Effective Immediately, Solstice Scents will be discontinuing our 10 ml blue perfume roll on bottles due to occasional leaking in transit. The full details of this transition is posted just below.
Remaining 10 ml inventory will be listed 1/30 for 3 hours (6pm to 9 pm EST):After posting this in the Facebook group, I began to receive a lot of messages wanting to buy our remaining stock of remaining 10mls, even if they leak. I cannot invoice everyone that has been asking so I'm going to
open the site at 6 pm EST tomorrow night until 9 pm EST (January 30th) for those of you who wish to purchase these bottles "at your own risk". We will not guarantee these bottles and it's consumer's prerogative if you wish to purchase these bottles. We only have so much stock left. Any that does not sell will be decanted to the smaller bottles when they arrive and be listed on the site a few at a time until we're all done. This will likely not be fully complete in time for our Valentine's Day release (which will occur on 2/12 or 2/13, date TBA) but a portion of the catalog will be ready at that time. The list of perfume that will be available in 10 ml bottle tomorrow is as follows:
https://solsticescents.forumotion.com/t698-remaining-10-ml-inventory-list-for-release-tomorrow-6-to-9-pm-est#4696History of the problems with our 10 ml bottles and what we have done to try to rectify the problem:We have carried our 10 ml cobalt roll on bottles since 2009 and have enjoyed a reputation for having roll on bottles that did not leak and were handy to carry on the go. In 2014, we received a few reports about the 10 ml bottles leaking in transit. This issue was not consistent or prevalent but it was concerning enough that we contacted our supplier to report the problem. We sent them examples of our bottles and suggested that the batch we purchased may have contained defective bottles. We were sent a quantity of new bottles. This batch also contained bottles with the same problem. We contacted the manufacturer of the 10 ml bottles to lodge a complaint in the hopes they would check to make sure there was not an issue with their molds or the roller ball/plastic plug inserts. They informed us that they could not take our message and that any complaints must be submitted from the supplier to the manufacturer so as not to breach contract between them. After many contacts back and forth with the supplier, they refused to pass on our feedback to the manufacturer. The issue remained unresolved. We attempted to purchase other similar bottles from other manufacturers and these leaked even worse than our current bottles. We then determined the issue was likely faulty plugs/roller balls so we began to purchase the stainless roller balls and plugs from another supplier. We enjoyed success without receiving contacts from customers about leaks and believed the problem to be solved. Eventually, we began to receive a few contacts about bottles leaking in transit again. The issue was much less widespread and only hit or miss so we continued carrying the stainless roll ons. The frequency of the complaints have increased to a point recently that action must be taken. We cannot continue to carry a faulty product and allow customers to receive a perfume that has leaked in transit. Therefore, we will be transferring our entire catalog to 5 ml cobalt blue roll on bottles. The premium bottles will continue to be offered in clear roll on bottles.
For the past month we have been contacting various glass suppliers and manufacturers in search of a different bottle solution. This process is still underway and we hope to have a bottle that fits our needs and vision in the next few months. The 5 ml roll on is intended to be a temporary replacement for our 10 mls until we have solidified a solution for our new permanent perfume bottle. Perfumes that are transitioning from the 10 ml to 5ml bottle size will be slightly reduced in price. The website will undergo some modifications as we edit each listing to reflect the size change to 5 ml and also include a new lead photo to showcase the actual bottle you will be receiving. We will keep the product scenes that reflect the scent as secondary photos but will not leave them as the lead product photo as we don't wish to cause confusion. We want to make sure that our regular and new customers alike can see the change in size plainly so that when they receive their orders, they won't be confused when the bottle they are used to receiving is not the one in their package. After a few weeks we may put the lead image back to the photos you're used to seeing since the 5ml cobalt bottle looks very similar. All listings are edited to showcase the smaller size of 5ml and hopefully that will be enough to prevent someone accidentally purchasing what they think will be a 10ml, if they did not see the newsletter and social media announcements regarding the change.
As we transition the majority of the catalog to the 5ml cobalt glass bottles, many of these perfumes will be temporarily unavailable. We endeavor to have this transition complete as soon as possible and project that most of the catalog will be available again in the next few weeks.
Further info on why the transition is so abrupt:This transition was planned but not until we had our new perfume bottles solidified. We have been trying to find a different bottle that meets our needs and vision. The plan was to find it and then retake all of our photos, order custom boxes for it and most importantly, give notice instead of abruptly discontinuing the bottles. We thought we could l make it with our current bottles for the next few months but this past week we've received more complaints when this has been going on on and off and we know we just cant. Because every time someone contacts us we have to handle it and we just can't afford to keep going this way, not to mention it's completely unfair to customers.
10 ml perfume boxes will be for sale:Since this wasn't planned at this stage, we already ordered 1000 boxes for the 10ml perfume oils and the order has already been completed (the boxes have already been made) without any way to cancel it. These will be listed on the site for much less than our cost for those of you who wish to have them.
Pricing on the 5ml bottles:After posting this message in the Facebook group, someone questioned why the price of the 10ml perfumes would not be cut in half since the size was being halved to 5ml. My response is that the price of the 10ml has been too low for the volume for so long and we cannot reconcile selling $7.50 perfume in the 5ml. The numbers do not add up for us for the amount of work involved and the expense of ingredients and packaging. Our contemporaries sell 5ml for the same price as our 10ml and we feel our quality is on par.
tl;dr We are discontinuing the 10 ml cobalt blue bottles and will be putting those perfumes in 5ml cobalt blue bottles at a *slightly* reduced price until we have finalized our permanent new perfume bottles that we're currently working on. The "premium" perfumes will continue to be offered in clear 5ml bottles since that is what they are pictured as in their listings. Remaining inventory of 10 mls listed tomorrow from 6 to 9 pm EST for those willing to purchase at their own risk.
