Blog Post 3- 4/14/2020
No Place Like Home 🏠
The Melodist by Aesop. A product offering of “domestic formulations that instill a welcome sense of aromatic quietude to all interior spaces.”
Our home is our sanctuary. A place to retreat, take comfort and be our most authentic selves. I’m reminded of some Macro Trends and emerging need spaces I worked on where we found that the home is a new and important sector for beauty—and particularly fragrance brands. Products like diffusers, essential oils, candles and room sprays offer the WFH-workforce a moment to indulge and to surround themselves with nice things. Call it hygge or call it self-care, whatever its name—when your home is the only place to go, it’s comforting to surround ourselves with a scent that makes us feel good.
For traditional fragrance brands, home-fragrance has either been an ancillary product or not considered at all. For example, a fragrance brand features the fragrance as the hero product but might also offer lotion, shower gel, candles and possibly a scent diffuser in the same scent. The ancillary products are a typically a nice to have but aren’t as necessary to purchase as the hero fragrance. However, due to the COVID pandemic and the unprecedented amount of time people are all spending at home fragrance brands may consider making the shift to widen their product offerings into something akin to lifestyle scenting. Aesop and French brand Kerzon are great examples of this.
Super Rouge x Mathilde Cabanas Hand Cleansing Spray by Kerzon
In an article by Beauty Inc. a WWD publication, Linda G. Levy, president of The Fragrance Foundation said about home fragrance, “It was [previously] only a small portion of the fragrance business, but the home fragrance category during the pandemic is undoubtedly seeing major increases. People are working from home and are interested in both cleanliness and creating a home environment where they want peace and escapism.”
Another bourgeoning space for fragrance brands is the more traditional CPG lane with products like hand & dish soap, hand sanitizer, laundry detergent, home cleaners, pet care and more.