Launch Date: April 2022
Geography: Seoul, Korea
Founder: Jun Lim, Founder + Managing Director
Executive Team:
Notable Investors:
2026 Full Year Projected Revenue: $75M - $100M, according to industry estimates
Primary Category: Fragrance
Other Category: Bodycare
Funding: Venture Capital
Primary Distribution Channel: Department Store
Other Distribution Channels:
Key Retail Partners:
Key Markets:
2026 Projected Offline Distribution Points: 1,100
For 20 years, I lived with fragrance; collecting it, studying it, loving it more obsessively than anything else. But one day I realized something unsettling: I couldn’t remember the last time a perfume truly surprised me. Everything smelled familiar. Safe. Recycled. And I refused to accept a world where scent stopped being thrilling.
Most brands begin with the question, “Will this sell?” We begin with, “Does the world actually need this fragrance?” If it doesn’t bring something genuinely new to the table, we simply don’t make it.
I never approached perfumery as a commercial venture. I came into it as a fan who was tired of redundancy; a fan who wanted emotion with teeth, creations that push the boundaries, bottles that look pure but hold something wild inside.
From that obsession, BORNTOSTANDOUT grew, accidentally successful, intentionally unconventionally. And the world responded. We became a global cult house because people were craving originality, not redundancy.
We create fragrances that didn’t exist before. Unexpected, intimate, rebellious, and every scent is treated as artistic necessity, never a commercial product. Our philosophy remains simple. Rebel against the standard.
Insights: Jun Lim, Founder + Managing Director
Why now and why you?
Because the fragrance industry is drowning in sameness. I come in as a 20-year fan, not a traditional marketer. My instinct is trained by obsession, not by sales charts. While the industry asks, “Will this move units?” I ask, “Is this new? Is this needed? Does this shift the landscape even a little?” That mindset naturally built a brand people couldn’t ignore.
What fuels your competitive advantage?
Our advantage is straightforward. We don’t create unless we can bring something genuinely new into the world. That filter alone eliminates 99% of what other brands would launch.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
We want to shape what people want as the next big thing.
What’s your proudest accomplishment to date?
That a brand started purely from passion and obsession, without much commercial intention, and became a global force. We proved that originality and risky intention can scale without losing soul.
What is the one thing you wish someone had told you?
Protecting your taste is harder than protecting your business. Everyone will tell you to go safer, but the world doesn’t need safer.
What would you tell your past self before starting this journey?
Trust your obsession. The fact that you think something is “missing in the world” is the entire business plan.
What does success look like in the next 3-5 years?
Culturally, pushing niche fragrance into a new era where originality, not trends, leads. Commercially, continuing global expansion without dilution. Emotionally, still creating like a fan—never from fear, always from instinct.
What's one industry trend that is overhyped, and what's being overlooked?
Overhyped: engineered “safe” scents optimized by research panels.
Overlooked: true novelty. Consumers crave something they haven’t smelled before, but the industry rarely dares to give it.
How do you think the industry needs to evolve?
By embracing imperfection. By letting brands take risks. By allowing fragrance to be loud, emotional, culturally specific, and even controversial. Beauty needs more soul and less polish. Less consensus, more conviction. Less perfect, more human.
If you could wave a magic wand, what one wish would you make for your business?
If I could wave a magic wand, I’d build a chain of flagship stores across the world with absolutely no budget limits … because retail is expensive, and imagination usually gets edited down by square-meter costs. I’d create the wildest, most artistic retail concepts the fragrance world has ever seen; spaces where people step directly into a BORNTOSTANDOUT universe.
And the best part? I’d take each city’s most traditional, conservative artistic or architectural codes and reinterpret them into something wildly avant-garde. A rebellious remix of local culture. Flipped, twisted, exaggerated, until the familiar becomes shockingly original.
Every flagship would feel like its own cultural provocation, a scent-driven playground built from the soul of the city but reinterpreted with our own language of originality.