Which Perfumes to Put in a Perfume Vending Machine, and How to Choose

A SpritzUp machine arrives empty. It comes with five 100 ml containers behind the door, and what goes in them is your decision: which fragrances, where you buy them and what you charge for a spray. You are not tied to anyone’s catalogue or anyone’s prices.

That freedom raises the obvious next question: so which perfumes do I put in it?

This post answers that. It covers how many fragrances the machine takes, how to choose them by the moment your customers are in, which profiles suit which venue, what each one costs you per spray, and how to tell when one should be swapped. The machine itself, its three packages and their prices are on the perfume vending machine page.

Does a Perfume Vending Machine Come With Perfume?

Ours does not. The machine ships with its five containers, and you fill them with the fragrances you choose.

Two details are worth knowing before you buy anything:

• The bottles in the lit display are for show. The fragrance that comes out of the buttons is in the five 100 ml containers behind the door. The display is there to look good, not to be refilled.
• The touchscreen is what customers choose from. You add each fragrance on the platform with its name, its photo and its price per spray, and that is what people see when they walk up to the machine.

You also do not choose alone. During onboarding we guide you through choosing your fragrances, deciding which ones to offer and setting how much each spray gives.

How Many Fragrances Go in a Perfume Vending Machine?

A SpritzUp machine holds up to five, one per button. On the platform, each button is an aisle numbered 1 to 5, and you put one fragrance on each.

You do not have to fill all five on day one. You switch on the aisles that match the fragrances you have and leave the rest off, so a machine can open with three or four and add the others later.

Here is what I would do, though: fill all five if you can. Five buttons give people a real choice, and a choice is part of what makes somebody stop at the machine instead of walking past it.

How Do You Choose the Fragrances?

Start from the moment your customers are in, not from your own favourite perfume.

Somebody leaving a gym wants something different from somebody about to walk back onto a dance floor. The simplest way to plan for that is to sort fragrances into three profiles by their olfactive family, which is the family a fragrance belongs to by how it smells. This is the same rule we use when we put together fragrance guides for our customers:

• Fresh. Aquatic and fresh families: marine notes, citrus and salt. Light and clean, made for the daytime and for after sport.
• Versatile. Aromatic and aromatic-woody families: fresh at the start, with a woody base. They work at any hour and in almost any venue.
• Warm. Spicy and oriental families: cinnamon, vanilla, cocoa, leather, amber. More intense and sweeter, made for the night.

You do not need to be an expert to use them: if the description talks about the sea, citrus or something clean, it is fresh; if it talks about vanilla, amber or spice, it is warm.

These profiles are a recommendation, not sales data. They describe what each kind of fragrance is made for. Your own sales will tell you what your customers actually pick, and the platform shows you that from the first sale.

Which Fragrances Suit Which Venue?

Matching the profiles to the places a machine usually goes gives you a starting point. This is our recommendation, by each profile’s olfactive family:

The pattern underneath is simple. If your venue is busiest during the day, start with fresh and versatile fragrances. If it is busiest at night, start with warm and versatile ones.

Here is what I would do with five buttons: put two or three on the profile your venue has most, and always keep at least one versatile fragrance. A versatile one is the safe choice for the customer who does not know what they want, and in a venue that is busy both day and night it covers both crowds.

Where you put the machine matters as much as what is in it. If you are still deciding on the spot, our guide on where to put a perfume vending machine goes through it.

Well-Known Fragrances or Ones Nobody Has Heard Of?

When we put together a fragrance guide for one of our customers this October, we chose twelve well-known fragrances from different houses and in different styles, and grouped them by the three profiles above.

We chose well-known ones for a practical reason: a customer standing at the machine decides in a few seconds. A name they recognise, on a screen that shows the photo of the bottle, is an easy yes. That is our reasoning, not a figure we have measured.

Whatever you choose, the name and photo you upload are what people see, so upload the real name and a clean photo of the real bottle.

What Does Each Fragrance Cost You per Spray?

Less than most people expect. A 100 ml bottle costs about €50–70, and in a SpritzUp machine it gives up to 900 sprays:

This is arithmetic on those two published figures, not a measurement from a particular machine. The count per bottle depends on the spray length you set: on the platform, the delivery time decides how much fragrance each spray gives, and a longer spray uses more. Our platform guide suggests using the same value for every fragrance, so that every button behaves the same.

Because the cost per spray is a few cents either way, a more expensive fragrance does not have to mean a different price. Each fragrance does have its own selling price on the platform, though, so you can charge more for one if you want to. Most operators charge €1.50–3.00 per spray, and our guide on how much to charge per spray works through where to sit in that band.

How Do You Know Which Fragrance Is Selling?

From the platform, without going to the machine.

• Sales Orders lists every sale, one by one, with the fragrance that was sold, the amount, the payment method and its status. Filter it by date and you can see which button people press most.
• The low-stock warning. For each button you enter how many sprays the bottle holds and a warning level, and the platform tells you when a fragrance drops below it.

I would not expect people to spread their choices evenly. One fragrance usually wins, and that is the bottle that empties first. So keep a spare of your best seller somewhere you can reach it.

I would give a new line-up a few weeks before judging it. A fragrance that nobody picks in the first days may simply be one people have not noticed yet.

When Should You Swap a Fragrance?

When the sales show one button falling well behind the others for weeks, that button is worth a change.

Swapping is part remote and part at the machine. On the platform, you add the new fragrance to your catalogue with its photo and price, then use Remove from shelf on the old one and Put on shelf to give the button its new fragrance. At the machine, you change the bottle in that container, the same visit you would make for any refill.

One platform detail catches people out: the photo and description are copied to the button at the moment you assign the fragrance. If you change a photo later, take the fragrance off the shelf and put it back on, or the machine keeps showing the old one.

The Short Version

A SpritzUp machine does not come with perfume. You choose up to five fragrances, one per button, buy them yourself and set what each spray costs.

Choose by the moment your customers are in. Fresh fragrances suit daytime and after sport, warm ones suit the night, and versatile ones work almost anywhere, so keep at least one versatile fragrance whatever your venue. A 100 ml bottle at about €50–70 gives up to 900 sprays, which puts the fragrance in each spray at a few cents.

Once the machine is running, the platform shows you which fragrance sells. Keep a spare of the winner, and swap the one that falls behind.

To see how the whole machine works, read how a perfume vending machine works. The packages and prices are on the perfume vending machine page, and you can run your own numbers in the calculator.