When New Zealand winemaker Frances Shoemack founded her natural perfume line Abel in 2013, niche fragrance was still very much a niche category. And the natural formulations she built Abel on were a yet even narrower market.
But times have changed: In the decade since Abel’s launch, the market has welcomed new ingredients, like biotech-formulated aldehydes that offer longer-lasting smells. And evolving consumer trends mean natural perfume brands are now as at home on the luxury beauty counter as they are in the health food store cosmetics aisle. In short, niche fragrances have become a mainstream obsession, with the prestige perfume category growing 6% in the first half of 2025, according to consumer data firm Circana.
With those new elements, Shoemack felt her brand was due for a refresh. On Wednesday, she unveiled a new face to Abel with new bottles, an edited distribution network, reformulated perfumes and boosted concentrations.
“I’m a bit reticent to call it a rebrand, to be honest,” said Shoemack. “[Rebranding] feels like a real marketing play, whereas we’ve completely remodeled the whole business. We’ve kept everything that’s working for us, and we’re letting go or improving everything that we think is not serving us or the customer.”
Other perfume brands have also taken stock of their brand image as perfume continues to grow. The fragrance and wellness brand The Nue Co., founded by Jules Miller in 2017, introduced new packaging in 2024 in collaboration with creative agency Combo. Byredo revamped the packaging on its high-concentration Night Veils line in October. And Boy Smells unveiled new packaging, product copy and scents — to the chagrin of many longtime fans — in April.
With fragrance still booming, now is as good a time as ever to undertake a rebranding. But while fresh packaging and scent profiles can earn traction with new consumers, they can also alienate longtime fans. The immediate, emotional reaction to Boy Smells’s new look highlighted the risk in rebranding an item as personal as perfume.
“I’d hate for fans to say, ‘Oh, you’ve made [the scent] more commercial,’ or something like that,” said Shoemack of the sensitivity of reformulating existing scents. “When we’ve discontinued fragrances in the past, we’ll get these emails, and it’s like, ‘You’ve stolen my identity.’ … I don’t take the responsibility lightly — it’s someone’s life and their daily rituals that give them joy. And I don’t want to fuck with that.”
But when done well, a rebrand can freshen up not only packaging, but also sales.
Prior to The Nue Co.’s rebrand, its supplements targeting issues like gut and skin health drove 80% of sales. But the brand’s founder, Jules Miller, said that, since the 2024 relaunch, fragrances now comprise three of the brand’s top five products and are on track to drive 65% of sales by the end of the year. Miller said the brand saw its best Black Friday sales performance following the relaunch, despite a 40% decrease in marketing spend year-over-year. She has also seen average order value increase by 20% and customer acquisition costs decrease by 70%.
“The fragrance growth has been crazy,” she said. “We literally can’t keep them in stock.”
The rebranding was motivated, in part, by feedback from Sephora, according to Combo partner and creative director Kapono Chung. When Miller first launched The Nue Co. in 2017, DTC was the name of the game. But entering major retailers like Sephora, which welcomed the brand in 2021, means rethinking how a product will sit on a shelf crowded with competing brands.
“Sephora is a behemoth of a retailer. And when they ask for something to change, then most likely a company starts to figure that out,” said Chung. “This is a lot of people’s story: They have a really great audience they’ve created themselves through DTC marketing. And at a certain point, they go on shelf, and all of a sudden, their bottles and shelf presence haven’t been taken into full consideration, because they never thought they would go into retail.”
Taking inspiration from the signature lavender color the agency created for the clean makeup brand Saie, Combo developed a rich green as The Nue Co.’s new calling card and streamlined its graphic design to remove diagrams, which don’t work on a crowded shelf. To offer a new look to the fragrances without investing in redesigning new bottles, the agency worked with The Nue Co. to introduce new caps to the perfume bottles. Since the relaunch, The Nue Co. has also created an on-trend gourmand scent — the creamy First Milk perfume, released on Tuesday.
While The Nue Co.’s rebrand proved to be a worthwhile investment, it was not without its logistical challenges. Snafus from new packaging suppliers meant some subscribers didn’t receive their supplement replenishments for months.
“It was a horror show, in terms of operations and logistics. … That is something that I would shout from the rooftops, because you can get it so wrong that it can sink your business,” said Miller. “I was operating a bit like, ‘Oh, you change the packaging and everything will be fine. There’ll be a little bit of a crossover.’ But it was really, really challenging.”
For Abel, adhering to the brand’s sustainability values proved a logistical challenge as the brand revamped its packaging. The new versions feature glass bottles, which are more easily recyclable, along with compostable caps and outer packaging made from fully recycled paper. Rather than keep producing old inventory that would need to be disposed of or discounted once the new bottles came to market, Shoemack said she let many SKUs remain out of stock once old bottles were sold through.
But the most jarring change to loyal brand customers may be the price tag: A 50-milliliter bottle of Abel’s Green Cedar perfume previously sold for $180. The new bottle will retail for $220. Shoemack has also dropped roughly 20% of her retailers from across the globe and has shifted her distribution to include more exclusive stores like Dover Street Market in Paris, Liberty London and New York’s Printemps.
“We’ve shifted [prices] up by about 25% across the board. It’s kind of a confident, risky move, especially in the current climate,” said Shoemack. “Natural shouldn’t be cheaper than anything else. The formulas are so expensive, and we were, in a sense, competing on price and, perhaps, falling into no man’s land a little bit. So this is very firmly being like, ‘It’s not a cheap product. It costs us a lot of money to make. We’re not cutting any corners.’”
Clara Molloy, co-founder of Memo Paris, believes that such evolution is a necessary part of any brand journey. She and her husband, John Molloy, founded Memo in 2007 with a focus on luxury travel-inspired scents. Her team has been working with Colette founder Sarah Andelman as it seeks to reposition its storytelling going into 2026, and it hired L’Oréal veteran Marc-André Heller as CEO, effective in January.
“We have the same codes,” said Molloy of Memo’s evolution. “How you express them … has to change over time, in my opinion.”
