[Review] Good Ol'Factory perfumes

 

• Name: Good Ol'Factory

• Location: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

• Known for: "Handcrafted personal and home fragrance"
  

TL;DR: While I didn't get along with all of these, I will commend the brand for a few unique takes on notes I love and see often. It was fun to try them, but even so, I won't be pulling these into normal rotation due to the format.

As always, you can read more about how I review scents here.

 

Scents

🖤Butterbrew

(Rich butterscotch toffee, creamy foam, and fizzy bubbles)

Wow, those bubbles are really overpowering. The foam and bubbly effervescence are all I can really smell, and it has a very clean feel to it. After six hours or so, you can start to detect the warm butterscotch among the bubbles.

Trying again, I don't love this enough to keep it. I like all of these things in isolation but strongly prefer my fizz alongside fruit or cooler notes. This warm, sugary feeling is not my favorite iteration of a fizzy drink scent.

Longevity: 12+ hours

 

🖤Dobby

(Sugary cereal blend, sticky spun sugar, and fresh citrus linen) 

Starts off like cereal, no doubt. Maybe Fruity Pebbles? You can also smell the fresh, lemony laundry just behind the cereal. The citrus takes over after an hour or so as the cereal fades, and it becomes all cotton candy after about six hours. It's a good blend of being very sweet and gourmand while not feeling like too much.

Trying again, I still feel exactly the same way about this. It's a clean laundry with lemon detergent, plus sweet and fruity cereal. It's a unique take on laundry smells, which I love to experience but have never enjoyed enough to keep. This one's a first! I love it and am glad I remembered it. 

Longevity: 8+ hours

🖤Dolores

(Pink sugar lemon, caramelized brown sugar, fluffy pink cotton candy, pink chiffon vanilla sugar)

Pink sugar + lemon is definitely where my nose takes this. While drying, it's like fresh cotton candy. Dry, it has the perfumey quality of that famous Pink Sugar plus a slight sour note from the lemon. I also smell the brown sugar and slight toastiness.

Trying again, I really am getting just Pink Sugar - incredibly musky and 'perfumey' cotton candy. It's not the best thing ever, but I do really like it. Keeping for now.

Longevity: 8+ hours

 

🖤Hogsmeade

(Berry puff pastry, fresh brewed coffee, crisp candied green apple, warm butterbeer)

Ew, ew, no. The initial smell is berries and some sort of fried food, maybe like a funnel cake. It's so realistic while also smelling like a scented doll head; it makes me queasy. The coffee is not helping, either, since it's a little bit bitter. It smells both warm and somehow tepid, like it has been sitting out awhile. Another part of this I don't like. Yuck. The apple sits underneath all of it, a bit sour but mostly away from everything else. I don't smell the butterbeer specifically but do get that gross warmth overall, so I can only imagine that it is adding to the overall feel.

Longevity: 8+ hours 

 

🖤Fiji Beach

(Salty ocean waves, clean citrus, light floral blossoms, tropical breeze, and mellow pineapple)

This has a beachy, airy smell like lightly-salty air or ocean water. There is definitely a fruit behind it, like pineapple or melon. It stays linear as long as it wears until something sweet and more creamy comes out after a few hours - it might be vanilla. I remember trying it again and deciding to get rid of it, but I don't remember why. I think the florals had come out more over time and gave me a little bit of a headache alongside the strong aquatic notes.

Longevity: 8+ hours

 

🖤Slytherin

(Black salt & damp wood, scorched amber, clean herbs, salt-encrusted driftwood)

My SO says this smells like men's deodorant, which it does. I like it! It has a very stereotypical masculine vibe to it, which is a little salty and smells like some kind of wood. I don't smell the amber much at all, but I can say that it's more neutral/warm than some of the other notes might suggest. It's very fresh while having a depth to it. That said, I have given it to said SO, who wears more of these notes than I do.

Longevity: 8.5+ hours

Success rate: 2.5/6 = ~42%

(I counted Slytherin as 0.5 for liking it but not keeping it.)

 

Thoughts

I bought these scents in 2019 after seeing someone post about a new perfume house. I was still building my collection at the time and really enjoyed the aesthetic of their PotterHead collection. (Note that I have developed more feelings on the topic since then; I no longer financially support anything related to J.K. Rowling due to her persistent transphobia, and I also feel that Harry Potter has been done for inspiration at least 2,000 times too many. New ideas, please!). I selected these scents due to my love for gourmand, foody smells, and I got Fiji Beach as a free sample. Other than the inspiration, the most memorable part of these perfumes to me is the format. The bottles have spritzers, which made me think that they'll be typical alcohol-based perfumes, yet the ingredients also include an oil base. This means that spraying them will leave an oil stain if it gets on clothes, so you can't use these as you would a typical spray perfume. I haven't worn them much for that reason, though the performance is good.

I don't have many significant thoughts about the experience of ordering, as it was smooth and uneventful. My order shipped in just over a week, and it arrived in about the same amount of time. Coming from Canada (though things were quite different with shipping back then), it was pretty fast. Everything arrived safely; each scent had its own cardboard box with scent notes, which I appreciated. I did have one interaction with the owner a year after I ordered, when I reached out to ask for the notes on Fiji Beach. Tahira was kind and helpful! As a completionist when it comes to details, I greatly appreciated the help.

It doesn't really seem like this brand is making scents anymore, nor can I find clear records of anything past this first collection. They seem to have switched entirely to scented home crystals, though the shop is closed completely at the time of posting. I don't think I'll be purchasing anything soon, though the idea of non-messy home fragrance is intriguing. TBD. For now, I'll enjoy my bottles of Dolores and Dobby (though I'm still gonna cringe at the names).

Also, I am noticing that the items in the photo are not alphabetized. Whoops. I still think it's cute.