This week, I checked in on Byredo’s expansion to Sephora U.S. stores and what it means for the niche fragrance category. Additionally, Vacation welcomes a new CEO and Nordstrom is testing same-day delivery for beauty shoppers.
Byredo is coming to Sephora U.S. as the beauty retailer expands its niche fragrance assortment. But is the fragrance giant still niche?
At Byredo’s Wooster Street boutique in the heart of Soho, shoppers can get the sort of hands-on customer experience befitting its triple-digit fragrance and quadruple-figure leather bags. But come September, shoppers will be able to find Byredo’s famed black-and-white perfume bottles at another, more accessible but perhaps more chaotic retail environment: Sephora.
On September 3, Byredo will launch at 24 U.S. Sephora stores and online. Sephora locations like the Aventura Mall in Miami, Newport Beach’s South Coast Plaza and the New York City Soho store will carry a “curated selection” of Byredo’s scented products, like perfumes and candles, along with its full body mist line. Sephora will also be the exclusive retail partner for the Alto Astral body mist, launched in June in Byredo’s DTC channels.
“Byredo brings a distinctive luxury point of view to Sephora’s evolving fragrance assortment, combining exceptional craftsmanship, unexpected scent storytelling and a strong cultural following,” Carye Campbell, svp of fragrance merchandising, told Glossy in a statement over email. “Clients will also have the opportunity to discover and experience the fragrances during multiple in-store launch events throughout the country.”
Between its own boutiques, department store counters and airport duty-free shops, Byredo has no shortage of distribution points. But the fragrance brand’s arrival at two dozen U.S. Sephora stores represents yet another stage of mass expansion for the once niche perfume darling and a sign of Sephora’s ambitions to attract the niche perfume consumer.
“On one side, Byredo has spent the past year behaving like a brand outgrowing its niche. The brand has been showing up disruptively in travel retail for the past year, and distribution appears to be widening very deliberately across specialty, brand-owned, department store, travel retail and now mass-prestige beauty retail,” said Queenie Lo, president of spatial at strategy and design company FutureBrand. “On Sephora’s side, this also fits a broader pattern of them tapping into the high demand of the perfume house, as well as other more prestige and niche houses.”
When Ben Gorham launched Byredo in 2006, he brought a new aesthetic to a niche fragrance world dominated by French labels like Serge Lutens and Frederic Malle. The Swedish brand’s minimalist bottles ushered in a contemporary look to the category that translated well to an increasingly digital world, while its evocative names like Bal d’Afrique and Gypsy Water offered an accessible sense of escapism.
“That packaging was identifiable, but it was really neutral and sort of fit in anywhere. I think the visual identity was what was pioneering. It didn’t look like the older niche brands,” recalled perfume writer and historian Jessica Murphy of the early days of Byredo.
In the two decades since, Byredo has expanded from a perfume specialist to a lifestyle brand selling everything from jewelry to leather goods. Those expansions made it a major acquisition target — Spanish conglomerate Puig snapped up the brand in a billion-dollar deal in 2022 — and caused it to lose some of the artistic credibility that made it successful in the first place.
“The fragrances really started to smell alike, and there were so many of them, I couldn’t keep up,” said Murphy. “I think I, and a lot of other original niche shoppers and just certain segments of the fragrance community, had shifted our focus to independent perfume brands and artisanal brands.”
While the brand has sacrificed some of its niche sensibility as it’s grown, Byredo has largely kept its luxury positioning. But since Gorham fully stepped down from the brand in June 2025, it has shown more mass ambition. The brand expanded to Sephora Canada in November of that year and launched body mist formats of its best sellers like Mojave Ghost and Rose of No Man’s Land in 2026.
Sephora, which already carries Puig-owned brands like Carolina Herrera and Jean Paul Gauliter, stands to be an attractive partner to help Byredo reach a broader consumer base. The LVMH-owned retailer has been steadily growing its niche assortment to include the likes of Fugazzi and Borntostandout in recent months.
But Byredo’s luxury status may be more challenging to translate to high-traffic Sephora locations, where lines often snake through the aisles and perfume testers are typically tethered to displays to prevent theft.
“They’re tethering all the testers and keeping everything behind walls, which is unfortunate because you’re not getting a luxurious experience,” said Murphy. “I know there are shoppers like me for whom luxury is a personal touch and an experience. And, unfortunately, I don’t know how much Sephora can deliver on that.”
That may put pressure on Byredo’s freestanding boutiques to offer the more white-glove experience that can attract luxury shoppers.
“What I’ll be watching is if Byredo chooses how big the differentiation between distribution channels for different consumer behavior needs will be,” said Lo. “[I’m also curious] how the retail experience will be tailored — perhaps a variation of product lines or services? — and how the brand will manage to create excitement across these different channels.”
Puig certainly has continued to reap the rewards of its Byredo acquisition; according to the Spanish conglomerate’s first half 2026 earnings report published in July, Byredo led its niche fragrance portfolio to “double-digit growth.” And with many of its other fragrance and beauty brands already at Sephora, Puig is well-positioned to grow Byredo even further at the retailer.
“Puig is a wholesale house, not a retail operator,” said Ariel Ohana, managing partner of investment bank Ohana & Co. “Rabanne, Carolina Herrera and Jean Paul Gaultier are built on Sephora, Ulta and Macy’s; Charlotte Tilbury on Sephora and Nordstrom. Within that group, Byredo has been the outlier, with direct-to-consumer close to half of its sales. Bringing it into Sephora simply brings it in line with how Puig runs everything else.”
But the niche fragrance world is only growing more competitive, particularly in the American market. Omani brand Amouage, with backing from L’Oréal, is expanding its territory with new boutiques across the U.S., while French brand Matiere Premiere, which received investment from Kering in 2024, has plans for stateside expansion, as well.
Those expansions may alienate the original consumers of those perfume brands who prioritize originality and artistic expression over mass appeal. But the continued growth of brands like Byredo leaves space for other indie perfume makers to fill the void. Murphy said she has her eye on Perfumer H, the London-based fragrance brand founded by Lynn Harris and known for its simple but unusual scents like Steam and Ink, with retail partners largely limited to specialty perfume boutiques like Stéle. But brands like Perfumer H may not stay limited in distribution for long. In March, Perfumer H received £3.4 million ($4.5 million) in backing from Elixir 1 Investment.
Future emerging perfume giants may not take up Sephora to fuel their next phase of growth, however.
“The more interesting question is Ulta, which is catching up fast,” said Ohana, noting its growing assortment of fragrance brands like Snif, Orebella and The Nue Co. “Byredo going to Sephora is the model working as intended; the next Byredo may well pick Ulta.”
Executive moves:
- Vacation names Nelson Miranda as CEO. Miranda will work alongside co-founders Dakota Green, Lach Hall and Marty Bell to lead the next phase of growth for the sunscreen and fragrance brand. Miranda was most recently CEO of Not Your Mother’s hair care and previously held roles at Procter & Gamble and Revlon.
- Coty names Soraya Benchikh as chief financial officer, succeeding Laurent Mercier. Benchikh was most recently CFO of British American Tobacco and will assume the role on September 1.
News to know:
- Nordstrom launches same-day delivery for beauty shoppers in Los Angeles. The expanded service will put the department store in competition with larger retailers like Walmart and Amazon, which have attracted more beauty consumers with their instant and same-day delivery options.
- Neutrogena issues a statement following blowback to the brand in the wake of the death of actress and former brand ambassador Hayden Panettiere. Prior to her death, the actress had shared that Neutrogena did not renew her contract after she spoke about suffering from postpartum depression in 2015. In an Instagram post shared on Thursday, the skin-care brand said it was “proud to have partnered with her and understand that we made her feel unsupported during this difficult time. This is not what Neutrogena stands for or who we want to be.”
- Kayali expands to body care. The fragrance brand founded by Mona Kattan launches its first body cream and lip balms on Friday, with products featuring its Yum Boujee Marshmallow 81 and Yum Pistachio Gelato 33 scents.
Stat of the week:
According to Sprout Social’s 2026 Influencer Marketing Report, 50% of Instagram creators have audiences where more than 70% of viewers of their Reels and posts are non-followers. For Instagram Stories, just 10% of creators have more non-followers as viewers than followers.
In the headlines:
Get ready for Generation Beta, beauty’s next big demographic opportunity. Young adults in the U.S. are increasingly wary of AI, concerned it will take jobs. “After makeup and skin care, we’re in the midst of a fragrance bubble,” says Kayali’s Mona Kattan.
Listen in:
On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Glossy West Coast correspondent Lexy Lebsack sits down with Dr. Kathleen Jordan, MD, chief medical officer of Midi Health, to discuss Midi Health’s skin- and body-care aspirations, the category’s role in telehealth in the future, and how Midi Health hopes to earn more market share.
Need a Glossy recap?
How Boka is winning Amazon with a beauty marketing playbook. Jo Malone and Tom Ford are now “billion-dollar brands” as the Estée Lauder Companies reports return to sales growth. Glossy Pop Newsletter: Why controversies still haven’t killed the brand trip. Wellness Briefing: Hims & Hers plots rapid expansion into peptide therapies like BPC-157, plus news.
