Vendôme Global Partners Strategic Advisor to Scent Beauty in Series A Round
James Maso | Oct 1, 2021
Scent Beauty, the omnichannel fragrance developer behind celebrity fragrances such as Cher’s and Dolly Parton’s, has closed a Series A funding round.
The round was led by KSV Global in Boston. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but industry sources pegged the deal between KSV Global’s typical range of $7.5 million and $10 million.
Steve Mormoris, founder and chief executive officer of Scent Beauty, said the funding would best serve capitalizing on its momentum of the past year. Over the summer, it launched Scent From Above, Dolly Parton’s signature fragrance. “We sold close to $3 million at retail of Dolly’s fragrance in one day,” Mormoris said of its launch on HSN.
“It was due to Dolly’s engagement with her consumer base, her love of the fragrance, her ability to explain why she created this form of art, and because we sold discovery sizes more than six months up until the shopping network broadcast, we were able to share the product with the market, create buzz and awareness to gather positive reviews. That drove purchases of the full size.”
After the proven success of his strategy, Mormoris said the funding will go toward scaling the business up for international distribution.
“We’re very pleased to partner with KSV, who is serious about entering the beauty category. It has partnerships throughout the world in perfumery, e-commerce acceleration, Asian distribution and other areas that will create synergies that will allow Scent Beauty to achieve significant scale internationally,” he said.
It will also allow Scent Beauty to fund future projects.
“With the new capital injection, we will scale internationally more quickly in Europe and Asia, and we will be adding new brands of colossal scale in the next two years, and we can also keep up with working capital requirements in terms of inventory creation as we grow our existing brands, such as Cher, Dolly Parton, Stetson and others,” Mormoris continued, hinting at new launches from both new and preexisting brands in Scent’s portfolio.
First and foremost, though, Mormoris is keeping tabs on international markets for Cher’s signature fragrance.
“We’re rolling out the Cher fragrance worldwide in chains and drugstores in the U.S., in Europe, on Amazon and we are looking at launching it in Brazil and Australia. It’s looking to be a strong brand with national support. We are about to launch a big, new campaign on Stetson behind Stetson Spirits, going into the holidays,” he added.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Scent Beauty in its next stage of growth,” said Dan Gay, co-founder and managing partner of KSV Global, in a statement. “Its team has assembled an influential portfolio of brands and this funding will enable them to expand new global partnerships more quickly and disruptively. We are grateful to be a growth partner.”