The niche fragrance world has been a consistently blossoming source of inspiration for the fragrance world at large, with new launches and entrants to the category on a monthly basis. The global luxury niche fragrance market is growing at a 11.29% CAGR from 2023 to 2030, and popular brands like Byredo or Parfums de Marly are being snapped up by strategics and private equity firms.
But navigating the road from self-made brand to consistent bestseller is no easy feat. In the tides of acquisitions and #FragranceTok viral sensations, Maison Louis Marie is a ship that has been sailing its own steady course for over a decade, a self-funded brand based in a love of botanicals and accessible luxury.
BeautyMatter sat down with CEO Matthew Berkson to discuss the challenging navigation from underground indie shops to the aisles of Sephora, creating complex yet wearable fragrances and the ever-morphing landscape of the perfume industry.
Botanical Beginnings
Marie du Petit Thouars was born into a world of flora fantasies. Her great-great grandfather Louis Marie Aubert du Petit Thouars was exiled during the French Revolution and ended up in the Mauritius Islands of Madagascar, where he discovered 2,000 different plant species. At the end of the revolution, he returned to France where his findings led to him becoming a celebrated member of the botanist community.
Growing up surrounded by botanicals, this love of plantlife built the basis of her fragrance brand. The brand’s mark is an original drawing of Louis Marie’s discovery of the antidris dryochris orchid. A lover of luxury candles, but not the financial anxiety that comes with purchasing them, the then-fine art fashion photographer tracked down a candle manufacturer in LA where she learned how to produce products. Her husband Matthew Berkson, who specialized in fashion manufacturing for brands like Marc Jacobs and Helmut Lang, headed up the operations side of the business.
Her Echo Park studio became Maison Louis Marie HQ, and in 2013, she launched with a collection of six candles. No.01 Scalpay, named after a family relative's Scottish Isle, is a breezy seaside creation of lemongrass, beach grass, and summer herbs. No.02 Le Long Fond pays homage to a nursery in Belgium founded by her grandfather, complete with notes of hinoki, cedarwood, and patchouli. No.03 L’Etang Noir references the black lake where she played during her childhood, a mixture of vanilla, anise, tobacco, and tonka. The company’s hero scent, No.04 Bois de Balincourt, takes its name from her family home and her childhood spent horseback riding through a trail called Lover’s Lane. The smell of damp sandalwood provided the basis for the warm and earthy creation of sandalwood, vetiver, and amberwood. No.05 Kandilli is the name of the small village in Istanbul where her mother first smelled tuberose. No.06 Neige de Printemps (French for “spring snow”) is dedicated to the spring seasons her grandmother spent in Switzerland, celebrating the carnival of Cran sur Sierre. The fruity scent contains notes of blood orange, kumquat, and guava.
Fragrance oils followed in 2014 (twelve fragrances and counting), eau de parfums in 2015 (seven scents in total), and later, bodycare. With a sleek aesthetic at $38 a candle, $65 for a 15ml perfume oil, and $93 for a 50ml eau de parfum, the brand’s price points also sits at an accessible price point compared to other luxury contenders. Home fragrance, comprised of candles and more recently launched diffusers, is an ongoing success, constituting 30-35% of Maison Louis Marie’s business. Bodycare is a smaller portion of the business but with a recent relaunch, there is plenty of promise for the future ahead. Berkson notes that especially the Asian market has been very receptive to the brand’s bodycare offerings.
“You have to be gritty. There's many more resources now out there than there ever before to help you launch your brand, but it’s about being slow and methodical. Things slowly evolved for us by design,” he says, recalling the early days when Du Petit Thouars would have to drive her shipments to FedEx herself for shipping because the brand was too small to have a regular pickup.
Today, the company still fulfills all goods from its own warehouse, and sources all materials and packaging directly. The couple's candle making connection led them to their fragrance supplier, which then connected them with a bodycare developer when they decided to launch into said category. While turnkey solutions are a key part of some young entrepreneurs getting their start in the industry, the duo wanted to be involved in their brand every step of the way.
“We were able to control every aspect of the business. It enabled us to scale slowly because we didn't necessarily need to hire upfront. We had key people processing orders and a small crew in our warehouse that’s grown to a bigger crew. But I didn't add any executive level people until about two years ago. I handled all the sales, marketing, and operations—that's not for everyone because it's gnarly. But if you're willing to do that for as long as possible, it will help you immensely in the beginning,” he remarks.
In 2024, the team includes a CFO, Head of Sales, and Head of Operations, with twelve full-time employees in total. The brand is in over 1,000 doors in total, with DTC presenting 30% of their total business, with 70% wholesale making up a majority of their business.
Independent boutiques have been and continue to be a core part of Maison Louis Marie’s retail presence from the very beginning. “We feel very comfortable working with them and are loyal to them because they have been with us from the beginning. It can be difficult to manage so many independent shops, but it's a really cool customer experience. For a new customer, when you discover a scent that you feel is a hidden gem that not many people know about; it’s really magical in a way,” he says.
The company's big break came in the form of Steven Alan, a menswear and womenswear fashion and lifestyle retailer that took the brand into its then-18 doors. “It basically worked as a showroom for us and helped grow the brand organically. We were always hesitant to look to bigger retailers and department stores at the time. We were very careful about growing too fast,” Berkson says. Throughout it all, the brand has bootstrapped itself. “We wanted to protect the brand and grow very sustainably,” he explains of the financial decision.
From Mom & Pop Shops to Sephora Shelves
In 2016, Sephora approached the brand about launching the brand as part of their Clean at Sephora initiative. “It was a great opportunity for us because it enabled us to get into a lot of doors fairly quickly. Since we launched with a group of other small brands we benefitted from their collective marketing since they put a lot behind the launch of the new category at the time,” Berkson explains. “We were initially very concerned that it would negatively impact our relationships with a lot of luxury retailers, but it didn't really affect our existing customer and just grew our awareness and worked out really well.”
Having an ingredients-conscious and natural-leaning focus from the onset proved to be beneficial not just to the brand’s ethos, but also its positioning at retailers. “We positioned ourselves early on as a luxury fragrance brand. When you launch a brand in our era and up until now, it's table stakes to be clean. We never really thought about positioning the brand that way, but it did open us up to rethink how we communicated our clean formulations and caused us to dive even deeper into our formulations and manufacturing processes and always sought ways to improve upon them,” he adds.
Launching at such a large chain like Sephora however also comes with its challenges. “Operationally, you definitely have to be prepared to launch. It’s making sure that you have the inventory to consistently ship and then all the additional marketing that's necessary to survive there. We were able to grow quickly because we had the help from Sephora in the background to promote the brand.” he explains. But with that growth also comes the challenges of continually partaking in marketing programs, media collectives, and smart sampling while also keeping a steady drumbeat of organic social and influencer marketing to stay in the conversation as it relates to Sephora.
Given that perfume oils are a smaller category to eau de parfums, Berkson notes that the brand also had to reassess its strategy. “In the beginning we had perfume oils displayed at Sephora when no one had them there. We love that format, but there is some confusion around them. We've realized over time that we really had to focus on the eau de parfums, especially with Sephora,” Berkson explains. Eau de parfums and oils were equally as popular, but now the spray variety is outpacing them.
Aside from Sephora, Maison Louis Marie also zeroed in on luxury retailers like Bergdorf Goodman, SSENSE, Blue Mercury, Credo, and Goop. As a US-based brand, the country is the brand’s primary market with a devout following. But Maison Louis Marie isn’t just staying stateside. The brand also has a presence in Asia and just launched in mainland China. In Australia as well as Hong Kong, they entered the market through Sephora alongside a selection of smaller independent retailers. Its European retailers include French fashion and lifestyle store The Frankie Shop and German e-tailer Niche Beauty. The company recently onboarded PR agencies in the US, Australia, and UK to continue to help spread awareness.
“We are still building our global footprint, and we're pivoting to focus on how to properly launch in Europe. It makes so much sense for our brand, with Marie being from Belgium and France, yet it's a very difficult market to enter. We’re focused now on the UK first,” he explains. Having just opened a warehouse in the country, they are selling DTC but also through many independent retailers like The Hambledon and La Gent, although Berkson admits: "It’s a cost prohibitive endeavor due to high shipping costs so the opening of our warehouse in the UK will be a gamechanger for us in the long run.”
As a brand with a luxury feel but more accessible price point, it can also be challenging to assess the ideal retail partners for Maison Louis Marie. “We really need to take the next step to build more awareness, and it's always tricky pitching luxury retailers since we are an accessible luxury brand in our price points, and a lot of these traditional department stores’ customers are looking at the ultra- luxury segment. They sometimes have trouble with our pricing,” he explains.
Joining Amazon was not an instant decision, but one that paid off. “We were very reluctant for many years, but at a certain point the floodgates opened and it was acceptable to be on Amazon. Before we formally launched on Amazon, it was so frustrating to see pages and pages of listings of people selling and reselling our product. So we took control of that and it's become a very big growing business for us," he mentions. “In the past, it was really important to offer certain assortments to different retailers. In this day and age, you need to be where the customer is because the customer is so used to getting what they want, when they want it, where they are.”
Sustaining Growth as a Bootstrapped Brand
Undoubtedly, while niche fragrance is booming, it’s also becoming a more complex terrain to navigate. Growth isn’t just happening in terms of expansions, but with the recent influx of investment capital in niche fragrance brands, “We feel like we’re the only fragrance brand that still hasn't taken an investment. It's become a much more competitive landscape. So many niche fragrance brands have popped up in the last few years. That's another thing I feel like we're up against,” he adds. “We've built this without investors and of course there's still the constant stress of we’ve got to grow. But while we are still finding and developing our path we find it beneficial that we don't have to answer to an investor and have the added pressure that we have to grow a certain amount every year and do it at all costs. Especially in fragrance, it's a different playbook than color [cosmetics] and skin. There seems to be a ceiling with fragrance and growth within larger retailers. It’s much more difficult to grow insanely fast, and you need to do it in a slow and methodical approach over time.”
One of the main reasons for this ceiling is the size of the niche fragrance market. “It’s a smaller piece of the beauty pie in terms of category and within fragrance you have the huge legacy players who have such a big share of it, like the Chanel's and Gucci's of the world. Then you have a lot of niche brands just fighting it out,” Berkson explains. “Of course, when you first launch at a bigger retailer, you're going to see crazy growth for the first couple years. But then it gets harder and harder as you keep growing to sustain it within those channels.”
There are also additional factors when it comes to competition in the sector. “With these brands that are well financed now, they’re hitting on all cylinders. The rise of TikTok and influencer marketing that is super expensive makes it very difficult for brands to be part of the FragranceTok conversation. It doesn't come naturally for us because Marie is a very creative yet very private person. She wants the brand to be at the forefront versus her, [but] the climate has changed in a way,” Berkson states. “In the last year or so, we've really put a focus on influencer outreach and trying to figure out in our own way to be part of that conversation."
Berkson also sees a growth in the youth market, with accessible pricing, formats like body mists, and gourmand and fruity floral scents at the forefront. For Maison Louis Marie, acknowledging the tides of the industry while also staying true to their own North Star is paramount. “We’re trying to create sophisticated, complex scents that have mass appeal and thrive at Sephora. It's trying to find that balance and doing it through our lens. You want to get your brand out to as many people as possible, but of course you don't want to sacrifice your aesthetic or your principles,” he comments.
With their newest release No.14 Icila, it was addressing the brand’s own gap in their lineup, namely one for a warm floral. With a name derived from the French word for “here” (“ici”), the creation combines juicy ruby pamplemousse with intoxicating jasmine in the opening, with elegant dark plum and rose in the heart, grounded in warm vanilla flowers, sakura blossoms, and patchouli in the base.
The newest release was also a departure in the sense that it was given a more abstract concept of cherishing the present moment, as opposed to the childhood memory and family history-inspired launches of the past. It is however, still incredibly relevant to the personal lives of the brand’s founders, given the busy day-to-day of running the company while raising an eight-year-old.
Today, the brand’s bestsellers are No.04 Bois de Balincourt, No.13 Nouvelle Vague (a fresh solar fragrance inspired by springtime visits to the Amalfi coast with muguet, fig, and tonka) and, No.14 Icila. No.13 Nouvelle Vague was a response to the booming demand for vanilla scents, but the Maison Louis Marie twist on it uses coconut water for a warm and sweet drydown, but nothing overtly saccharine. While responding to an undeniable trend in the industry, the brand is conscious of not rushing its releases.
“The cadence of adding a scent a year for smaller brands, we're starting to rethink that because what we saw with No.13 is that it takes over a year for a scent to really establish itself. We don't have the resources for scorched earth campaigns; it needs to be this gritty drumbeat for a sustained amount of time for us to really get a scent out there into the marketplace,” he explains.
With thousands of launches in the market every year, and consumer demand for newness, there are certainly pressures to keep creating new scents, but this also comes at a risk of oversaturation. Maison Louis Marie is hoping to take a more considered approach. “Going into next year, we're looking at our line and are really happy with the assortment, and we're just considering a continued focus on our top three scents. It’s this tricky dance; newness is such a big part of being with bigger retailers. But even then, they see the same thing: they would rather have us focus on stuff that's gaining ground over time rather than constantly throwing more stuff at the market,” he adds. “Especially because of constant new launches, it's highly likely that most people just aren't aware of your newness. It takes a long time because there's so much noise.”
An Early Entrant of Clean Fragrance and Sustainability
Clean perfumery may still be a fairly new entrant to the industry, but it certainly has a passionate fan base. For Maison Louis Marie, it was simply a logical approach given the brand’s base in botanical wildlife and a love of nature, but it’s also helped create a loyal customer community, as well as keep the brand’s eye on the constant moving target of sustainability.
“We get a lot of customers who reach out to our website directly, and it's amazing how knowledgeable they are about specific ingredients and dive deep into the formulations,” Berkson explains when asked about the evolution of the clean fragrance customer. “The clean standards are finally homogenizing. There are still big misconceptions out there as to what is supposedly clean and it's no fault of the average person who, when you hear [the term] ‘clean,’ you obviously would deduce that all formulations need to be 100% natural but that is not really the case and in certain circumstances safe synthetics actually could be safer and better for the environment than using its natural counterpart,” he adds.
“When you are classified as a clean brand, it brings much more responsibility upon us. It adds a whole new dimension to how now we formulate and have to deal with the restrictions of a lot of ingredients that make it a little harder to make things. But at the end of the day, it's been great because that led us on a totally different [sustainability] path,” he says.
Minimal packaging not just as part of the brand’s aesthetic, but also to minimize its environmental footprint. The brand avoids cello wrapping and packages its bottles in 100% recycled fiberboard and FSC certified paper boxes, printed with soy ink. The brand is now relaunching its bodycare in aluminum packaging. Previously, any plastic packaging used was 100% recycled.
“We did everything possible to be sustainable but at the end of the day, you're not doing the world any favors by making products that didn't exist and putting them in the environment,” he points out. To help bring their environmental cause even further, they joined 1% for the Planet and also work with The National Forest Foundation with every dollar donation resulting in a planted tree. To date over 10,000 trees have been planted on the brand’s behalf on a monthly basis. The brand also works with Climate Neutral, assessing the carbon output and also getting them involved in projects such as working with a nonprofit in Brazil to help conserve the rainforests. “It makes you sleep better at night knowing that you’re going above and beyond as a company to do good in the world. We're in the position that we, financially, actually help the environment beyond just sustainability in our packaging. It’s key to focus on recyclable packaging, but we just wanted to do more because it's important to us as a brand,” he adds.
Expanding the Maison Louis Marie Cosmos
Aside from its aforementioned international expansions, the brand also has other projects on the horizon. This year will mark the opening of its first pop-up store in Culver City, California, in Q4 2024, plus a campaign video for their new scent launch.
“We feel that it's important to set a vibe. The frustration too is we focus so much time on that product photography and our aesthetics, but at the end of the day, at a big retailer, you’re given a tiny little shelf with tons of other brands around you. We love them, but you're never going to get an understanding of our brand from experiencing us there. So, this is super exciting that we can create and show people our own world,” Berkson states.
Moving forward, the brand is hoping to do further pop-ups and set up a permanent retail location. They are also opening up to the idea of onboarding investors. “We have a lot to prove still, on our own. It’s interesting because you go through that exercise where you ask yourself: what would I do with $3 to $5 million right now? Of course, I could use those resources, but we're almost over ten years now operating this way. We can still grow without having a partner, but then you get to a point where, to make a bigger splash and speed up growth, I'm totally open to it,” he comments. Part of proving themselves include continued success with larger retailers, developing their own DTC and potential standalone retail channels.
“If you look at the big transactions of Aesop or Byredo, they followed their own path; they have a super strong brand and that needs to be protected at all costs. I want to be in a position to be like ‘this is our blueprint that we can offer’ and take the next step versus coming to them without a full plan or vision and then working together to try to figure it out. I think that could be dangerous,” he says.
Given that Berkson’s and Du Petit Thouars’ business strategy of a slow, steady, and intuitive approach has helped them build a continuously growing fragrance brand built for the long haul, it’s safe to say that whatever their future path may be, the legacy of Maison Louis Marie will only continue to take root.
