To receive the Glossy Pop newsletter in your inbox every Friday, click here.
All products featured on Glossy Pop are independently selected by our editorial team. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Serial entrepreneur Shaun Neff has launched many brands, and most have shared one thing in common: a celebrity founder. The list includes Beis, the luggage brand co-founded by actor Shay Mitchell in 2018; Pattern Beauty, the hair-care line by actor Tracee Ellis Ross that debuted in 2019; and Florence by Mills, co-created with actor Millie Bobbie Brown, also in 2019. In 2024, Beis surpassed $200 million in revenue. And Pattern is now distributed in Sephora and Ulta Beauty.
However, Neff said his newest brand, Noyz, could not be built using the same model — it’s rooted in “real and raw” storytelling that would be hard to convey via one person alone. Instead, Noyz leveraged 44 influencers to put the brand on the map.
In June, Noyz debuted at Ulta Beauty with four fragrances crafted by master perfumer Jerome Epinette, the nose behind Byredo’s Bal d’Afrique, Sol de Janeiro’s Cheirosa ‘62 and Victoria Beckham’s fragrances. According to Neff, the brand initially did well at Ulta, but it is now taking off. It has since launched a fifth scent, and two more will debut in 2025. Noyz fragrances sell for $85 per bottle.
Neff said he was driven to get into the fragrance category based on his business acumen and his sense that there was a white space for disruptive storytelling in the category.
“Anytime I consider starting anything, I look at: How’s the market? What’s the size of the prize? Is it trending upward? Downward?” he said. And fragrance was on the upswing. “We talked with a lot of buyers and senior management at all the retailers, and it felt like fragrance was having a moment — and it wasn’t just a quick one,” he said. “It felt like, over the next three to five years, fragrance was going to have a boom.” According to Circana data tracking January 2024 to September 2024 sales, the fragrance category grew 14% in prestige and 2% in mass.
As for the storytelling opportunity, “It was just glaring how every brand was so fantasy-like,” Neff said. “In one out of three ads, someone’s riding a magical white horse in a magical land. It was just so over-the-top ridiculous that the whole market was driving perfection.”
According to Circana, TikTok drives 66% of Gen Z’s fragrance purchases on social media. Neff said Ulta Beauty’s team “loved the idea that we were hitting TikTok, as beauty trends now are born on TikTok.” Noyz became the first-ever emerging fragrance brand to launch in every Ulta Beauty door from day one.
Noyz’s influencer partners at launch spanned “mids, macros and megas,” said Kyrstin Watanabe, vp of celebrity talent management at Beach House Group, Noyz’s parent company, owned by Neff. Watanabe said she was looking for “people who get personal, [who] are super authentic and open, and who story-tell on their platforms — [people who] share the good and the bad, not [the people] sharing a highlight reel of their lives.”
This included former One Direction member Zayn Malik — before the brand’s launch, Noyz sponsored his first concert in eight years. Malik has over 54 million Instagram followers. “We kept everything super vague,” Watanabe said. “His fans were checking the patent and trademark sites [wondering], ‘What is it? Is it a Zane fragrance? Is it not?'”
And, naturally, the brand’s strategy was to make a lot of noise once the brand launched. Starting on June 23, creators including Madeline Argy (9.4 million TikTok followers) and Jake Shane (@octopusslover8, 3.3 million TikTok followers) and Tara Yummy (9.2 million TikTok followers) posted TikToks promoting their favorite scents from the collection. Argy’s involved a two-part tale of forgetting a fragrance she needed to post an ad for.
All 44 content creators’ contracts included more than one piece of content, some across a span of months. “From a storytelling perspective, that’s the point of Noyz,” Neff said, regarding how the brand removes the typical red tape from influencer content briefs. “There’s no set formula. There’s no, ‘We’re Chanel, and there’s only a certain group of people that fit [the brand].”
When it comes to working with influencers, “We’re like, ‘Hey, we think you’re rad. Here’s some product. And if you like the product, and you’re vibing with it, then let’s do something.’ We’re not going to tell [them] what to do,” Neff said.
Based on the creative content influencers have posted about Noyz, inbound inquiries from creators interested in working with the brand are now flowing, Neff said.
The influencer strategy is paying dividends, said Malena Higuera, Noyz’s CEO who joined the company in August. “We understand that authenticity is critical, [so] our [influencer] briefs are tight. We are really handing the brand over [to the creator], which has humbled us. The creators have come back with better work than we could have imagined on our own.”
Since its launch, Noyz has generated over $15.2 million in earned media value, according to the tracking platform Archive.
The launch campaign largely spotlighted Noyz’s Sh**ty Day scent. The team licensed and rewrote the iconic Hoku song “Perfect Day” and partnered with Gen-Z creator Mariel Darling to perform the recreation. Six creators, including Genai Makama (242,000 followers), used the sound for Sh**ty Day-focused content. Sh**ty Day has notes of eucalyptus and fig.
In May, the brand flew Shane to Grasse to learn about perfume making. There, he created a four-part content series — some co-starred Epinette and some riffed on “The Simple Life,” staying true to his brand of humor.
At the end of October, Noyz tapped creator Christina Kirkman (2.1 million TikTok followers) as the face of a new, fifth scent, dubbed 12:00. Kirkman hosted an influencer event — a magic show in LA preceded by a meet-and-greet attended by 80 fans — and created multiple pieces of content, which she wrote herself. At the event, Kirkman got the brand’s “Sh**ty Day” logo — an emoticon of sorts — tattooed on her arm.
More recently, Noyz has shifted its focus to the Unmute scent, which Higuera described as “a deeper, spicier vanilla, with a little more bite.” Back in September, based on social listening and determining that vanilla was having a moment, the brand doubled mailers for Unmute as well as the number of creators promoting the scent.
“[The scent] is being built sustainably,” Higuera said. “We don’t want to be a flash-in-the-pan moment on TikTok. This thing is growing week on week on week.”
Over the last six weeks, Noyz has sold through Unmute inventory that was forecasted to maintain supply until June 2025. The scent is now sold out on the brand’s DTC site and is in limited supply at Ulta stores.
On Friday, Noyz hosted a meet-and-greet at American Dream mall in New Jersey with some of its newest brand advocates, the up-and-coming Kalogeras sisters: Sunday, with 1.8 million Instagram followers; Eliana, with 1.2 million Instagram followers; and Demitra, with 1.6 million Instagram followers. Tickets to the meet-and-greet were $35 — the price of a 15-milliliter fragrance, which guests received. Tickets sold out within 20 minutes of the Kalogeras sisters’ Instagram Reel promoting the event going live.
“Being experiential offline, as much as you are online, is super important. And to create IRL energy the way we have been doing on social is an important part of creating community in real life,” Higuera said.
According to Higuera, this week has been the brand’s best revenue week since its launch. “We are continuing to see weekly growth in the double-digit percentages,” she said.
Collab of the week: Maggie Sellers (Hot Smart Rich) x Nudestix
Nudestix has teamed with Maggie Sellers (27,000 Instagram followers), an influencer and investor in the brand, on a special Red Maple flavor of its Hydrating Peptide Lip Butter. The flavor pays homage to Sellers’ Canadian roots.
“Nudestix has been a part of my life for over a decade — long before I became an investor or advisor close to four years ago,” Sellers said, explaining that she started as a loyal customer. “Having the vantage point of a creator has made me a better investor and businesswoman and given me a competitive advantage that separates me from other investors,” she said.
According to Taylor Frankel, Nudestix co-founder, “Maggie’s unparalleled eye for trends and passion for empowering women perfectly align with Nudestix’s mission to create multi-tasking beauty essentials that inspire confidence and ambition.” Shop it here.
Inside our coverage
Studs and Stephanie Gottlieb team up to bring fine jewelry to the piercing studio
Fazit’s founders on how Taylor Swift and her glitter freckles changed their business
Exclusive: Sephora announces the 2025 Accelerate class
Reading list
Pete Davidson on his new designer role, tabloid scrutiny & being done with celebrity
Will your favorite beauty products get more expensive under Trump?
