Why extrait costs what it costs

The difference between an eau de toilette and an extrait de parfum is, on paper, just a percentage: roughly 5–15% aromatic compound against 20–30%. In practice that percentage is the single biggest lever on a bottle’s raw material cost, because the alcohol and water carrying the fragrance are cheap and the aromatic compound — especially natural absolutes like rose or jasmine, which can run into thousands of currency units per kilogram — is not. Doubling the concentration doesn’t double the retail price, but it comes close to doubling the actual cost of goods.

This is also why reformulating a formula down to a lighter concentration is never as simple as adding more alcohol: the ratio between top, heart and base materials in the original formula was balanced for that specific concentration, and diluting it uniformly usually makes the lightest, most volatile top notes vanish disproportionately fast, leaving a base-heavy, off-balance result.