Every decant shop looks much the same from the outside: clean photography, a long list of houses, the word authentic somewhere near the top. The things that actually separate them are not on the listing. Four of them can be checked before you spend anything.
Run the per-millilitre number first
Divide price by millilitres, for the decant and for the bottle it was drawn from, and set the two side by side. Xerjoff Naxos is $383 for 100 ml as our made to order bottle, or $3.83 per millilitre. The 5 ml decant is $34, or $6.80. An honest decant sits above the bottle's own rate, because one bottle becomes twenty atomisers, twenty labels, twenty boxes and twenty payment fees — twenty of everything except the bottle.
A decant priced below the bottle's rate means someone upstream absorbed a cost. Sometimes that is a clearance bottle. More often it is sourcing outside authorised channels. The full table is in why some decants cost so little.
Ask where the bottle came from
A seller who buys at retail can describe the route in specifics you could challenge: which bottle, bought from whom, sealed or not when it was opened, what the transfer is done with. Vagueness is the tell, and it is the cheapest thing to spot. We pay full retail for every bottle we open, and the bench process is written out in full.
Check how they are allowed to ship it
Perfume is a flammable liquid, classified UN1266 under international transport rules. It cannot be posted like a paperback. Sellers who ignore that either mislabel parcels or watch them stopped somewhere between the two of you. Our shipments move by DHL Express under DHL Dangerous Goods requirements, with the applicable IATA standards for air and ADR for road. Customs duties and import taxes are paid before the parcel leaves, so nothing is owed at your door.
Read reviews you can trace
A review count is the easiest number on a page to move. What is harder to arrange is a third party confirming the ratio. Judge.me lists us as a Gold Transparent Shop, which means at least 95% of the verified reviews we receive get published — including the ones that are not five stars.
Then choose a size, not a brand
A 2 ml settles a question inside a week. A 5 ml lets you wear something through a season and find out whether you reach for it. A 10 ml is already a small commitment. Start smaller than feels satisfying: the point of a decant is to be wrong cheaply. Browse the full range when you know what you are testing for.
Common questions
What size should I start with? A 2 ml, unless you already know the house suits you. Four wears is enough to decide, and a proper testing method gets you there faster than a bigger vial does.
How can I tell a decant has not been diluted? You cannot, from a photograph. What you can do is ask the seller to describe the transfer, and compare the per-millilitre rate against the bottle. Dilution is a pricing decision before it is a chemical one, so it usually shows up in the arithmetic first.
Do decants have a shelf life? Kept away from heat, light and humidity, a sealed decant holds its quality for a long time. A drawer is better than a windowsill. Because the juice is drawn from an authentic bottle it ages the way the original does.
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