Choosing Fragrances and First-Order Recommendations

September 1, 2026

Choosing your first French soap range can feel slightly daunting when there are so many fragrances available.

The good news is that you don’t need to predict the perfect bestseller from day one.

A good first order should give your customers enough choice to discover what they like while allowing you to learn which fragrances work best in your particular shop.

Start with a balanced fragrance selection

Rather than choosing five very similar scents, we recommend creating a varied selection.

A good starting mix might include:

A classic floral fragrance — such as Lavender or Rose
A fresh fragrance — such as Verbena or Lemon
A fruity fragrance — such as Fig, Peach or Cherry
A warm or sweet fragrance — such as Honey
A traditional or natural option — such as Olive

This gives customers noticeably different choices and makes the display more interesting.

Familiar fragrances are useful

Well-known scents are often reassuring to customers.

Lavender, Rose and Verbena, for example, are immediately recognisable and strongly associated with French and Provençal products.

They can provide a useful foundation for a first range.

But don’t choose only the obvious ones

Some of the pleasure of selling French soap comes from customers discovering fragrances they weren’t expecting.

A slightly more unusual scent can become a surprisingly strong seller simply because customers pick it up, smell it and think:

“Oh, I like that!”

For this reason, we normally recommend including at least one or two less predictable fragrances alongside the familiar favourites.

Colour matters too

Soap is a very visual product.

Customers often approach a display because of the combination of colours before they begin smelling individual fragrances.

Try to create a selection that gives your display some variety rather than choosing several soaps that all look almost identical.

A good mix of fragrance families and colours tends to make the whole range more inviting.

Your shop matters

There is no single perfect fragrance selection for every retailer.

Different shops attract different customers.

For example:

Gift shops may do particularly well with colourful, strongly fragranced soaps that are easy to give as presents.

Lifestyle and homeware shops may benefit from combining fragranced soaps with traditional Savon de Marseille and household products.

Beauty-focused retailers may want to include Donkey Milk, Natural or Aleppo soaps alongside the fragranced range.

Tourist shops often benefit from products with a particularly strong French or Provençal identity.

Start with smaller boxes where possible

Where a range is available in both 24 and 41-soap boxes, we generally suggest starting with the smaller quantity when testing a new fragrance.

Once you know which soaps your customers repeatedly choose, you can move those fragrances into larger reorder quantities.

That reduces the risk of having too much stock tied up in an unproven scent.

Don’t judge too quickly

A fragrance that sells slowly during its first few days may simply need time.

Customers need to see, smell and discover the soaps.

Before dropping a fragrance completely, consider:

moving its position in the display
placing it beside complementary colours
encouraging customers to smell it
including it in a seasonal display
giving it enough time to establish a sales pattern

Keep track of what actually sells

Your customers will eventually tell you which fragrances deserve more space.

After a few orders, identify:

fragrances that sell out first
fragrances customers specifically request
products that are regularly bought as gifts
seasonal favourites
slower sellers

Then build future orders around the evidence rather than assumptions.

A strong soap range normally develops gradually.

Starter Packs

If you’d rather not build your first selection from scratch, our Starter Packs are designed to make getting started easier.

Our French Soap Essentials Starter Pack contains:

5 fragrances
5 boxes of 24 soaps
120 soaps in total
10 display boxes

This gives you a ready-made foundation for a traditional fragranced soap display.

We also offer a Natural & Traditional Soap Starter Pack, combining several of our heritage and specialist ranges for retailers wanting something broader than fragranced soaps alone.