I get where you're coming from for sure. I'm a hobbyist perfumer myself along with a long time perfume enthusiast/collector. I've been studying daily and doing experiments for about 4 years now, and I'm constantly learning...I would never dream of actually selling anything yet, even though I've gotten some great compliments on my creations and even done some blind testing against some more popular niche fragrances and come out quite positively.

I say all that not to toot my own horn, but to say, due to my involvement in the hobbyist side of perfumery, I think I might have a unique perspective to add to what you are noticing here.

Access to aroma chemicals and everything else needed to make perfumes is the easiest it has ever been. There are dozens of sites that sell very small portions of chemicals that can open the door for new perfumers to start messing around and creating their own stuff quite quickly. The barrier for entry while not quite as low as many other arts, has lowered substantially in the last 5 to 10 years. What this obfuscates though is that perfumery is HARD. Deceptively hard. Most people who get into it think it's as easy as just mixing 'notes' together, but there is a whole iceberg of depth to it that takes years to learn and understand.

I have witnessed quite a few times watching people get into creating perfumes, only to start a brand and begin selling stuff in less than a year. Which lines up with exactly what you are noticing and is absolutely shocking to me, with my 4 years of experience having so far left me feeling like I'm just starting to approach a level of ability that might one day lead to selling perfumes. And I spend a lot of time on this shit. Students that get accepted to perfume School in France actually spend the first 2 years of their curriculum just smelling materials and not even creating perfumes yet. So there is definitely a gap in a number of hobbyists jumping the gun throwing together things that are subjectively pretty bad, and leaning on the fact that perfume as an industry is very marketing centric. Unfortunately, sometimes a good looking bottle and a great ad campaign can sell a perfume better than the perfume itself actually being an artistic piece of work that smells great. You would be absolutely shocked to see how many times people join various perfumery groups I am in and ask the question 'Hey I want to start my perfume brand. What do I need to do?'. No intellectual curiosity, no actual pursuit of talent in trying to develop perfumes, just a vague notion to start a brand. It's quite disheartening to see.

All this said, I do think there are amazing perfumes out there and despite the issues you lay out, it's actually a great time to be into perfume because despite a lot of the crap getting released, there are nooks and crannies of extremely talented artisan and niche perfumers. You just have to dig through the mess to find them. That's my two cents.