Niche perfume maker Boy Smells’ first brick-and-mortar location, formally opening on Thursday in New York’s SoHo, isn’t only a bid to achieve new prospects. It’s additionally within the hopes of reintroducing itself to a few of its previous ones, and reassuring them its ethos stays unchanged.
The retailer area contains a “peep show” space the place prospects can work together with its fragrances, like “Cowboy Kush” and “Citrush”, each $78. It’s kitted out with a mixture of industrial concrete and brushed aluminium in addition to sheer curtains, designed in homage to the model’s remixed id, which it describes as extra layered.
It’s been a rocky path. When the model unveiled refreshed packaging and branding in April, its management hoped it could make a splash. Boy Smells had been battling declining gross sales, and the cohort of buyers, led by model company General Idea, which had acquired it in 2023, felt a refresh would reinvigorate the model and provides it some buzz.
What they didn’t anticipate was some authentic followers being so distraught with the modifications, which included new bottles, tweaked formulations and three new scents, that the model could be accused of promoting out and abandoning the queer group.
“It was very jarring for people,” mentioned Zach Weal, the corporate’s president. Executives noticed the adverse suggestions in actual time by means of TikTok movies and Reddit threads. “When you have something that you love and you see it radically changing in terms of the way it looks visually … that’s hard.”
Boy Smells was initially launched in 2016 by Matthew Herman and David Kien, and rapidly grew to become a distinct segment hit and resonated with the queer group for its “genderful” vary of scents rejecting the standard gender binary, a message it bolstered with easy black-and-pink packaging. Playful product launches just like the aforementioned scents “Citrush” impressed by the celebration medication generally known as poppers, as “Cowboy Kush”, created in partnership with the nation singer Kacey Musgraves, additional secured its positioning as each queer-coded and strictly grownup.
The new look contains brighter duochrome packaging, scents with names like “Sugar Baby” and “Rosy Cheeks”, and a few recent, fruity physique sprays. While Weal mentioned it was meant to be extra inclusive and open the web to extra prospects, some on-line detractors disagreed, referring to it as “Temu-fication” of the model in reference to the Chinese quick style large. The implication was that the model implying had bought out for mass youth enchantment.
The fact, in line with Weal, is that the model bought out, interval. Weal mentioned that after the rebrand, Sephora bought by means of a month’s value of refreshed Boy Smells inventory in mere days. More latest campaigns, equivalent to introducing Citrush, previously only a candle, as a fragrance have been effectively obtained, he mentioned, and mentioned there’s been extra constructive on-line commentary. (One TikTok remark from this week mentioned, “The new look feels way more fluid.”) Now with its first retailer, the model hopes to proceed its progress trajectory, and attain a brand new buyer base.
“With our new look, we are absolutely outselling what we did before,” mentioned Weal.
Navigating a Backlash
Weal mentioned the rebrand wasn’t simply an evolution, however a rebirth, and a crucial one. The firm was arguably higher recognized for its candles, was struggling to chop by means of within the faster-growing fragrance area and was quick operating out of highway. “[Boy Smells] was not in a financially healthy place, and was likely going to go out of business,” he mentioned.
Rather than all of the modifications occurring in a single day, as some observers felt had occurred, Weal mentioned the modifications have been a gradual course of courting again to its 2023 acquisition led by General Idea. (Founders Herman and Kien are not concerned within the firm, having left in 2024 and 2023 respectively.) After the buyout, it set about finding out buyer suggestions to analyse the enterprise’ strengths and weaknesses, and in addition redirecting its focus to constructing its private perfume, quite than residence perfume providing, earlier than finally relaunching this yr.
“The big goal was to become well-known as a fragrance brand, which meant we had to broaden our appeal,” he mentioned, including that perfume gross sales have been traditionally round 30 p.c of gross sales, and now they comprise round 70. The model additionally elevated the share of pure perfume in its scents to 25 p.c, about 5 p.c above most eau de parfum formulations, to make them longer-lasting, in addition to tweaking its candle wax formulation to try to tackle buyer suggestions equivalent to uneven burn.
Weal pushed again on the suggestion that extra feminine-presenting scents like “Sugar Baby”, with notes of honeysuckle and sugar, have been additionally an undermining of its queer roots. While he mentioned the model hadn’t realised how a lot its authentic packaging in pink and black had been perceived as a signifier of inclusion, the aim of the refresh was to make the fragrances simpler to buy, and in addition extra fashionable. It took inspiration from different high-end designer scents — the duochrome bottles recall to mind choices from Jil Sander and Dries Van Noten — and colour-coded them considerably to make purchasing extra easy.
“Something green is maybe a fig, something pink is maybe floral,” mentioned Weal.
Store-as-School
Aside from the packaging, Weal mentioned its dedication to the LGBTQ+ group is unchanged — and the brand new area on Elizabeth Street, kitty-corner from different perfumeries like Diptyque, Avestan and Stéle, will assist underscore that.
The model solid Vivian Wilson, the estranged daughter of tech billionaire Elon Musk because the lead mannequin in its Coco Crush marketing campaign, which Weal known as “showcasing LGBTQ love across the board.” According to the model, it’s the one perfume marketing campaign at Sephora to characteristic an brazenly transgender mannequin. A latest collaboration with doll maker Bratz is an “ode to the young gay boy who wanted a doll growing up” in addition to the younger ladies who might have been gifted them, he mentioned, whereas the relaunch of the Citrush scent donated a portion of earnings to The Trevor Foundation, an LGBTQ youth charity.
The bodily area is supposed to strengthen the thought of “genderful,” too. The design juxtaposition of business and cosy parts is meant to replicate the “layered identity” of the brand new model, mentioned Levi Shaw-Faber, co-founder of Faber/Hughes, the architect agency that led the venture. The area will present area for passers-by who’re utterly new to the model to find out about it and its scent, and have unique scents. It will even have the model’s full vary, permitting prospects to buy throughout worth factors — travel-size mists begin at $24, whereas full-size perfumes are $78.
Weal mentioned Boy Smells hopes to open as many as 4 new shops within the US subsequent yr, in cities like Los Angeles or Miami, and believes having a devoted model area can be integral to getting the corporate again to sustained progress.
“When you have these experiential moments, people see what we look like in the real world, and how we show up in real life,” he mentioned.
Sign as much as The Business of Beauty publicationyour complimentary, must-read supply for the day’s most necessary magnificence and wellness information and evaluation.