How Ulta Beauty is reaching Gen Zalpha teen boys through first men’s masstige fragrance launch

0:07Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning into the Glossy Beauty Podcast, a show about the business of beauty and wellness. I'm your host, Glossy's West Coast correspondent, Lexi Lipsack. We have a special episode today to discuss one of the fastest growing, increasingly powerful consumer demographics in beauty today. And no, it's not Gen X shoppers or millennial moms. Today, we're talking about teen boys. And to do so, I'm joined by two of my Glossy colleagues. Please welcome Glossy's international fashion reporter, Zofia Zveklinska. Hey, Sophia. Hi. And Emily Jensen, our senior reporter. Hi, Emily. Hi, guys.

0:48Well, Sophia, you published a story about Ulta Beauty making a big bet on reaching young male consumers. And we're going to dig into that in just a second. But first, let's sort of set the table here. I know we've talked about teen boys quite a bit on the podcast, but it's been a hot minute. Emily, maybe you can kick us off here, our fragrance connoisseur here. Talk to us a little bit about how teen boys sort of became a driving force in the fragrance space. Totally. I mean, I think teen boys as a demographic kind of got into fragrance the same way we all did in this kind of post-pandemic boom of like, you know, people just discovering fragrance on these social media communities like TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram.

1:33And there's always been these kind of male fragrance content creators in that space. But it really exploded, obviously, like post-COVID as we saw more people just, you know, kind of going down the rabbit hole and discovering these scents. And with a lot of teen boys, like, I think they start off, again, the same way anyone does. Maybe someone gifts them a fragrance as like a birthday gift and then they start wanting to learn about more. Or maybe they talk about it with their friends and they kind of start, you know, learning like what's the cool scent or like discovering what their signature is.

2:06But I think the reason why it's like really exploded within that demographic to such an extent is if you think about it in a way of like maybe teen girls when they're kind of getting into their personal style or expression, like not for everybody, of course, but teen girls, maybe we feel a lot more permission to like experiment in a lot of different categories. So like nails or makeup, clothing or accessories or hair, whereas like, again, not for everybody, but a lot of teen boys like don't feel permission to play in all of those categories. That's a really great point. I feel like it's one of the most ubiquitous things that I've seen in beauty.

2:48Whenever I'm around a boy in that age group, it's always fragrance and their hair. And it just feels like this like hyper focus on those two categories. What have we learned? And what have we learned sort of about what boys want and what they're purchasing and how they're discovering? You know, to that point as well, like, yeah, like boys kind of like, you know, they're playing with their hair, as you were saying, but they all kind of like that same, like maybe curly, like broccoli boy haircut, as you know, has been discussed, although that's probably out of style by the now that we're talking about it, or they all had the same kind of like big, giant wide leg jeans for a while.

3:24Like I was talking with Linda Pilkington, who's a founder of Ormond Jane, which is like a luxury fragrance brand a while back. And she has a teenage son. And she was saying like, when I see him and his friends all together, they all have like from behind, they look exactly the same. Like same giant pants, same curly mop head. But she's like, I could tell my son by his fragrance. Like I can like pick him out of a lineup because they all have their own different scent or whatever. That's so funny. But I think there's actually like a lot of, yeah, a lot of parallels with how they're kind of discovering and purchasing with like the sneakerhead kind of community that was big in like the 2010s.

4:01Obviously, that's still around and there's still people collecting sneakers and whatnot. But if you think about that then, like, it was, again, it's very, like, at one time niche community that was very much, like, people kind of discovering, like, this limited edition release or this kind of, like, you know, holy grail scent or this, like, hard to come by scent and kind of, like, very much if you know, you know kind of world. and again this very much like collector mentality that there was with sneakers I think you see that a lot with the way that teen boys are also purchasing fragrances like they're um kind of amassing these like big wardrobes of them so I think that sort of drives a lot of the again partly just why it's exploded so much with teen boys but also just how they're discovering like going on these like reddit communities and kind of looking for you know decants of scents for example like there's certain very high-end scents that are very popular amongst teen boys like blue talisman by ex nihilo is a big one or imagination by louis vuitton so people might be looking for like discount versions of those scents either like dupes or clones or just going to like discount retailers like joma shop is a big one where you can kind of find discounted scents or they're discovering maybe these like dupe or clone brands that are often coming out of the middle east like latafa is a big one ray han is another one and they're kind of again And comparing them together and kind of asking, like, is this worth it?

5:24How does this stack up to the original? All those kinds of things. And of course, then you have influencers who are, you know, like every other beauty influencer, just getting tons and tons of PR and kind of unboxing those for their followers and showcasing their collection. So interesting. Well, it certainly feels and you guys both correct me if I'm wrong here, but it certainly feels like there's been this niche thing and it's been bubbling up and growing behind the scenes. And now we finally see retailers that are really doubling down and trying to reach them with sort of what you reported on, Zofia, happening over at Ulta.

5:57Do you think I sort of have that right there? Yeah, I mean, I think that right now it's almost like coming to the forefront and retailers are starting to pick up on it. Most of it so far has been, you know, as you said, Emily, kind of in niche communities. It's not really been something that mass retailers have invested in. most of that focus on the fragrance side has been on the kind of female scent cycle, unisex fragrances, rather than kind of focusing specifically on a younger male customer. So the story that I wrote last week was around kind of Ulta and Sniff launching their new kind of cologne-focused sub-brand called Noteworks into Ulta Beauty.

6:38And Noteworks currently has three$74 fragrances and it's adding this fourth scent called Double Take for the Ulta launch. And it seems like there's just been such an underserved market before this and they're basically trying to get in front of it, trying to be the first to kind of put it in a retailer. I think that most of the kind of men's cologne space in prestige retail is still kind of built around legacy designer brands. So ones that we already know, you mentioned obviously like maybe like a Tom Ford, for example, or some of the kind of more mass fragrances. And those tend to sit also quite on the higher end.

7:21They're above$90. So Noteworks are trying to, I guess, like cater to a younger customer who's also got less disposable income by putting their price point down at$74. And obviously like the fact that this is being tested, like Sniff did like an insane amount of studies before actually launching it in Ulta. They basically talked to a lot of teen boys. They kind of made sure that like the scent groups, the packaging, like the visual appearance of the brand was stuff that they were already into, things that they could relate to before even launching the first fragrances. And let's just like take a moment because obviously this is also a really new brand for sniff like noteworks only launched last october um so they're also like to have four scents within basically like less than a year is quite a lot for a new brand to be launching with um and they care about you know a lot of these things that men or like boy fragrance heads really care about so the performance of the fragrance projection so how far it kind of extends out the longevity of the fragrance, because obviously that's a big thing in female fragrance too.

8:36You know, a lot of those Middle Eastern perfumes are kind of well known for having that longevity and concentration. So whether it's a lighter or a heavier kind of set, they're really interested in having things that have a little bit more of that as well in there. You know, I have to say that I always hear people talk about how young consumers are very fickle. And I think that in all my years reporting on beauty, I've never seen so many surveys being done of young people. It feels like every time we turn around, there's a new survey asking teen boys what they want. Was there anything really surprising in there, Zofia, that Sniff sort of found out?

9:15Yeah, so I think it's actually a point that Emily mentioned earlier around kind of how many fragrances these boys have. So he spoke to like a bunch of 16-year-olds, Brian, who's the founder of Sniff, and said that they could identify both niche fragrances and individual notes. And one of the teenagers that he talked to had over a hundred bottles. And a lot of the behavior he said compares to how they would collect Pokemon cards or things like that. So again, it's just that idea of like building a fragrance wardrobe, like having scent wardrobes for different seasons. Like it's very similar behavior to be honest, to what you see with female fragheads too.

9:55Wow. Well, Sophia, one thing about your article that really stood out to me is that you wrote that Noteworks will be the retailer Ulta Beauty's first dedicated mastige men's fragrance brand. It sort of made my jaw drop that it's only happening now, like, you know, quarters and quarters and quarters into this big fragrance boom. What do you think that it sort of says about where Ulta Beauty is going? Yeah, I mean, I think that Ulta has been going into a lot of different categories recently. I I think they're actually investing into a lot of these more niche communities. You know, for example, things like wellness that all of us have kind of written about is a big market for them.

10:33But it's also about kind of getting into some of these communities that, you know, have erupted or have grown or kind of erupted over the last couple of years because of social media. So they're leaning into, you know, the niche communities on TikTok, on Reddit. And I think that's where this need for niche brands also comes in. I think they have a little bit of a track record of supporting those younger brands, even if they might not have as big of a range or a kind of portfolio as some of the bigger ones. And I think that Sniff is also trying to make something that is both elevated and collectible, which I don't think you see as much with some of these designer fragrances.

11:16They're kind of broad launches. You have the same scent in various formulations. You won't really have multiple kind of very niche launches. And I think it's also about the scents that they actually invest in. So for example, like some of Noteworks's fragrance lead into Gourmand fragrances for men. Like that's a really unusual category and not something that you would see from maybe some of these kind of higher end prestige brands. Talk to me a little bit about Sniff and their business model. I realized we kind of like skipped over that maybe a little, but what's their deal? Yeah, so Sniff began as a kind of digitally native brand.

11:58So they started online and they did a lot of kind of gender fluid sense, again, at more kind of accessible price points. A lot of the kind of initial success it had was 3DC and kind of social discovery. So similar environments to, you know, a lot of these kind of fraghead communities. Obviously, since it's expanded into physical retail into Alta, so it expanded Sniff into Alta before launching Noteworks into Alta. And to be honest, one of the things that Brian talked about is the fact that Noteworks almost was co-developed with Ulta. They kind of work through both the product and the packaging and the visual appearance of the brand with them.

12:37So they're also playing into Ulta's customer, not just Sniffs. And so Noteworks sits underneath Sniff. It has its own name, packaging and kind of identity. And I think that what Brian said is that just adding kind of masculine scents into Sniff wouldn't have been enough to make kind of younger shops attracted to the brand. So they wanted to build out something that was very, very distinct for them. I have a question for Zofia, but also maybe Emily too. I'm curious, what sort of differentiates a male fragrance from something that's just unisex? Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Honestly, I didn't know basically until I did this story.

13:19And I still feel like there's a little bit of a distinction here where some of these scents, I think the only reason they're classed as kind of male scents is because of like the packaging or the visual appearance. Like I think the scent itself could probably be classed as unisex. I just think it's like when you want to target a certain demographic, you go after them deliberately. And I think that's why, you know, the campaign imagery features guys rather than guys and girls, which is kind of interesting because I feel like most brands, especially kind of older brands, if they do launch a scent, which is kind of across both, you'd want, you know, to kind of play to both demographics in case it becomes something that's also popular with female fragrance fans.

14:03Yeah, I think it's a it is an interesting question of like, well, when we talk about like a male targeted scent versus like a female targeted scent, like what are we really saying here? And I do. Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of it is just like the positioning and the packaging of like the bottle or the campaign or using like, you know, a male model versus a female model. But there are certain like scent families that historically have been more associated with like men's fragrances. Like a fougere scent is like the most, I guess, classically male fragrance. And a lot of like scents on the market today are kind of derivations of that family.

14:41And that's like usually made up of like lavender and like oak moss. It has that sort of like green hay kind of maybe like barbershop sort of scent that you might think of. Like if you smell something like that, you'll kind of recognize it. But there are certain like notes that have come up a lot in like male fragrances. Like years ago when I was talking to Anne Gottlieb, who's like developed a lot of fragrances for like brands like Calvin Klein and whatnot. like there's kind of two scent compounds that appear in a lot of male scents especially in a lot of like accents for example which is like dihydromersenol and that's your like if you think of like blue you know is like a category like okay you know like a dior salvage that very brisk kind of again sort of barbershop smell that's like probably a lot of dihydromersenol And then there's also coumarin, which also appears, again, in accents, but also in, like, designer sense.

15:42That's your more, like, warm, kind of vanilla, kind of, like, sweeter, again, sort of hay-like scent. So it's like, there's often those notes that are appearing in male sense, but those appear in scents across the market again. But I think you see that sort of essence, I guess, of like a Dior Sauvage appearing in a lot of like male targeted sense. But again, it's not like a strict thing. There's, you know, also like all kinds of floral notes like iris and rose. you know we think of those as being very feminine but they appear in a lot of male scents as well I think it's um Dior Aum is like known as like a classic obviously male scent but it has um a lot of iris in it as well but it's just about how you're playing up that facet maybe you're playing up the more kind of earthy vegetal aspect of an iris as opposed to the kind of like lipsticky powdery that you'd get in more feminine scents but yeah but it's interesting I feel like there's an interesting push and pull where like most niche brands when they've emerged like have always been by default kind of unisex whereas the designer sense were and still are traditionally like this is you know poor ohm and this is like poor fum like very black and white that way but yeah now there's kind of more like confluence there like and you see I think that the young male shopper in some cases is like very open to trying like scents across the board, but might also in some cases stick to the more like masculine targeted scents.

17:21It kind of also relates to Sniff's like customer and their preferences. Like they've done collabs with bakeries for like specific scents. And like, I think that that's a very different kind of scent profile to maybe something a little bit more traditional and they've used some of those references in notebooks as well. Like there's apricot for men or there's like skin scents for these guys. Like it's very different kind of profiles to what you would see in traditional kind of scent families, like what you said. Knowing what we know about this burgeoning consumer demographic and everything they're sort of buying right now, do you think that price point is going to work?

18:01Do you think that that's like a nice price point to reach this audience. And I ask because, Emily, you brought up Axe. And so when I think of teen boys sort of spending their money on fragrance, like 79 even maybe feels a little bit high to me. But of course, this is a very dedicated consumer base. We know that. But I mean, how much is Axe? You know, like it must only be a sliver of that. But I don't know. What do you guys think about the pricing here? Emily, do you want to go first? Yeah, I mean, I guess something that I hear from these kind of shoppers is they care about something feeling premium.

18:39They want bang for their buck and like they do want a good value or a good deal. but that could translate to maybe a lot of, a lot of different ways, like something that is like a very high end scent with like, you know, a really, you know, luxurious looking bottle and like unboxing experience, even if that's very expensive, like a Zerjoff, that's like a brand that's also very popular amongst teen boys. Like those are very expensive scents. Those are, I think they're like$300. But they have like a very flashy kind of like bottle that like, you know, looks good in your like collection. But they're also really interested, yeah, in like a lot of these brands that are coming from like the UAE that are like very affordable kind of clone brands, like a Rehan, for example.

19:28But those tend to be fairly like cheap. I mean, to the point where you're like, how are they this cheap? How are they like under$40, maybe a bottle, but they have this kind of elaborate looking packaging. So I think, yeah, it's like there's not maybe one price point that you have to like stick to, I think, but you have to like deliver a sense of like premium quality. And as like Sophia was saying as well, like is it a long lasting scent? Is it like delivering what it's kind of promising that way as opposed to just like it's affordable and, you know, they'll buy it just because it's cheap. Yeah.

20:06Yeah, I think also like you have to think about affordability a little bit differently to maybe how you would have thought about a fragrance custom maybe five or 10 years ago. Most brands right now have discovery sets, which means that you can test and trial perfumes at a much lower price point. And to be honest, if you do have a very wide kind of fragrance wardrobe, chances are that little sample is going to be enough to kind of get you to try it on multiple occasions. so the act of like committing to a perfume is more about you know what emily spoke about it's like having it in your wardrobe having it in your collection being able to kind of experience it for a longer period of time um and i think again that's why the longevity of it really comes into play it's not just about longevity on how long it lasts on your skin but like you know will the perfume keep for a long time like is it something you can have over multiple years for example like I think there's a different attitude to it um and I think it's the same with with men and women I think most you know girls and guys will buy a discovery set if they want to experience a perfume or they'll spray it in store and then you know after kind of doing the research online like another thing that Brian talked about is that a lot of these guys apart from Reddit they'll watch longer tutorials about the fragrances themselves on YouTube.

21:29So after doing this bulk of research, only then will they commit to a more expensive full-size bottle. And even then, it might just be a smaller version. We've seen travel samples also go wild, and they're in between a discovery kind of size and maybe a full-size bottle. And that's also something that they're going to be investing in. Sophia, one more question about your article. How many doors at Ulta are getting the fragrance and how are they going to sort of promote it in the beginning? Yeah. So I mean, Sniff, like the parent company is already in 1 ,500 Ulta doors. And I think the idea is that Notebooks is initially going to be launching with a small number for that and then expanding outwards as the launch kind of progresses over the next couple of months.

22:17And then obviously in terms of the marketing they're going to be focusing a lot on retail and kind of just bringing people in they've got special kind of displays something that they talked about being more approachable than maybe like a traditional stand so we'll see how that looks in Ulta stores over the next couple of weeks and then also another big thing they're doing is a big social push since you know Sniff is kind of primarily D2C and also you know they've been very heavy on kind of investment in social and creators, they're going to be doing the same with notebooks. So sending out to fans, the brand customers, including kind of trial sizes, all of that is going to be included in that kind of initial marketing push.

23:00Cool. That's an interesting story. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on all these changes over at Ulta. Okay. I have to ask both of you before we log off here, what do you think is going to happen to the future of fragrance? I mean, How many fragrances can teen boys collect before it's a bubble that's bursting? Yeah. Does the limit exist? Yeah, I don't know. I'm always, yeah, I'm curious about this because I think about it too with like the way that like the sort of sneakerhead culture also faded a bit. And again, not saying that people aren't still collecting sneakers, but it reached what went from being this very kind of niche community really exploded into the mainstream.

23:42Again, more in like the kind of late 2010s with like more luxury brands collaborating with sneaker brands or kind of releasing more of their own sneakers. is like it kind of reached this point of mass where I think it maybe got overrun as well by like bots and resellers and maybe lost a bit of the appeal for some of that demographic or that demographic also just grew up and kind of took their interests and their spending power elsewhere. So I'm curious, yeah, with this kind of fragrance demographic, even just beyond Teen Boys, but in general, like do people reach a point where it's like I have enough, I have more fragrances than I will get through in my lifetime.

24:18time, you know, it becomes kind of overwhelming. Like I don't need to keep discovering things or like what have you. But I do think with fragrance, there's an interesting kind of cycle that a lot of consumers maybe go through, including some of the teen boys where maybe they start with the more mainstream designer sense. And then they move to the slightly more kind of niche sense, you know, like maybe like a diptyque by Reto sort of Penhalgen's level of niche. And then they get more into like more in proper kind of indie brands, more kind of weird sense, you know, brands that are only really stocked at like small boutiques or what have you.

24:54And so then they kind of, you know, keep going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole where they're more into these, like, again, harder to come by sense. And what happens is a lot of those maybe smaller brands, they get bought up by like private equity, or they get acquired by like an Estee Lauder or L 'Oreal, and they no longer are as niche as they used to. But then a new niche brand kind of emerges to kind of take that place that that consumer can then discover. So there is this kind of replenishing cycle maybe to these fragrance brands for consumers to go down. But I am, yeah, I'm curious, like the spending habits I think changed a lot as, you know, we've talked about and others have, where like it used to be you had your like signature scent and you were like, I'm just going to buy my like Coco Mademoiselle or like Jean-Paul Cotillat, like every year I'm just going to re-up that for my birthday or whatever.

25:44And that's it. Whereas now if people are willing to have this fragrance wardrobe, yeah, they're willing to like try all kinds of fragrances. And that also creates a market where the fragrance companies can release more kind of daring, bold scents because they're not just trying to have to sell you on one. You're willing to have maybe your everyday kind of scent, but also your kind of more weird experimental sense as well. Anyway, so it just kind of creates this mode where, you know, there's more and more fragrances launching and consumers buying it. But yeah, I don't know. I think the bubble definitely could burst at some point.

26:18And maybe like the next wave of teen boys will discover some other kind of thing to collect, like whatever the next, I don't know, Pokemon card thing is that they'll get into. And then they'll maybe like reach a point, maybe they'll kind of mature a bit and kind of settle down on like, oh, I'm just going to buy this one nice scent a year, or I'll maybe, you know, buy one or two a year and then be kind of set with that. I don't know. I'm very curious. And I think that the fragrance brands are going to have to get more, yeah, creative in how they're kind of creating excitement for their consumers as well.

26:56Like Ex Nihilo is, they're a brand that like they are very much playing with this model. Like they're a French brand and their founders have also, you know, said like they themselves were sneakerheads growing up. They're kind of taken from that model of like these limited edition drops that like they kind of tease their audience about and let them know a little bit beforehand. And then they only release like maybe a thousand bottles and they sell out almost immediately. And you kind of create these ways of like creating a bit of hype and what they would call like positive frustration. Because I think that's what a lot of these teen boys are interested in is this kind of like this hunt for the fragrance.

27:33It's not just like going to the store and buying it, but kind of like the researching of it, the comparisons, getting the samples or like decants, kind of finding the best deal. And that creates, you know, this longer kind of lifeline to the interest in it. But yeah, and you know, as we were saying too, like they, I think even for adult men, like a lot of them, they're not really spending as much money like across the board on their grooming. they're kind of funneling a lot of that purchasing into like one or two things and maybe that one one or two thing is a fragrance as well yeah I agree I think there's like if you think about like the swatch and AP rush it kind of feels like that but for fragrance like there's a lot happening in that space I just think that like what's going to be interesting in seeing like these like boys age out of that category because I think at some point other things end up taking your disposable income and like at that point does that mean that you know the category shifts more into like body care like will that be a thing for men like I could imagine like lighter fragrances also becoming more popular as it kind of gets hotter as well like I think a lot of the times now like I think that will be a big consideration for fragrance brands is like as you know the weather heats up as we've you know seen like you know all of these things like with fragrance are they going to be too much if you're walking around and the fragrance changes because obviously your your body heat just like goes up and I can imagine like that affecting the kind of scents like people choose like I've already seen that with like female fragheads like looking more like green tea scents or like lighter things even like skin scents I think are so popular now because of that like people don't want an overwhelming fragrance and I think maybe teen boys are still at that kind of like early stage of the fragrance discovery they're like looking at these weird ones like things that are a little bit unusual and then it will kind of like even out with a with a kind of more neutral wave i am curious too if more brands will do kind of what sniff is doing of like especially at this kind of mastige level like targeting male consumers specifically.

29:47Like Sol de Janeiro also just recently launched a trio of like male targeted scents as well. Again, like that brand has obviously been like doing so well with like the teen girl demographic. But I'm curious, like, how are men going to be buying those? I'm just checking the kind of price on these. But yeah, they're like$26 for like a cologne. They're calling it a cologne mist, not a body mist, I guess. But yeah, and it's got like a bit, you know, darker colors and kind of, you know, the marketing of it is more targeting men than the kind of more like bright pink, kind of yellow, girly kind of sense that we associate with Sol de Janeiro.

30:28So I don't know, maybe do those, I guess it's, I guess I'm curious to see if like how successful like a Noteworks is or Sol de Janeiro mail launch of other brands kind of follow suit as well. yeah no emily that's a really great point i feel like there's definitely gonna be something like from something more similar to the solda genera launch because that price point feels like very very i don't know i don't know the right what i'm looking for but yeah that price point feels feels like some the audience would want that too sophia great story thanks for coming in and talking about it emily thank you for sharing all your fragrance knowledge um great takeaways for everybody.

31:04Thanks so much.

31:10And thank you for listening to this episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. And for even more coverage on the beauty industry and more, please visit glossy.co slash beauty.

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