Bubble Skincare Alumni Launch LeNose With $10 Luxury Hand Soaps
Three former Bubble Skincare executives launched LeNose with $10 Soap de Parfum hand soaps, $3 million in pre-revenue funding and a volume-first margin strategy.
Updated
The takeaway
- LeNose launches Soap de Parfum, a collection of $10 hand soaps in five fragrances including My Soap Smells Like Money.
- Cofounders Caroline Valentini, Lindsay St. Clair and Zee Carlstrom closed a $3 million oversubscribed pre-revenue round with backing from Aesop's early investor Era, Fifth Growth Fund and OpenSky Ventures.
- Industry sources estimated first-year retail sales between $5 million and $10 million; the brand launches DTC and on TikTok Shop, entering Amazon in October.
Three former Bubble Skincare executives are launching home fragrance brand LeNose with $3 million in oversubscribed pre-revenue funding and a collection of $10 hand soaps called Soap de Parfum.
Caroline Valentini, Lindsay St. Clair and Zee Carlstrom — Bubble's former operations, creative, and marketing executives — built LeNose around a founding question: why can't everyone have nice things? The answer is five hand soaps priced at $10 each, with names including I'm So Fancy, My Soap Smells Like Money and Yeehaw I'm a Sandalwood Cowboy.
"The fun thing that just got us so energized about soap was that luxury soaps had become a symbol of wealth for the people who use them. There's a lot of signaling with them, both on social media and in real life in your home. So that symbolic nature of someone who has enough money to literally wash money down the drain, buying a $50 to $100 soap, we thought that that was the perfect symbol to answer our founding question — why can't we all have nice things?" said Carlstrom, the brand's chief marketing officer.
The most provocative scent in the lineup is My Soap Smells Like Money. "It's a $100 soap for $10, and so it is literally a soap that smells like money. It's limited edition," Carlstrom continued.
The rest of the range targets the traditional fragrance realm. Chief business officer St. Clair laid out the olfactory strategy: "As far as the other scents go, our whole goal was to create a really fun platform that was a combination of sophisticated luxury-inspired scents with a fun point of view on them. We have a tropical that's a very fun, bright fragrance. We have a vanilla gourmand that's a very warm, not sweet vanilla, and then we have a sandalwood. A lot of the sandalwoods that you can buy for $10 lack that complexity, and we think we nailed that. Then we have a fresh mandarin rosemary. That's a perfect kitchen scent."
Thin Margins, Volume Play
CEO Valentini said the $10 price point does not mean cut-rate formulation or packaging. The brand runs on tight margins instead of a large markup.
"We're not taking an enormous markup. Our margin is tight, and that's the risk we're willing to bet on LeNose and really make sure that the volume is the play here," she said.
LeNose launches direct-to-consumer and on TikTok Shop first. Amazon follows in October, with additional home fragrance categories and retailers planned for the near future.
Investor Backing
The cofounders closed a $3 million oversubscribed pre-revenue round with strategic backing from Era, an early investor in Aesop, plus Fifth Growth Fund, OpenSky Ventures and others.
"From the moment we met the team, we saw that LeNose had the potential to be a category-defining brand," said Era Partner Claire Cherry. "We saw a rare desire to shape the cultural zeitgeist and become a leading voice in this category, akin to what the team achieved with Bubble. From our time backing brands like Seed, Boy Smells, and Maude, we know that exceptionally strong creative direction, a phenomenal product, and an accessible price point give LeNose the opportunity to disrupt a sleepy category."
The brand declined to comment on sales forecasts. Industry sources estimated retail sales between $5 million and $10 million in Year One.
The October Amazon entry and planned expansion into adjacent home fragrance categories will test whether the volume-first economics can scale beyond the launch assortment.
Source: WWD
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Senior reporter covering business strategy at Eurasian Beauty Journal.
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