Absolute Aromas
Competitive pricing review · August 2026

We know what our oils are worth.
The market disagrees.

We measured every price five UK competitors publish, against ours, on the oils we both sell. 1,275 listings. 422 confirmed matches. This is what came back.

Twelve slides. Roughly three minutes.
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Of the 53 oils we can compare like for like, there is not one where we are the cheapest on the shelf.

Not one. And on 15 of those 53, we are the most expensive option a customer can find.

And yet

We are not a premium-priced brand either. Tisserand charges 71% more than us for the same oil.

Tisserand vs us
+71%
Neal's Yard vs us
+28%
Oils where we undercut Tisserand
29 of 33

The brand closest to us on quality is also the one furthest from us on price, and it is above us, not below.

The whole market on one line

Two brands sit above us. Three sit below. Nobody sits with us.

Each bar is where that brand usually prices, as a percentage of us. The teal line is our price. Amphora's bar is the narrow one, and that matters more than it looks.

The one to watch

Amphora Aromatics undercuts us on 47 of 57 oils, and almost never by much. That is not coincidence.

Their usual price vs ours
93%
Half their range sits between
84% – 95%
Oils compared
57

They carry our grades, our sizes and our trade model, and they price in a tight band just underneath us. They are shadowing our price list. If we move, they can follow.

The quiet one

Amour Natural is cheaper than us on 44 of 46 oils. We are cheaper than them on none.

Not a single oil in the comparison where we win on price. They sell only through practitioners and independent health shops, which is exactly the shelf we are fighting for, and they are not on Amazon or in the chains, so nobody is comparing them to anyone but us.

A shop owner choosing between two trade suppliers sees our RRP and theirs side by side, with no brand halo to separate them. Their typical price is 83% of ours and they never go above us, so on price alone the answer is the same every time. That is a distribution argument, not a pricing one.

15 oils where we are the dearest on the shelf

A handful of prices are doing real damage. Thyme is nearly three times the cheapest rival.

These are like-for-like: same oil, same bottle size, published retail price. The percentage is the cheapest rival as a share of our price.

The clearest example

Thyme, 10ml. Same oil, same size, published prices.

Absolute Aromas
£13.40
T010 · Thyme ct thymol · 10ml
versus
Amour Natural
£4.95
Thyme essential oil (white) · 10ml

£8.45 apart on one bottle. Either our cost base genuinely justifies that, in which case we should be able to say why, or this is a price nobody has looked at in years.

The part nobody can undercut

On 76 of our 163 priced essential oils, not one of these five competitors sells the oil at all.

76 oils no competitor stocks 87 oils where someone competes

Nearly half the range has no reference price in the market, so there is nothing for a customer to compare and nothing for a buyer to beat us down with. Breadth is the asset here, and only Amphora comes close to matching it.

The uncomfortable question

We hold the credentials of a premium brand and the prices of a value one.

Thirty-two years. GC-MS on every batch. The chair of the Aromatherapy Trade Council and a board member of IFEAT. And a price list that sits 41% below Tisserand and only 7% above Amphora.

Both cannot be right. Either we are leaving money on the table across the range, or we are a different brand than we believe we are.

What I would do

Three things, in this order.

01

Review the 15 outliers, not the price list

Thyme, Oregano, Juniperberry, Spearmint and Sandalwood are where we are visibly the most expensive option. Five decisions, not four hundred. Check each against its actual cost base and either defend it or move it.

02

Treat Amphora as the reference competitor, not Tisserand

We benchmark ourselves against Tisserand on quality, and that is fair. But on price the brand that actually moves our volume is Amphora, sitting 7% under us on nearly everything. Any price change should be measured against them.

03

Price with confidence where nobody can check

On the 76 oils no competitor stocks there is no reference price to lose against. On the 24 oils that four or five rivals stock, there is nowhere to hide. Those two halves of the range should not be priced by the same rule.

Where these numbers come from

Published retail prices only, and the honest cut of them.

Captured 21 August 2026 from Amphora Aromatics, Tisserand, Amour Natural, Naissance and Neal's Yard Remedies, from the prices they publish on their own websites. No trade or wholesale prices anywhere: we cannot see theirs and have not looked.

Every comparison is one of our oils against theirs, per millilitre, and only where their bottle is within 20% of the size of ours. Every match was reviewed before it counted; 422 were confirmed and several hundred were rejected as not genuinely the same product.

Deliberately the narrowest defensible cut. Comparing across pack sizes, or including carrier oils and skincare, makes our position look better than this. Essential oils at matched sizes is the comparison a customer actually makes. Live data and the underlying matches sit in jwPIM under Competitors.
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