At first, Herman said, they bought ingredients off the internet and mixed them themselves.
“Looking back, I joke that it was our bath house gin version of fragrance,” he said.
Herman and Kien have come a long way since 2016 when they decided to turn their hobby into a business.
Boy Smells has reformulated its original core collection using higher quality ingredients and works with renowned fragrance houses Firmenich and Robertet Group.
The company’s direct-to-consumer business is thriving. Its web sales surged by 1,000% in 2020 and account for 75% of the company’s revenue.
Boy Smells employs 12 people, and in addition to more than a dozen candle offerings, has expanded its product lines to include underwear and wearable fragrances that it calls “cologne de parfum.”
The scents of its candles, which are packaged in sleek, light pink boxes, are woodsy and floral and often contain an unexpected note.
Kush, which contains no actual THC or CBD, is a blend of pot, suede, white musk and tulip. Les, the French plural article for masculine and feminine nouns, mixes black currant with peach blossom, jasmine rice and white cedar. Polyamberous combines cardamom with geranium, tobacco flower and pistachio.
“We always take something traditionally masculine and something traditionally feminine and combine it together in the scent profile,” Herman said. “What was so surprising to us, and I should have seen this coming, it was an instant hit with so many of our girlfriends (who) were wearing Tuscan Leather by Tom Ford or Santal from Le Labo, and those are all very masculine scents.
“And I’m on the other side of the table of wearing like La Tulipe by Byredo, something very feminine and floral. I could see that crossing the binary in scent was kind of like (a woman) wearing the boyfriend blazer or a chunky Rolex. Or like for me, it was like wearing a shoe with a little bit of a heel on it.”
The idea that scent preferences don’t always align with stereotypical gender norms defines Boy Smells as an entire brand. The company’s name alone, Herman said, pokes fun at scent being assigned to gender. And those personal tastes, he added, should be celebrated.
“We use the word genderfull rather than genderless, so, representing a fuller idea of gender rather than neutering gender or saying it’s nonbinary,” he said. “For us, our brand is post binary.”
That ethos has driven collaborations with Kacey Musgraves, who Herman described as an outspoken liberal woman writing and producing music in the male-dominated country music industry, and model Richie Shazam, “who’s living in total fluidity.”
It’s also what helps separate Boy Smells from hundreds of small- to mid-sized candle-making companies.
In Los Angeles, players include Commerce-based P.F. Candle Co., Beverly Hills-based Barratt Riley & Co., Santa Monica-based Stone Candles, and West
Hollywood-based Lait. They’re all part of a growing scented candle industry that’s expected to generate $4.2 billion worldwide by 2025.
Boy Smells turned a profit within its first year, at first largely focused on wholesale. Its first retailers were ByGeorge in Austin, Texas; Forty Five Ten in Dallas; and Lisa Says Gah Inc. in San Francisco, along with a few local L.A. stores, including Little Tokyo-based Poketo.
“We started carrying Boy Smells when they first launched. … We loved their packaging and scents as well as their irreverent brand name,” said Angie Myung, who co-founded Poketo. “They’ve sold well for us, and I like how they’re always changing their scents and packaging, it brings new freshness.”
Within two and a half years, Herman and Kien had each quit their day jobs in fashion to focus on Boy Smells full time (Herman had worked at Nasty Gal, whose company culture inspired him to have a side hustle in the first place).
Retaining those jobs early on helped Herman and Kien keep Boy Smells afloat. Herman said they have not taken on capital funding and retain full ownership of the company though he said they will likely look for an investor in the future to help them grow.
In the third year, they moved the business from their home into offices at the corner of Venice Boulevard and Burlington Avenue in Pico Union.
At the end of 2019, they decided to prioritize direct-to-consumer sales. The timing was fortuitous.
“At the onset of the pandemic, the struggle was to keep up with demand,” Herman said. “Everyone was home and like, ‘S—, if I’m going to be here, I’m going to need a candle,’ and it became a supply chain issue.”
“If we hadn’t put those things into place, we wouldn’t have had as much growth, and we would have been more struggling to survive as a business rather than keeping up with demand,” he added.
Herman and Kien changed web platforms, from Squarespace Inc. to Shopify Plus, which offered data insights into inventory, customer behaviors and software integration. They also contracted with a digital marketing agency, New York-based Phidel Digital and hired an in-house marketing professional.
Additionally, they reevaluated their brand platform and identified their key values, centering them on the LGBTQIA community, identity and equity, then amplified those values in the company’s marketing materials and campaigns.
Herman said he and Kien are still pretty hands-on and will tweak copy and tone, which is almost always sassy and flirty. Recent newsletters sent to subscribers had the following subject lines: “XXXL — This Is Big,” “Grab Your Chaps” and “Good Trips Guaranteed.”
“We like to keep relevant,” Herman said. “We love a pun and a little bit of provocation, and our customer does too. Our open rate and click-through rate data support our instincts.”
There’s one other area in which Boy Smells carved out a competitive edge. Its 8.5-ounce candles are priced at $32 — no small sum — but relatively affordable compared to other brands using natural ingredients.
“A mid-priced modern scent profile product is just a real white space,” Herman said. “You have P.F. Candle Co. and Voluspa offering in our price point, but they are not super modern.”
“I don’t see a lot of candle makers or personal fragrance companies that are really standing behind what, I guess, is almost a Gen Z value system,” he added. “You’re not seeing a lot of other candle brands talking about dismantling gender norms.”
