This week, I checked in on the strategy behind the fragrance brand By Rosie Jane’s Smell Good Saturdays pop-up series. Additionally, L’Oréal announces new leaders to its hair-care brands, and Target gets in on the ChatGPT shopping trend.
With Smell Good Saturdays, By Rosie Jane is taking fragrance to local businesses
It’s hard to say no to a free doughnut. Or at least that’s what By Rosie Jane founder Rosie Johnston is banking on for the first edition of her Smell Good Saturdays pop-up.
On Saturday, the Los Angeles-based fragrance brand will partner with local doughnut shop Donut Friend on an in-person giveaway, where the first 100 guests to the Highland Park bakery will receive a travel-sized sample of By Rosie Jane’s Rosie perfume and a rosewater donut inspired by the scent. The event is the first in what Johnston plans to be a monthly series that will see her brand partner with local businesses in cities like New York and L.A.
“My goal for the whole series is to interact and give out 5,000 samples,” said Johnston. “It’s about having that in-person experience, discovering the fragrance, taking it home, smelling it and then hopefully we kind of pique their interest.”
Future partners include Kumquat Coffee, also in Los Angeles’s Highland Park neighborhood, where By Rosie Jane will unveil a new, passionfruit-based scent alongside a similarly flavored coffee drink. In New York, Johnston has enlisted perfumer Asia Grant, who leads perfume tours through her Scent Social Club, to host a scent swap.
Johnston is not alone in seeing the power of fostering in-person connections with consumers. Experiential marketing has continued to grow as brands seek to reach audiences through IRL touchpoints rather than through widespread digital campaigns. According to Statista, global spend on experiential marketing grew 10.5% in 2024 to $128 billion.
Staging pop-ups in cities like Los Angeles and New York can easily run brands hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Johnston said she is keeping her dollar spend on Smell Good Saturdays minimal beyond the cost of furnishing the free samples.
“We will also share the cost of the doughnut or the coffee with each location, because it’s really to support their businesses, as well,” she said. “We’re a bootstrapped brand, so we can’t just throw tens of thousands of dollars at a program. It’s really about creating these small moments that hopefully have a larger impact by word of mouth or sharing.”
Ahead of the holiday shopping season, designer brands like Loewe and Miu Miu have mounted immersive fragrance pop-ups in the likes of Florida’s Aventura Mall and New York’s Rockefeller Center. In the long-term, Johnston is confident she can forge a connection with customers even without such elaborate set-ups.
“Beauty, at the moment, has become who has the bigger wallet. And that, to me, as a beauty founder and someone who’s been in this industry for a long time, isn’t really what ends up keeping your customers for longevity,” she said. “Anyone, if you have enough cash, can make anything spectacular. But does it have meaning?”
Food-based collaborations have proven popular for beauty brands in 2025, ranging from coffee partnerships to Erewhon-inspired smoothie collabs. The loyalty many consumers feel to their neighborhood cafe has made them a useful conduit to brand partnerships.
“[Kumquat] are really coffee connoisseurs. They take it very seriously, and their community is hyper-engaged. And I love that about it,” said Johnston. “The aromatics of coffee and the whole experience is so related to fragrance. It’s a very emotional, ritualistic kind of experience.”
Following New York and L.A., Johnston said she would like to bring the series to cities like Austin and Chicago. But beyond getting thousands of samples in customers’ hands, she said the benefits of the series remain to be seen.
“I never have experienced something bad with somebody getting a fragrance for free. Whether or not they love it, they definitely will pass it on,” said Johnston. “I think the results are going to be something we won’t probably see right away. It’s going to be over the whole year.”
Executive moves:
- Melis del Rey was named CEO and board director of Supergoop. Del Rey was most recently gm of Amazon U.S. Health and Beauty, where she oversaw the expansion of the e-commerce platform’s premium beauty brand assortment. She will assume the role at the SPF brand on December 8, succeeding interim CEO Gregory Polcer.
- L’Oréal has named a number of new executives in its professional products division. Mounia Tahiri was named gm of Redken U.S., joining from L’Oréal Professionnel. Guillaume Duez was named gm of Color Wow, which L’Oréal acquired in June. And Julie Fortier was named gm of L’Oréal Professionnel, after working as L’Oréal Canada’s gm for Kérastase and Shu Uemura.
News to know:
- Target and OpenAI announced the launch of a Target app in ChatGPT, allowing Target shoppers to get product recommendations and check out in ChatGPT. The news comes after Walmart and OpenAI announced a similar partnership in October.
- Sephora has teamed with the NBA to boost the men’s fragrance category as the official fragrance partner of the Golden State Warriors. The partnership builds on Sephora’s existing sponsorship of the Golden State Valkyries WNBA team. The LVMH-owned beauty retailer is also the first-ever presenting beauty partner of the Warriors Dance Team.
Stat of the week:
49% of Gen Z use tools like ChatGPT weekly for product discovery, according to data from NielsenIQ. The data analytics firm also found that 37% of millennials use AI tools like ChatGPT for product discovery on a weekly basis.
In the headlines:
Med spa nation. Retail stocks need unlikely holiday miracle to save rough 2025. The man who uses perfume to unlock opportunities in prisons.
Listen in:
T3 founders Dr. Julie Chung and Kent Yu join the Glossy podcast to talk creating the luxury hair tool category.
Need a Glossy recap?
Value is winning holiday sales as TJX, Ross and Walmart surge, Target tumbles. Inside MCo Beauty’s ultimate dupe — a prestige experience, totally free. The chance to win the holiday marketing season has already come and gone, according to Traackr’s holiday report.
