If you have a lot of fragrances, you probably know Scentsy.
Scentsy specializes in making waxes, oils, body products, cleaning products, and air purifiers that produce its trademarked fragrances.
Their goal is to help connect people with past, positive, memories through fragrance alone.
When shopping on Scentsy, however, you’ll quickly find that their fragrance products tend to cost a bit more than others.
What about Scentsy makes its products so expensive?
Why Is Scentsy So Expensive? (10 Reasons)
Scentsy products range from as little as $5 to over $200.
Its warmers regularly cost anywhere from $25 to $75.
Several factors such as the fact that their products come from the United States, their affiliation with certain intellectual properties, and their collectability make Scentsy’s products expensive.
Let’s look at these factors in more detail.
1. Licensed Partnerships
One of the reasons Scentsy is expensive is because it partners with certain brands.
In particular, some of its biggest licensed partnerships include:
- Disney
- Harry Potter
- NFL
Within Disney, Scentsy also has licenses with several of its own IPs.
For example, it has partnerships with Star Wars and Marvel.
This makes Scentsy expensive for a few reasons.
The first is that some partnerships require a certain percentage of the sales to go to the partner.
Other partnerships allow a company to use licensed material for a certain price.
Whatever the deal Scentsy made with Disney, Harry Potter, and the NFL, they’re not going to make as much money on those products as they would their own products.
To correct this, Scentsy markets those products at more expensive prices.
That way, even though they might have to give money to the partner, they’re still making enough from the sale.
Another reason Scentsy’s partnerships make it more expensive is because of the marketing.
People love Disney, Harry Potter, and the NFL.
If they can get a candle or product with their favorite character or sports team on it, they’re going to buy it.
That means Scentsy is going to earn more money on those particular items because they sell more.
They’re recognizable and fun.
Since Scentsy knows those products are probably going to sell well, they put them at a slightly more expensive price point than its other items.
2. Affiliation With Disney Resorts
Scentsy doesn’t just have a licensing agreement with Disney.
It also has an association with its resorts.
Disney Resorts have a reputation for being expensive.
You get the full Disney treatment when staying at one of its famous resorts.
The guest service tends to be extremely helpful.
The rooms are usually spacious and themed.
Each resort also usually has a restaurant that serves incredible food.
You might also find that your room smells particularly wonderful.
Even in other areas of the resort, there may be a unique scent that makes the area seem luxurious.
There’s a good chance that the fragrances you’re smelling come from Scentsy.
Scentsy provides certain products to Disney resorts.
This makes the store expensive for a few reasons.
The first is that it connects your memories to your Disney experience.
Some people are willing to pay more money to rekindle those fond memories.
Secondly, because Disney resorts tend to make people think of luxury, the fragrance is also seen as luxurious.
Scentsy is thus able to charge luxury-level prices on some of its products.
There’s also just the association with Disney.
Practically everything at Disney costs more.
Since Scentsy has an association with Disney, some buyers may think that it’s just the Disney price they’re paying for their products.
Scentsy is expensive because it’s the fragrance of choice in Disney resorts.
3. Wax Lasts A Long Time
Scentsy is also expensive because its wax lasts a long time.
It uses a thick wax that takes a while to burn through.
The same goes for its warmers.
Its products simply last longer.
This makes Scentsy expensive for a few reasons.
The first is that people enjoy products that last a long time.
They don’t want to spend a good amount of money on something that only lasts a day, for example.
Most people want to get their money’s worth.
Since Scentsy’s products tend to last longer than the average scent product, people are more willing to spend more for their products.
This reinforces the price since Scentsy knows its customers are still buying from them.
Another reason is that customers end up buying fewer products.
When a product lasts longer, an individual needs to buy fewer of them.
That means Scentsy isn’t earning as much money as it might if it sold waxes that don’t last a long time.
To make up for that loss of money, they have to put a higher price tag on their products.
They focus on quality rather than quantity to earn their profit.
Other companies tend to focus on quantity.
They produce a lot of smaller and lesser quality scents with the expectation that customers will need to buy more scents sooner rather than later.
They’re able to put a cheaper price tag on their products because they’re selling their scents in bulk.
Scentsy’s products are bigger and last longer.
Since they’re able to last longer, they have to make more money per product.
To do so, they sell their products at higher prices.
4. Lifetime Replacement Warranty
Another reason Scentsy is expensive is that it has a lifetime replacement warranty.
If you buy a product from Scentsy and discover that it’s defective, you can return the item to Scentsy and get a new one for free.
You don’t have to pay for the replacement product.
Scentsy doesn’t provide cash returns.
Instead, they’ll replace your product with the same one to ensure you still get the experience that you wanted originally.
This makes Scentsy expensive because they’re putting a bit of risk on their company by providing a lifetime period on it.
In most cases, customers know immediately if their product has a defect or not.
However, they may choose not to report the defect until a few months after purchasing it.
Some customers may buy a Scentsy product as a gift.
As such, the recipient may not receive the gift until several months after the purchase.
When they open it, they may find that the product has defects.
Even if it’s several months later, you can still report the product to Scentsy.
They’ll give you a free replacement.
This may end up making Scentsy lose money.
Since they’re not able to charge you for the new product, they have to dip into their reserves to get you a new one.
To ensure they have enough reserves to handle this sort of situation, they put a higher price tag on their products.
5. Processing Fees For Defected Products
Scentsy is also expensive because it does charge processing fees for certain defective products.
There are a few products that Scentsy sells that they guarantee will be defect-free.
Those products include:
- Scentsy diffusers
- Scentsy Go
- Scentsy Go Solid
- Scentsy air purifiers
They state that the products should remain defect free for as long as the product lifetime.
However, in the rare case that you do end up with a product defect in one of those products, you can return it.
Scentsy will give you another product in return.
The problem with Scentsy’s return policy for these products is that they come with a processing fee.
For some of the products, the processing fee is quite high.
According to Scentsy’s policies, here are the fees you’ll need to pay if you want to return one of the products listed above:
- Scentsy Air Purifier: $45
- Scentsy Go: $18
- Scentsy Go Solid: $15
- Deluxe Diffuser: $20
- Mini Fan Diffuser: $5
- Premium Diffuser: $20
- Wall Fan Diffuser: $12
This makes Scentsy expensive because you not only bought a defective product, but you also have to pay an additional fee to get Scentsy to give you one that works.
6. American Manufacturing
Scentsy produces its wax in America.
It also makes its products in America.
Since they use American manufacturing, it means they have higher labor costs.
American workers have higher wages than some other countries.
Since the American dollar tends to be higher than other currencies, Americans need to earn certain wages to afford to live in their own country.
Many also expect benefits, retirement savings, and health insurance.
Without those things, employers aren’t always able to entice American workers into working for them.
Or, at the very least, the workers might not be of the best quality.
Those sorts of expenses require the company to add more costs to its operations.
They need a safe environment in which to work.
They need to pay their workers fairly.
They also need to provide benefits.
Since labor costs are quite expensive, they have to make a certain amount of revenue to cover those costs and make a profit.
Scentsy does so by selling its products at higher prices.
A lot of consumers also like to support American-made products.
They don’t mind paying higher prices because they’re supporting American workers.
Scentsy understands that, too, which is why they’re mindful of how expensive their products become.
After all, their customers are only willing to pay prices that are so high.
7. Rare Fragrances
You can buy a vanilla-scented candle almost anywhere, but you can’t buy some of Scentsy’s fragrances anywhere but at Scentsy.
That makes the company expensive because they, essentially, have a monopoly on certain fragrances.
Their partnerships with certain licenses add to this.
When they come out with a product that’s supposed to smell like Gryffindor from Harry Potter, for example, that’s not a scent that you can get anywhere else.
The same goes for some of its original scents.
You can only get them at Scentsy.
This makes Scentsy expensive because if you really want that particular fragrance, you have no choice but to buy it from them.
You can’t get it anywhere else.
Another reason their fragrances make them expensive is that they use unique ingredients.
Scentsy isn’t afraid to push boundaries and try new things.
They might use an ingredient that other fragrance companies would have normally stayed away from.
Rare ingredients cost money.
For one, there usually aren’t that many of those ingredients available on the market.
The particular ingredient may only bloom once a year, for example, if it’s a rare flower.
Other fragrance companies may also want to get their hands on certain ingredients.
It becomes a race to see who can put in the highest bid to get the ingredient.
If Scentsy has to pay a lot of money to use certain ingredients, they’re going to have to sell the product at an expensive price.
It covers the cost of manufacturing the product.
Scentsy is expensive because it uses rare fragrances that sometimes use expensive ingredients.
8. Subscriptions
Another reason Scentsy is expensive is that it offers a subscription service.
It calls it the Scentsy Club.
While the subscription service doesn’t cost you anything extra to enroll in it, it does make shopping at Scentsy more expensive.
That’s because of its nature.
The Scentsy Club subscription is a program where you pick things that you want Scentsy to regularly ship to you.
You can choose how often they send you products, but it’s usually every month.
This is expensive because the subscription plan essentially has you buying their products every month.
Even if you haven’t used up all of your previous shipment, you’ll get your next box of products.
At some point, you might find yourself with more wax and warmers than you know what to do with.
The subscription box is a way to get you to keep spending money at Scentsy even when you may not necessarily need the products.
If you forget about it, you could end up spending a lot of money each month without even realizing it.
The subscription service also makes Scentsy expensive because it requires workers to put those boxes together.
They have to fill the box with your order each month and ensure it gets to you.
That means more labor costs.
Since it drives up the price of operations, Scentsy has to have higher prices to cover it.
9. Shipping And Distribution Costs
As with any business, the cost of shipping and distribution also makes Scentsy expensive.
Scentsy doesn’t use other carriers to ship its products.
It has its own warehouses and distribution centers.
This makes the business more expensive because that’s more people that they have to employ.
If they were to contract shipping out to a third-party carrier, they might be able to pay a yearly price.
They could even get different quotes from different carriers to go with the cheapest option.
Instead, Scentsy takes all those costs on itself.
Everything from paying truck drivers to truck maintenance is covered by Scentsy.
Because it makes their business more expensive to run, Scentsy has more expensive prices.
10. Collectible Warmers
A final reason Scentsy is expensive is due to its collectability.
It makes several products, particularly licensed products, that some might see as a collectible.
NFL enthusiasts, for example, might find that the NFL warmers are particularly collectible since each team has its own.
Disney fans might find certain Disney products collectible.
That’s because Scentsy releases those products as parts of collections.
They’re only available for a certain amount of time.
Collectibles are always expensive because they’re small in number.
Only a few people can get their hands on them before they’re gone.
If Scentsy ever makes it big, those collectibles could be worth something one day.
As such, savvy collectors might be in the market to pick them up for a good investment later.
Some of the items that you buy at Scentsy are expensive because they have a collectible price tag on them.
Conclusion
Scentsy is a fragrance company that makes warmers and waxes that don’t use flames to burn through the wax.
Their affiliation with Disney and other licensed companies tends to make their prices expensive.
The fact that they’re an American-made business and have their own distribution centers also makes them expensive.
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