Earl of East has extended its reign in all cardinal directions. The home fragrance brand and lifestyle store concept started by couple Paul Firmin and Niko Dafkos in 2014 has found a loyal audience for its stylish yet approachable take on all things scent, body, and home decor. Whether it’s marbled ceramic vases, Scandinavian spice grinders, or color blocked dog beds, there’s many diverse treasures to be found inside an Earl of East store. While each space has its own unique twists, the brand’s aesthetic could be defined as cozy minimalism: there’s green foliage and natural wooden flooring to welcome one in, with modern pops of color and steel open shelving units—a modern city dweller space no doubt, but still warm and inviting.

When visitors aren’t busy browsing the shelves at the brand’s stores in King’s Cross, Piccadilly Circus, and Shoreditch, which includes fellow brands like Maude, D.S. & Durga, and Everyday Humans, they can be soaking up creative impressions in candle-making workshops. Their book to help recreate those experiences outside of the four walls of their shops, The Scented Candle Workshop, was published in 2019.

Earl of East’s own brand universe also offers a plethora of avenues of engagement, from wildflower illustrated T-shirts to glass incense holders, hand wash, and bath salts. Home fragrance is the undeniable core of its brand DNA, realized as soy wax candles and hand-dipped incense sticks and cones. As purveyors of interior scent design options, Earl of East has inspirations aplenty: Elementary recreates the smell of a Victoria town house with a blend of amber, leather, and tobacco leaf; Smoke & Musk references a cabin in the woods with a blend of patchouli, green balsam fir, and wood smoke; Jardin de la Lune emulates the gardens of Versailles with tuberose, cade, blackberry leaf, and bergamot. 

Earl of East has also struck creative gold with a wide range of collaborations. With Uncommon Creative Studio, the company released a “Scents of Normality” collection with candles themed around the most loved-experiences missed during lockdown (the cinema, festival, and local pub) benefitting Hospitality Action's Covid-19 appeal. It also created a “Scents of Belonging” range focused around scent memories in Syria, Iran, and Nigeria, with all profits going towards the Choose Love organization to aid refugees. The company collaborated with emerging print artist Charlotte Taylor on a range of limited-edition packaging for Jardin de la Lune, a “Feeling Blue” collection of ceramics with East London-based studio KANA, and teamed up with sustainable fashion brand Damson Madder’s first candle collection. 

This summer, the brand released a trio of café inspired scents: Americano (the scent of freshly ground coffee beans), Iced Matcha (an earthy scent of matcha tea leaves and cedar), and Milk Bun (a sweet and creamy blend of buttermilk, almond milk, and sandalwood). Not only is it a fitting nod to the coffee corner housed in each Earl of East store, but the candle containers are reusable ceramic mugs.

Firmin and Dafkos were inspired to set up Earl of East after spending weekends exploring the independent shops in LA or Broadway Market near London Fields. They completely self-funded the business while holding down full-time jobs in media and advertising during their first five years in business―Dafkos a social producer at AMV BBDO and Firmin as an agency group head at GumGum, an AI start-up.

They began trading their products at Netil Market, selling cacti, candles, and mid-century ceramics before setting up shop in London Fields in 2014 (a space which they bid farewell in 2019 amidst expansion). A year after launching, they were working with Selfridges and within 12 months, had 25 stockists. Today, the brand has also found a home in 240 shops around the world, including Nordstrom, High Tide, and Incu. In 2023, the brand sold 11 candles per hour, made 100,000 units by hand, and saw incense sales spike up by 122%. Its bodycare line has also found a warm welcome with the Shinrin-Yoku All Over Oil (a forest-bathing inspired creation featuring 10 organic oils and a black pepper, cedarwood, and juniper scent) selling out four times in nine months.

BeautyMatter spoke to Firmin and Dafkos about the importance of in-person touchpoints in the digital age, creating democratically priced products for everyday use, and how the brand managed to leverage the pandemic to its benefit.

Where did both of your loves of scent begin?

Niko Dafkos: For me, the beginning goes beyond scent. For me the love of it came from the world of flavors, spices, and herbs. Growing up in Germany with a Greek family, my great grandmother was always in the kitchen, working with spices and herbs. I loved being in there with her and seeing what dried herbs she was using in various dishes, from cinnamon to cumin to bay leaf. Fast forward to us meeting 12 years ago and discussing our passions, scent quickly stood out as something that we shared. 

Paul Firmin: That was part of how we bonded in the beginning on our first dates. Scent became quite prominent from the very beginning of our relationship. Mine was less food-based—I'm from the Northeast so food isn't over-spiced—but my grandparents loved their garden. The scent of geraniums in flower pots or the scent of jasmine in the summer were really prominent for me. We started speaking about grandparents, that led to scent, and then that became something that we explored more and more.

How would you describe your working synergy as co-founders? 

ND:  I don't think it’s as descriptive as you would probably expect. Over the last 10 years, we fell into a place very organically where we both have different focuses that we also happen to enjoy. Paul will usually start with a creative idea, and I'll go and source the ingredients that I think could do the job; then we sit down and work on the blends. Businesswise, I'm more production focused and in our studio in Leyton; Paul is more retail-focused and client-facing.

PF: I was trying to describe this to someone who joined the team yesterday. It’s not that Niko does all of one side of the business like the numbers, and then I do all the retail; we both do bits of each. Now it is a bit more formulaic in a way that makes more sense to the team. But at the beginning, it was me doing parts of the creative process and Niko would do another. I would do part of the accountancy and Niko would do a bit of the other, and then we just found a way of making that work.

ND: It also stemmed from it being a side thing that we did outside of our day job. We had one inbox; whenever I had downtime, I would jump in and continue conversations, and when Paul had downtime from his office job, he would jump in. But as the team grew, we needed to designate responsibilities.

PF: It's funny because I read an article yesterday about the side hustle making a great return. That was a huge part of our identity for five years. We built a pretty big business for two people who had full-time careers. It was quite a challenge.

Building what you've built alongside a full-time job is pretty impressive. My hat's off to you for your organizational capabilities.

PF: We've always had a good team and that helped us grow. In the beginning, when it started to gain traction, we weren't ready to leave our jobs because we actually liked them. There were milestones we wanted to achieve, like buy a house, which was definitely the right thing because we wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise. At some point, we had to let the reins go a little bit, and people stepped in. It's our baby, so we'll always be a bit precious over it, but because it was a side hustle, we needed other people to step in, which then meant that when we joined it full time, it already had an organizational structure. The free flow of work does change all the time, but it's quite good because we both have experience working in every bit of the business. 

Learning by doing really. You started with the market stall, but then moved into a standalone store. What makes a great retail space?

PF: We have these four pillars that underpin everything we do. People nowadays, probably more so than a decade ago, they don't just buy a brand, they want to be part of it. Having a market stall taught us that the way you would be able to engage a customer was by talking to them. We didn't just sit behind the market stall with a book open on a stool. From the very early days, we made sure that conversation was a big part of it. We made sure there was music playing, there were candles burning; it’s quite multisensory. You need to create a space that feels like it's theirs, not just yours. 

We've created what could be referred to as premium retail spaces, but there's always a bit of a juxtaposition between where we are and how we operate. In King’s Cross, it's quite stark, but then you'll come into our space, and there's always nostalgic music playing. It appeals to a broad range of people because the couple who brought their parents in, that music can resonate with them because they remember it from way back when. The idea of conversation and making sure we speak to and engage with everyone is as important as the space; just making it feel as welcoming as possible. Having coffee counters in each of the stores is purposeful because it feels like less of a commitment to step into a space when there’s coffee available.

ND: What the coffee counter does as well, and you'd be surprised, a lot of people don't understand the concept, so they come in and ask “You do coffee, you make candles, you have homeware, what is this place?” So, they open up the conversation in that way. When people talk about retail experiences, they always mean some theater-like production, but the experience can be as simple as the conversation you have with the team that is in a store. That is really the most meaningful experience for a customer, and then everything else comes with it. Dialogue makes good retail and even impacts our buying and how we display things. We pay attention to how people move in the store, what they asked for, what they want, what they don't want, and we work with that. If you don't have dialogue, you're just creating something that no one responds to.

Even visually the stores sit somewhere between this streamlined, minimalist aesthetic so you're not visually overwhelmed, but then it doesn't have that stark, alienating feel to it, which can sometimes happen when you go for that cleaner aesthetic. The relationship with physical retail is being redefined because there's been such an e-commerce boom, but also through the pandemic so many stores were wiped out. What was your key to navigating that really challenging time in retail?

PF: We showed up the whole way through. Through the pandemic we would offer local pickup so people could still come and collect the product. We delivered product to people on their doorstep. We continued to produce content, we were still in their inbox. We were quite lucky; we had been banking content in advance, and it was resonating with people so we kept going. We had left our day jobs six months prior, so we had to make it work. 

ND: As a small business owner, what your passion becomes is problem solving. Then Covid lockdown became a business problem, and that problem we had to solve the best way we could. We threw ourselves into it, which was empowering while being very scary, having to pick up every single element of the business and make it work again. I actually really enjoyed it.

How much of your business is divided up between the e-commerce side, the retail side, and the wholesale side? 

PF: Now, online is about 30%; wholesale probably accounts for about 20% of our overall business currently. Then physical retailers are really, really important. We also have the workshop strand, which straddles both online and physical. But we're really committed to growing online, and we've put a lot of things in place to start to scale that side of the business but not at the expense of the physical. We opened our Regent Street store last year. There will be other stores coming. 

We believe that distribution and where you place yourself is the best form of marketing. It's not an accident that we're in Coal Drops Yard, Redchurch Street, and just off of Regent Street, which is a juxtaposition. What we've learned here is that this space operates very much as a brand space. The discovery [rate] is crazy. Obviously, you get the Soho workers or people who live south of the river who were our customers and now this is their closest space. But a majority of the revenue in this space comes from people who've never seen us before. But by placing ourselves just off Regent Street that means something to people and international stockists.

ND: It means as much as being stocked in stores like Selfridges. Selfridges is a global powerhouse; the minute a brand is in there, it elevates its positioning, and people want a slice of it. Regent Street has a similar impact. It's one of those globally known shopping streets. 

PF: We're still very much a small business; our entire team is 26 people. We have three stores, we manufacture a significant amount of products. We do e-commerce, photography, everything in-house; we're very lean. What I've realized, even since opening Redchurch Street is because those locations are premium, people think you are a much bigger brand than you are. But also people don't always want you to scale. When you do that, it can become: oh, you've sold out? 

There’s this viewpoint, especially in fragrance of the “us versus them” mentality of the indie brands versus the big corporations. At the end of the day, you have employees, your own livelihood; why wouldn't you want to grow? The art and commerce debate can be seen in so many other creative structures as well. In today's day and age with how competitive the market is, you need to have a certain baseline.

PF: The majority of feedback is positive. Distribution is marketing. It’s really purposeful where we've placed ourselves. We're trying to build a brand, which is harder to do in a neighborhood.

In terms of aligning yourself with the right partners, what makes an Earl of East collaborator? What do you look for in the brands that you bring in?

PF: There’s a shared ethos. The people or the brands that stay with us, whatever size or scale they are, it's that mentality of wanting to do something fun. All of them are incredibly hard working. 

The difference between the brands now is obviously once we opened in Coal Drops Yard, we needed brands where we could turn over stock much more quickly. We couldn’t do that with handmade product, but there is definitely a shared ethos. There’s also a shared aesthetic that they all have, whether it's in their packaging or their socials. I want to work with people who are really ambitious. I find that inspiring. When it comes to beauty in particular, we've got a lot of really nice new emerging beauty brands, and they're compelled to do this thing because it's not easy.

You’ve had this incredible expansion with your namesake brand, going into 240 doors. What do you think has been the key to having that end goal but also doing it mindfully?

PF: We’re nearly 10 years old, and we’ve had the brand wholesaling for eight. It sounds like a lot, but over that time, it's been fairly organic. We've always represented ourselves; we've never used an agent. The people who are selling our product to stockists, they know the whole process. They see it being made, they’ve made it, and that makes a difference. In terms of the product, we've tried to create a product that is premium, but still democratically priced.

It's independents who've built our business. They've been the ones who've really supported us because when they buy into the product, they sell it like it's their own. We're at about 65 different SKUs, but we've released them quite slowly. Everything is evergreen. The scents that are in the line have always been in the line. We don't change them every three months. We don't change the packaging once every six months and try and reinvent the wheel. It's something a stockist can rely on when they come on board.

What we created is something that's fairly minimal and then just added to it organically. We're capped by how fast we can produce it; everything is still hand poured. What's allowed us to grow is the fact that we control our entire supply chain because we're fully vertically integrated. But then what also potentially stops us from scaling really quickly is the fact that we still make everything; it's not machine made.

That's a good thing, because it becomes its own benefit when it needs to be; like in the pandemic, we could keep producing, we could do collaborations and turn them around really quickly. Then on the other side, we're still a small team, and there's only so much we can do. But we've come to the realization in the last couple of years that you can only release two or three things and do it properly. We have a lot of products that are there, but either you don't have the right time to release it, or it doesn't feel like the right time, or you just don’t have the time.

I know there's demand for reed diffusers, and we've developed them but then the cost to do it in the way we want to do it is really high. Now is not the right time because it’s a challenging time out there. It's a huge financial risk.

What are your bestsellers across which markets or are they universal?

ND: The bestsellers are the bestsellers across markets. Shinrin Yoku and Onsen, which are part of the bathing range, are performing really well for us. The bestsellers change based on seasonality rather than territory. So usually the cozy months September through March, it’s Smoke & Musk. In spring, it's all about Greenhouse. We see a spike on Wildflower at the end of summer; it's heavy on jasmine, gardenia, and rose geranium. Jardin de la Lune, which is a tuberose scent, is [popular] throughout the year. 

PF: All of the scents align all the time. What one of our online retailers has told us is that the majority of brands they buy into have one bestseller, and then if that bestseller becomes oversaturated, sometimes there isn't anything else. What’s interesting about our brand is they all sell very well and very consistently. We don't just halo one. Pushing one scent, I'm sure that helps in terms of driving scale, and it's a really quick way to grow, but when that becomes oversaturated, where do you go from there?

Every year, we'll celebrate one of our core collections. So last year, we did a campaign called Bloom Where You're Planted, which brought to life Wildflower, which has been in our line since 2015. It’s a way to celebrate and come back to that scent. When we release new SKUs, for example, we're doing bar soaps of every SKU in the line, we're doing a different format in every scent. What's nice about that from a stockist perspective is that very few stockists of any scale stock the entire line. But when they stock four scents from it, which is the usual, they carry as much in those four scents as they can. We've added air fresheners, incense, and bar soap so that your stockist can still have newness but with what's already tried and tested.

Do you have any particular creative process when it comes to new product creation? 

ND: It’s been very organic; they're all inspired by places we've been to. Obviously, you experience every place differently, depending on the time of year you go and see it. But as the business has grown and as we have been in it full time for five years, you see what other peers do and how they approach it. It turns out sometimes there is more strategy in a release rather than just intuition. For a new range that we had been working on, it was more like looking at trends, what's performing in store, looking at interior trends, what TikTok tells us, and then we formulated what it would look like if Earl of East did that topic.

You also host the workshops and do these very interactive points of connection. How important has community building been to your business model?

ND: Community has been super important. It's been the power behind the business from the get-go. Existing in a local market, you're surrounded by community. If that community doesn't create the energy for people to come and come back and come back again, then you can't achieve anything.

From then on, you have the community of all the brands and makers that you work with; it's the principle of you scratch each other's back. Then ultimately you also have the community of customers, of people who are part of your business and interact with it physically or digitally. Workshops are an extension to that. Without community we wouldn't be here.

PF: Communities with us are very much in real life. It's someone who attends a workshop. They often become brand ambassadors. When you have 10 people sitting around our table, we ask if they have heard of us before. Most people in the room will tell us their friend, colleague, or partner came to our workshop, or they know our store. Whenever we do an event in the space, it sells out in minutes. People want that real-life experience. 

There's such a push towards e-commerce and online, but there is something to be said for that in-person point of connection. There's a very different emotional aspect to it.

ND: Whenever I'm in store, I need that community, that connection with my customer to just talk about life. The product and scent falls into it as a byproduct. Some of the nicest conversations I've ever had in the stores are people coming up to to one of our team members or ourselves and sharing what's been going on in their lives. That is quite special for stores in Central London, especially when people come in and we remember their names, their last purchases, and how their other family members are doing. It shows you the importance that it has. All the faceless stuff you can do online, of course we can't compete with convenience because if you order it on the internet, it will be there tomorrow. That's great sometimes, but what we offer is that human connection and that community aspect through and through.

Has your vision for the business changed since the first day? Or has it stayed the same?

ND: I wouldn't say the vision has changed. We always set out to create a space where anybody could come in and find something they would like or something that would interest them. What has changed over the last decade is the source of inspiration. We’ve traveled a lot to Copenhagen and obviously stock a lot of Danish brands. There’s an aesthetic inspiration, which has had an impact on us and our current taste. The same with trips to Japan and the inspiration from there. As you walk through life, you see new things, and they influence you.

PF: For the retail spaces for sure and for the product, too. It's the idea of elevating every day. I want it to be the candle you burn; I don't necessarily need it to be the table centerpiece. I want it to be the scent that you use every Christmas like Smoke & Musk; we see that every year. “It's not Christmas, unless I've got a Smoke & Musk candle.” Hearing that feedback directly, there's nothing like that. That's still the main aim: being democratically priced, creating things people want to use and use and use again is really special.

ND: Being meaningful with everything we do. 

What have been the biggest hurdles and triumphs of the last 10 years? 

PF: It’s been relentless, the whole five years when I’ve been in it full time. That's not unique to us. Every step, it feels like there's been a lot of people who disappear, and we don't live in a climate where it's that encouraging to start something. Getting through the pandemic and the way we handled that, we took risks; it was like a huge hurdle. But we also came out of it quite proud.

We scaled up quite quickly, and that was really challenging when we moved to the new head office, going from an 800-square-foot space to 11,000 was a massive jump. We had to relearn everything. That head office team is now in a really good place; it had some challenges. Even though we hand pour everything, we're not small batches anymore and had to relearn everything. There were points in that process that were really tough. 

I'm so excited about getting to 10 years old; that’s a massive milestone. I'm really proud of what we've done. I wouldn't change any of it. 

Was there any key moment where things just took off and it snowballed from there?

PF: The pandemic, definitely because when everything closed down, we were able to keep producing and manufacturing. Then we did the Scents of Normality and the Scents of Belonging campaigns. But also, because we've both been in advertising, we pulled lots of levers to be there. We have a longstanding relationship with Pinterest, doing corporate events, but we also did all of its care packages. We did online workshops with Spotify. We took our experience from media and advertising and asked ourselves how can we turn that into a revenue stream. That helped keep us going.

ND: Thinking about those key moments, what I keep on coming back to is that we have a small business trying to play with the big players. That is always exciting because it’s a bit scary at the same time. 

What can you tell me about your other side projects and additional revenue streams?

PF: When we worked with JW Anderson, that was a specific request from Jonathan Anderson to work with us, which was cool. Or we do a lot in the music industry, projects for Universal and Sony. There's a number of artists and well-known people who we've done incense sessions with who love our products, but there's also a discretion. So we're working on a few projects at the minute with pretty big-name people, but it's something that no one will ever know about. But it’s really flattering. 

What’s on the horizon for you?

PF: Hard soaps in every scent. We're also doing scent pairing gift sets. We might do another space. We want to reformulate our hand washes and balms, so like the All Over Oil, they become an all over wash and bomb. Elevating the every day, but without having to have 20 different products to do so. We have an ambition to do perfumes as well.