Why companies from Cirque du Soleil to Esquire are launching perfume

This summer, that conversation resulted in the launch of four fragrances from Esquire and Michael Malul with names like New Journalist and Editor in Chief, drawing upon Esquire’s editorial gravitas. Malul said he expects the collection, currently available online for $120 a bottle through his brand’s Amazon storefront and Nordstrom, to command $3 million to $5 million in sales by the end of the year. “The goal here is to build a brand, to create demand and to have credibility for the products,” said Malul. 

While it’s de rigueur for high-profile celebrities and luxury fashion houses to extend their brand into perfume, an increasingly diverse set of companies and figures are making their mark in fragrance this year. And those launches aren’t just limited to names with an established connection to fashion or grooming, like Esquire. 

Cirque du Soleil, the Quebecois entertainment company known for its elaborate Las Vegas shows, launched its first fragrance this spring. Crypto exchange platform Binance created a perfume in March in a bid to attract women to cryptocurrency. Auntie Anne’s, the ubiquitous mall pretzel franchise, announced its first fragrance, Knead, last week. KFC has a barbecue-inspired fragrance. Tennessee Titans player Will Levis and condiments company Hellman’s are releasing a mayonnaise-inflected fragrance. Anonymous celebrity gossip Instagram account Deuxmoi has a fragrance, too. 

These launches speak to fragrance’s growing power as both a revenue stream and a marketing tool. According to data analyst firm Circana, fragrance represents the fastest-growing prestige beauty category this year thus far, with dollar sales up 12% in the first half of 2024 versus the same period in 2023. But they are also a response to an evolving perfume audience that is hungry for more offbeat fragrances — should those launches pass muster with their discerning noses, that is. 

“Ten years ago, if Cirque du Soleil had put out a perfume, people would have laughed and joked about it. And now, people are much more open to this,” said perfumer Maxwell Williams, founder of UFO Parfums and board member of the Institute for Art and Olfaction.

Williams, who has created fragrances for the likes of media company Dirt under their UFO Parfums line, believes companies need to know their fragrance goals before reaching out to a potential partner. 

“A fine fragrance, a beautiful perfume, requires investment,” Williams said, citing $25,000 as roughly the minimum buy-in to launch a run of bottles intended for sale. “It’s difficult for a lot of marketing people to conceptualize that investment and the return on it — and whether it’s strictly a marketing gambit and you’re not going to make money on it, or you’re hoping to actually sell bottles at a larger quantity and make it a part of the revenue stream.”

For Cirque du Soleil, the launch of its first perfume was firmly in the latter category. 

“[Perfume] is an aspirational category, and there is a lot of allure and prestige that goes along with it,” said Isaac Lekach, co-founder of Flower Shop, the fragrance developer behind the Cirque du Soleil scent. Working with the Cirque du Soleil licensing team, Lekach envisioned a product with integrity that would appeal to perfume fans. The resulting $195 bottle was inspired by art deco and Schiaparelli designs in a nod to the circus’s surrealist atmosphere, with the scent itself featuring notes of buttered popcorn and freesia, created by Firmenich perfumer Alexis Grugeon. 

Lekach is well-versed in the fragrance licensing business, having helped launch fragrances for the likes of Paris Hilton and Katy Perry. But how consumers are accessing fragrance means it’s no longer just A-list celebrities seeing the potential in perfume.

“The difference now is that, because direct-to-consumer is a viable avenue for this, you have a bunch of new startups — whether it’s brands starting from scratch, or celebrities or influencers — dipping their toe in it,” he said. “They’re able to explore because the barrier to entry isn’t so great.”

Developing a brand through a traditional licensing model allows Cirque du Soleil to build long-term inroads into fragrance, with plans for further launches down the line, Lekach said. But co-branded perfume collaborations are increasingly common, as well, allowing outside companies to tap into an existing perfume brand rather than establish their own credibility and audience in the space.  

Josh Meyer, co-founder and perfumer for Portland, Oregon-based niche perfume house Imaginary Authors, was contacted in 2023 by Absolut and Kahlúa to create an espresso martini perfume, capitalizing on that year’s cocktail craze. Meyer had previously worked with fellow Oregon-based ice cream maker Salt & Straw to develop a waffle cone-inspired fragrance, but the alcohol giants represented a new feat; both brands are owned by Pernod Ricard, which drew €12.14 billion ($13.3 billion) in revenue in 2023.  

“It was very, very specifically a marketing tactic. They just thought, ‘We’re gonna spend a million dollars, or whatever it is, and make this perfume and advertise it everywhere,’” said Meyer. But Meyer wanted it to be a serious perfume that his audience could get their hands on, not just a quick run of 100 bottles. The resulting fragrance, Blend No. 83, was turned around in roughly three months to launch in November, in time for the holiday season. 

“I don’t want it to be a joke,” said Meyer of his company’s fragrance launches. “I want you to smell it and love it.” 

There is precedent for offbeat, collaborative perfumes that are beloved by the fragrance community in their own right. UFO’s Williams cited Comme des Garçons’ perfume series with travel and culture magazine Monocle first launched with 2008’s Hinoki, a gold standard in the category. Le Labo’s 2010 launch Another 13, created with Another magazine, is now a mainstay in the Le Labo line and has spurred countless dupes. More recently, indie perfumer Marissa Zappas launched the 2021 cult classic Annabel’s Birthday Cake with astrologer Annabel Gat. 

Merch itself, fragrance or otherwise, is not a new concept for media companies and magazines like Monocle and Another. Esquire editor-in-chief Michael Sebastian cited an Esquire-branded record with songs from the likes of jazz legend Louis Armstrong as an early example of magazine merch — it was included in an issue in the 1940s.

“The editors in 1940-whatever were thinking the way that we’re thinking right now, which is, ‘Where are all of the other places where this brand can live?’” he said. “Maybe it’s recording an album and printing it on the back of a magazine, or maybe it’s creating a fragrance that we sell in stores and online.”

Today’s media companies are facing an uphill battle to diversify revenues through events or products as ad sales continue to dwindle; Esquire owner Hearst laid off more than 40 employees last year and recorded a 2% fall in profits earlier this year. 

“The reason why we do brand licensing programs like this is to build touch points with the public, with the reader, with the shoppers outside of the immediate Hearst content universe. That creates this lovely flywheel that comes back to our content world,” said Angela Kim, senior director of licensing at Hearst. Esquire’s other licensed products include jewelry, which has been sold at Macy’s for years. 

Fragrance is an especially timely terrain for Esquire, given the rise in the young male fragrance consumer — the magazine’s prime audience. “Evan,” the 22-year-old influencer known as Fragrance Knowledge and with close to 1 million followers on TikTok, shared a sponsored post promoting the Esquire x Michael Malul launch at the end of last month. Ashton Kirkland, aka Gents Scents, also reviewed the quartet for his 480,000 YouTube subscribers earlier this month. 

Time will tell if companies like Cirque du Soleil or Esquire will have a Comme des Garçons x Monocle level hit by satisfying both commercial interests and discerning fragrance fans. But lest you think the Hellman’s mayo perfume or Deuxmoi fragrance is a sign we’ve reached a saturation point, Imaginary Authors’ Meyer said we’re only just getting started. 

“We’re barely scratching the surface of making perfumes even more engaging,” he said.