This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
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Maison Louis Marie was founded in 2012 and has never taken on investment, which, according to the married couple behind the brand, Marie du Petit Thouars and Matthew Berkson, has allowed it to focus on slow and steady growth. It is profitable and does not spend excessively on influencer marketing.
“We want to be careful with the brand. We really want to create a legacy brand,” Berkson said.
In 13 years, Maison Louis Marie has grown to sell eau de parfums, perfume oils, candles, diffusers, body wash, lotion and deodorant, among other products. It entered Sephora in 2017. A little over six months ago, it opened its first dedicated retail space, at Platform, an open-air shopping center in Los Angeles’s Culver City.
According to the founders, Maison Louis Marie’s community members love the space and the chance to shop the brand’s full collection — a smaller selection of products is carried at Sephora.
“People want to smell [things IRL] — yet what each store can carry is so limited, as there are so many brands,” said du Petit Thouars. “[At our store] the customer is so excited to [discover] all the things we offer that they’re not aware of and to be able to touch, smell and look,” said du Petit Thouars.
In this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Sara Spruch-Feiner speaks with Berkson and du Petit Thouars about how Maison Louis Marie is meeting the current moment of fragrance mania, how it’s working to attract a younger audience with its soon-to-launch hair and body mists, and what drove its first-ever celebrity endorsement.
But first, co-hosts Sara Spruch-Feiner and Lexy Lebsack chat about the different ways customers discover new products nowadays, including ChatGPT’s updated shopping capabilities, Wirecutter’s new beauty vertical and Ulta Beauty’s program transforming its salespeople into content creators.
Below are highlights from the episode, which have been lightly edited for clarity.
On the changing pace of fragrance
Berkson: “Coming out of Covid, fragrance, as we all know, had this huge moment. And with that [came] a lot of investment, a lot of new fragrance brands and things just got turned up to 11, in terms of marketing and new scents, and and the pace has gotten much faster.”
Du Petit Thouars: “[Fragrance moves even faster] than fashion. You have fashion shows every six months now, but I feel like fragrance does something new every month — it’s crazy to follow. We’re not like that. We don’t have any investors. We’re very lucky because we can go at our own pace, but we observe [the] pace around us, and it’s crazy.”
Bringing in younger customers
Du Petit Thouars: “My niece came over the summer, she’s 12, and I took her to Sephora, and I [hadn’t] realized that young customers … she was crazy [looking at all] the products. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s for real. [This is] really going on.’ I was like, ‘How can we try to keep being Maison Louis Marie — and offer products that would be [compelling] on the younger side — to us, the body mist made sense. I don’t know if I’m really okay with a 12-year-old posting an anti-aging eye cream — it’s just not necessary, but a body mist. It’s in your hair, on your body. We tried to make the packaging still us, but with a little bit of color. It was a [challenge], because we don’t really do color usually, but I’m really happy with with the result.”
Berkson: “The writing is on the wall, in terms of the youth movement in beauty. We need to play in this area, but in a Maison Louis Marie way. We wanted to create an entry point for our brand that’s a little more accessible — our price point is going to be super competitive.”
An authentic celebrity partner
Berkson: “Two or three years ago, someone [said], ‘Dude, did you know Clairo wears your No. 9 scent?’ I was familiar with her. … We really liked her music — just her whole vibe is so cool. [It had] never been in the cards for us to work with celebrities or cool musicians, even though … it makes so much sense for our brand to align with musicians. [Then one day] I mentioned it to a friend of mine, and he happened to be friends with Claire [Cottrill, aka Clairo]. He immediately put us on a text chain, and then it just evolved from there.”
Du Petit Thouars: “She wanted to do everything herself. … You need to let people be creative and do their own thing. Don’t force anything. Otherwise, it’s going to be like what everybody else is doing.”
