The Good Scents Company

The Good Scents Company began in 1980 as a home-based fragrance business, when its founder started organising supplier paperwork and index cards into a self-taught dBase database to keep track of raw materials and creative notes. In 1994, after discovering the internet, the founder began publishing that database as web data sheets, and it has run continuously since, with the site's own copyright notice now reading "1980-2025."

Unlike Fragrantica or Parfumo, which catalogue finished perfumes, The Good Scents Company (often abbreviated TGSC) catalogues the individual materials perfumers and flavourists build with: naturals such as essential oils, absolutes, concretes, isolates and extracts, and synthetic aroma chemicals, all searchable by CAS number, FEMA number, odour type, flavour use, or cosmetic function. Individual material pages carry physical data such as flash point, density and polarity alongside odour descriptions and recommended usage strength, functioning as a free, lightweight reference for a specific-molecule lookup where paid industry databases are the usual alternative.

The site is funded by banner sponsorship from raw-material suppliers and distributors rather than subscriptions, which keeps it free to use but means its homepage and category pages carry a visible run of supplier adverts. It has an unmistakably dated, early-web interface, and because it has effectively been maintained by one person's ongoing effort rather than a funded editorial operation, entries vary in depth and there's no visible peer-review or citation trail behind individual odour descriptions - they read as practitioner shorthand rather than lab-verified specifications. For a UK reader trying to understand what a specific listed ingredient in a fragrance actually smells like or where it sits chemically, though, it remains one of the most complete free references of its kind.