Trendyol vs Your Own E-Commerce Site: Sales Channel Comparison for Fragrance Brands

You've blended your fragrance oil, diluted it with alcohol, and filled the bottles. Now the real question: where does all that effort go? A marketplace or your own site? Both can make you money — but one gives you speed, the other gives you ownership.

This isn't an either/or decision. Most brands run both simultaneously. But if you don't know which to push and when, you'll either get eaten alive by commissions or stay invisible. When the top note fades, the base takes the stage — it's the same with sales channels. The marketplace gets you discovered; your own site gets you grown.

The "free traffic" appearance of a marketplace is deceptive. On every sale, commission, shipping, service fees, and the burden of returns all come out of your margin. With your own site, you have fixed infrastructure and advertising costs — but every additional sale's margin stays with you.

The table below is indicative — commission rates vary by category, campaign, and your individual contract. Always refer to the current platform dashboard for exact figures. The purpose here is to understand the structure of the cost items.

A customer you sell to on a marketplace is the platform's customer. You see the order, but the email list, purchasing habits, and right to remarket largely remain with the platform. On your own site, every piece of data is yours — provided, of course, you operate within the framework of KVKK (Turkey's Personal Data Protection Law) with explicit consent.

In the fragrance oil business, this difference is critical. If a customer loved an "amber-vanilla accord," being able to present them with similar compositions again is worth its weight in gold. That's only possible when the data stays with you.

Brand control works the same way. On a marketplace, your product appears as one card among hundreds of competitors. On your own site, you craft your entire story, right down to the language of the packaging. Just like the decision between contract manufacturing and your own facility: the price of the easy route is loss of control.

A marketplace's strongest card is ready-made traffic. Millions of users are already searching there. On your own site, you have to generate the traffic — through ads, content, and social media. It's a slower build, but a lasting one.

The smart approach is to use both like a bridge: get discovered on the marketplace, delight the customer, tuck your own branded card into the parcel, and migrate the second purchase to your own site. Just like the maceration process — a patient transition turns raw interaction into mature loyalty.

Also watch out for the density pitfall: volumetric shipping weight is calculated against actual weight. Citrus-based fragrance oils are light (specific gravity ~0.84), while heavy resin/synthetic ingredients can exceed 1.10. Two bottles of the same volume can have different shipping costs; factor this into your pricing.

In short: if you're new and unknown, a marketplace makes you visible. As your customer base and brand establish themselves, gradually shift the weight to your own site. Don't abandon either one — change the ratio over time.

Remember: whichever channel you choose, IFRA compliance, product notification, and labelling responsibilities remain with you. Cosmetic fragrance oil is not edible or drinkable — state this clearly on the label. For current product notification and responsible person obligations, refer to up-to-date TİTCK sources — these processes are subject to official fees and are not free.