else in the team can smell all of them, including the one that smells of almost nothing to me. There is simply something in that particular fragrance that my nose does not pick up.
Why we don’t we rate every fragrance from strong to mild
We are often asked whether we can rate all our fragrances from strong to mild, and this is exactly why we are cautious about doing it.
We write a scent summary for every fragranced product and describe it from our own perspective, often after asking several members of the team to ensure its a balanced description. We can tell you how it compares with others we know although your nose may still have a rather different opinion. A rating of strength would be misleading.
And why is the shower gel so fluid?
The comment that it was “like water” is a separate issue. This particular liquid soap is more fluid than a standard shower gel, which is why we recommend using a pump. It has not been watered down; it simply has not been thickened to give it the familiar consistency of most mass-produced shower gels.
That thickness can make a shower gel feel more concentrated, but it does not necessarily mean that you need less of it. In fact, you will often use two or three times as much as you need when washing with a traditionally made liquid soap.
The ingredients within the fragrance can also affect the finished consistency, so two fragrances made with the same soap base may not be equally thick, and there can be some variation from one batch to the next. These liquid soaps are made in batches by a traditional French soapmaker, rather than mass-produced to give every fragrance and every bottle an identical consistency.
Complaints are rare for us, but they can be useful when they show us that we have not explained something well enough. We cannot tell somebody who finds a fragrance overpowering that it is not strong, or somebody who cannot smell it that it is actually highly fragranced, their experience of it is real. What we can do is describe each product from our own experience, ask several noses when ours disagree and explain anything that might not be quite as expected. These two complaints may appear to contradict one another, but both can be true, —and that is precisely why a fragrance rating will never be as simple as one to ten.