Cult candle (and, as of last year, fragrance) brand Boy Smells is landing at Sephora.
The brand will launch 24 of its key offerings on sephora.com on Aug. 30, as well as in 122 doors nationwide beginning Sept. 12.
These include core candles Hinoki Fantôme, Slow Burn, Kush and Cameo, and fragrances such as Flor Del La Virgin, Marble Fruit, Cashmere Kush and Woodphoria, the latter being a new, Sephora-exclusive fragrance infused with notes of fig, jasmine petals, sandalwood and upcycled cedarwood.
“Retail is still a place where people discover brands, especially at Sephora,” said Matthew Herman, who cofounded Boy Smells alongside his life partner, David Kien, in 2015.
While the brand is presently available at retailers including Nordstrom and Space NK, Boy Smells sees the Sephora partnership as a meaningful plot point toward the brand’s ongoing goal of redefining the narrative landscape when it comes to fragrance.
“While we have an amazing community that we’ve built digitally and through other retailers, we see Sephora as a significant opportunity to not only introduce ourselves to new consumers, but also introduce our fragrances to existing Boy Smells customers who haven’t yet had the opportunity to smell them in real life,” Herman said.
Boy Smells inaugurated its first fragrance collection in March 2021, melding traditionally masculine and feminine notes for a resulting gender-inclusive, or as the brand coined it “genderful,” approach to scentmaking.
A year and a half later, fragrance is now the brand’s fastest-growing category.
“Our fine fragrance collection is up 100 percent over last year, and we’re seeing increases month-over-month,” said Herman, who told WWD in 2021 that Boy Smells’ fragrance collection made up 15 percent of the brand’s then-total sales.
Like all other Boy Smells perfumes, Woodphoria retails for $98 for a 65-ml. bottle. With its launch, Boy Smells seeks to bring the success of its woody aromatic candles to the brand’s fragrance division.
“Woodier scents tend to do fantastic in our candle category, and we haven’t yet had a fantastic new [fragrance] scent that focuses on beautiful wood accords,” Herman said.
As part of its partnership with Sephora, the brand seeks to invest in offering free samples, one of Sephora’s key Beauty Insider perks, to further its reach.
Also on the horizon for Boy Smells in the next year is a number of undisclosed category expansions, with which Herman aims to “bring the idea of genderfulness to other areas of the vanity in the bathroom.”
Source: WWD