Though Carlos Huber’s niche fragrance line, Arquiste, tends toward the sophisticated side of perfume — with scents inspired by the likes of Aztec rituals and classical antiquity — Huber noticed younger consumers gravitating to the brand in recent years. He wanted to offer those fragrance fans a more price-accessible way to experience Arquiste.
“There’s the whole collecting world. Then, there’s this entire new thing of teenagers partaking in and being obsessed with fragrance,” said Huber. “I would hear from stores saying, ‘I have four teenagers outside, gathering their money so they can buy one big bottle.’”
On Thursday, Huber launched “Chiquitos,” a 10-piece collection of miniature versions of Arquiste’s best-selling scents, like the Mediterranean-inspired A Grove By the Sea and the floral-guava Tropical. The name for the collection came from conversations with perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux, the nose behind many of Arquiste’s scents, who would often refer to perfumes as “chiquitos,” a Spanish endearment meaning “little ones.”
Most perfumes are available in 50- or 100-milliliter bottles as a standard. But with more consumers adopting a “fragrance wardrobe” over one signature fragrance, Huber is betting there is room for a small-scale take on perfume that offers the accessibility of a travel-sized sample, without sacrificing the visual appeal of the traditional full-sized bottle. Each 30-milliliter Chiquitos bottle retails for $105, compared to $225 for its 100-milliliter counterparts.
Arquiste joins other niche brands that have begun to offer mini versions of their full-sized bottles. Korean brand Borntostandout launched pocket-sized 15-milliliter bottles in September 2024, while Parisian natural fragrance brand Ormaie launched refillable 20-milliliter bottles in 2023. Those smaller formats give consumers a more affordable avenue to try out a perfume brand or grow their collection.
“It’s like Netflix. You don’t own a movie anymore, but you want to watch 100,” said Ormaie co-founder Baptiste Bouygues. “It’s a bit the same thing with fragrances.”
But while appealing to more customers, the smaller, lower-priced bottles can be just as costly to produce as their full-sized counterparts.
“I think you have to think of it as an item with a lower margin, which is what it is. But it has a wider distribution and wider appeal. It’s easy for more people to participate in,” said Huber. “[This size] still is very pretty. It comes in a beautiful box. It still feels intentional, as opposed to a travel spray.”
Determining which sizes to offer is largely dependent on each brand’s strategy and proposition, said Isaac Lekach, co-founder of fragrance developer and consulting firm Flower Shop. And they can run the risk of diverting sales from those larger bottles.
“If you are a brick-and-mortar company, whether you’re under the L’Oréal umbrella or a startup, you’re going to need a full size, so that the bottle, the packaging, is in all its glory. And then you’re going to need [a travel size],” said Lekach. “That’s a 10-milliliter [bottle] traditionally, versus 100 milliliters or 50 milliliters. And anything in between will compete with the main items. So that’s the big thing to consider: Will offering this new product, even though it’s the trend, negate and cannibalize my own business?”
But offering a middle-ground size may appeal to younger consumers looking to amass larger perfume collections, rather than investing in one larger bottle that offers them a better price per ounce. According to data from NielsenIQ, Gen Z is spending $204.15 per year on fragrance, $38 more per year than the average consumer. Piper Sandler’s Spring 2025 Taking Stock with Teens survey found that teen boys increased their spending on fragrances by 26% compared to the previous year.
“Younger consumers, from millennials through to Gen Alpha, are increasingly interested in building their fragrance wardrobes and are indeed often drawn to more varied size options,” said Costanza Sofia Maset, lead editor and strategist at the indie fragrance consulting firm Nunotes. “However, offering multiple sizes also comes with practical challenges. Producing and sourcing different bottle formats can increase costs and operational complexity, while managing inventory across several SKUs can be demanding.”
For Bouygues, investing in a custom mold for Ormaie’s 20-milliliter bottle rather than using the stock travel tubes used by many brands was key to maintaining Ormaie’s visual identity. He added that, owing to the cost of materials, the margins between his 20-milliliter bottles and 100-milliliter bottles are not wildly different.
“When you do glass like this, it’s one day of production, it’s about 60,000 pieces,” said Bouygues of the investment in the custom mold. “We wanted it to be beautiful, and we wanted you to be super happy to take it out of your bag.”
But logistics and economics aside, there is one major advantage to smaller bottles: They have the cute factor. Huber said some of his retail partners were resistant to the Chiquitos bottles — until they saw the miniature bottles for themselves.
“A lot of them that in the beginning were like, ‘No.’ [Now] they’re like, ‘Oh, they’re so cute. We’re gonna order them,’” said Huber.
