00:00What's that smell?
00:01It could be a teenage boy who swapped his Axe body spray for a $400 cologne,
00:05or a TikTok influencer who doused himself with a fragrance he's pitching.
00:09And if it's a scent, you can't quite pinpoint.
00:11Maybe it's a young man who sprayed himself with multiple perfumes,
00:14a trend known as layering or fragrance wardrobing.
00:17Put it all together, and you get the undeniable smell of a men's fragrance boom in the U.S.
00:22Demand for fragrances surged during the pandemic,
00:24when cooped-up consumers with extra savings started buying more skincare and perfumes
00:28as a treat for themselves.
00:29But the continued strength of the fragrance market has surprised
00:32even some of its most bullish cheerleaders.
00:34Recently, the industry has been attracting more male shoppers,
00:37particularly among Gen Z.
00:39You can see it on TikTok, where the growth in the number of influencers
00:42pitching fragrances to men has outpaced those marketing to women.
00:46That's according to data firm Charm.io.
00:48And it's in large part because there's money to be made
00:50linking to fragrances sold via TikTok shop.
00:53One of those influencers is Evan Hall,
00:55who opposed to his 1.1 million TikTok followers as fragrance knowledge.
00:59Hall says that most of his followers are 18 to 24 year old men,
01:03and many have high standards for their sets.
01:05Any JPG, super hyped, everyone loves JPG and wants to hear more about JPG.
01:10Aventus, classic, everyone loves it.
01:12Any Louis Vuitton, especially Imagination.
01:15There's so much organic content that still happens.
01:17Like, I'll go in and teach a match or someone else will go in and teach a match,
01:20pick up a fragrance, love it, post it on Facebook, and then we see it or the brands see it,
01:26and then they kind of get like a hype that way.
01:28If someone talks about it, you're going to want to try it,
01:30then if you actually like it, then you talk about it, it's chain reaction.
01:34The surge in demand for niche fragrances was one of the reasons,
01:37according to analysts, that cosmetics giant S.T. Lauder was keen to acquire Pooch.
01:42The Spanish fashion and beauty company owns brands like Penhaligon and Bayredo,
01:46and had the second largest share of the men's premium fragrance market last year.
01:50The company said on May 21st that talks about a deal had ended.
01:53Despite the ongoing boom, there's a potential threat to the dominance of the legacy fragrance
01:57houses, mass-market and budget brands, producing bottle after bottle of so-called dupes,
02:03much cheaper, almost identical versions of a high-end set.
02:06Rehan Elixir, Rehan Pacific Aura, Khadlaj Vanilla, Dunes, Khadlaj Island,
02:12Club the New Intense Man, that one's very mega viral.
02:15It comes down to like marketing, who's talking about it, like the hype aspect of it.
02:20But for the affordable fragrances, I think it just comes down to that there's now like
02:26affordable fragrances that smell good.
02:27So...
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