Key Takeaways:
For almost 70 years, the only way to smell like Dove’s Beauty Bar was to use one. But on October 27, that changed, at least for a select few.
That day, Dove Original Fragrance, the brand’s first-ever fine fragrance, mirroring the scent of its iconic Beauty Bar, went on sale at noon ET exclusively on the brand’s own site. It was advertised as a “one-time, limited-edition social drop” at a “special community price” of $19.57, a nod to the 1957 debut of the Original Beauty Bar. Within minutes, less than 10, to be exact—it was gone. Now, the site reads: “Dove Original Fragrance is completely sold out.”
Prior to the launch, fans were given early access to sign up for a waitlist, and according to multiple social media accounts, consumers set alarms and refreshed at every step leading up to checkout. But at some point, before fans could complete the purchase, things took a turn, and the product sold out. Frustrated consumers took to TikTok, Reddit, Threads, and Instagram to express their frustration, with one Reddit user saying they had been online at noon and the bottle was “sold out in less than 7 minutes.” Soon after, bottles showed up on eBay at upwards of 25 times the initial cost, leading fans to express their grievances about the drop on social media.
BeautyMatter reached out to Dove to find out how many units were available for purchase during the drop, but the brand did not respond as of press time.
On paper, the launch was seemingly foolproof. In a press release prior to the launch, Dove said that over the years, fans have asked in comments and DMs for the iconic scent in a bottle, so they wanted to get it right. To ensure the fragrance hit the mark and captured the scent consumers have grown to know and love, Dove hired Ann Gottlieb, the fragrance developer behind CK One, Dior J’adore, and Marc Jacobs Daisy. To take it a step further, the bottle design mimicked the Beauty Bar with a gold dove for the cap.
“Dove tapped into something real [with this fine fragrance]—people have a scent memory of the bar soap that goes back decades, and a fragrance lets them wear that memory,” said Bhargav Lakkaraju, founder and CEO of Hoopla Interactive Services, an independent advertising network. “The concept was right.”
To Lakkaraju’s point, the limited-edition drop is a tried-and-true strategy for luxury and streetwear brands, but the oversight may be that Dove’s audience expects to find the brand on just about every drugstore shelf in the country. The gap between those two expectations is where the frustration likely lies. One TikTok review from fragrance creator @YouCanScentWithUs, captioned “I AM FURIOUS. 😤 #dovesoap,” racked up more than 38,000 likes and 850 comments within a day of posting.
“A $20 perfume is very rare,” Funmi Monet, fragrance expert and founder of Influxious, told BeautyMatter. “You're usually looking at $20 for just a body mist,” which is why she called the launch “a perfect storm of nostalgia, but also a very accessible price point.”
Lakkaraju sees the same appetite across the category. “There's a clear hunger for comfort scents: clean, familiar, nostalgic,” he said. “Consumers want fragrance that feels like a fresh shower or a childhood memory, not just a statement.”
Still, Monet isn’t convinced the brand got it wrong so much as it got a very loud answer to a very good question. “The truth is that there was no amount of inventory that Dove could have produced that would have been enough for the demand they had,” she said. Unlike a bootstrapped founder, she added, Dove can lean on decades of sales history. “They made a calculated decision.”
Asked whether the drop was a backfire or a misstep, she lands on “both,” and suspects the loudest critics are a small share of the people who actually wanted a bottle. “The public also feels entitled to being able to buy things when they want them,” she said.
If anything, Monet said the sellout may have widened the funnel. “To be honest, when I saw the Dove [launch], I was like, ‘Oh, that's nice,’” she said. “Now that I've seen all these people upset about not getting one, I'm like, ‘When they drop another one, I might need to grab one.’”
For now, Dove has a loose commitment to restocking the fragrance for its 70th anniversary next year.
When the fragrance does return, both experts point to scale and access as the deciding factors. “Now that they know the demand, whatever they sold, they need to run that number up quite a bit,” Monet said. A permanent version raises harder retail questions, she adds. “They have so many retailers that carry their product that they have to seriously think about distribution.” Warehouse space is another limit. “If a million people want a product, you might not have space for a million new products in your warehouse,” she said.
Lakkaraju would treat the drop as the opening act. “I'd turn the drop into a first chapter rather than a one-off,” he said. “Give everyone who missed out a fair shot, through a larger waitlist or discovery-size vials at a wider set of retailers, then decide on a permanent line based on real demand data. That keeps the buzz and repairs the goodwill.”
And for other heritage brands now eyeing fragrance, Monet issues a warning. “Other brands should proceed with caution,” she said. “Dove's success is not necessarily an indication that you will also be successful launching a fragrance.” Dove, she adds, has a rare combination of universal nostalgia and an affordable price point. Brands “have to move very, very intentionally to have that lightning strike twice in a bottle.”
