Hacker News Reader

For anyone looking to save money, don't get the brand name perfumes.

Instead, get something from a good clone house. They have special equipment to analyse the ingredients of the branded perfumes and end up making exactly the same thing.

Stay away from lower quality copies that aren't made by clone houses (i.e random "inspired by" stuff from Amazon).

View on HN

They are not making exactly the same thing. That might be their marketing claim, but it is false. Unles they somehow discovered a way to do cheap low-volume synthesis of arbitrary organic molecules, which alone would probably get them a Nobel or two, and the analysis claim is also only loosely based on reality.

The only reason perfume manufacturers are willing to pay more than gold price (in weight) for some ingredients is exactly that they can't be economically synthesized.

Where can such clone houses be found? Market research with a search engine is impossible these days.

I was able to find some local ones here in Melbourne, Australia with a simple Google search.

There are tons of Youtube channels and Reddit threads dedicated to clones. My protocol is, if the originals sell at outrageous prices, I go for clones. They are good enough for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com