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“It was a breakout year for us,” Adam Bouris, head of growth at Who Is Elijah, told Inside Retail. “We went from having stockists placing orders of $1000 to $25,000.”
The brand ramped up production to ensure it had sufficient stock to meet demand during the Christmas period, and started using Salesforce to automate some of its backend processes. Now, the business is in a good position to scale, Bouris said.
“This year is going to be really big for us, it’s just a matter of how fast and how hard we want to push it,” he said.
Selling fragrances online
At the top of the list is range expansion. Who Is Elijah currently offers five fragrances – His Her, Her Her, Haze, Muse and Nomad – and it has two more in the works.
The first new product, Nightcap, is set to launch in July, and will be specifically marketed as a fragrance to wear at the end of the night.
“This year, we want to communicate with our customers really clearly about where to wear our fragrances and why,” Bouris said.
The brand has already created personas for each of its fragrances and the people who wear them. For instance, Nomad is described as “the little black dress or navy suit of your fragrance wardrobe. You can wear it anywhere & everywhere, to the office, on a romantic date night or simply to the grocery store.”
Meanwhile, Haze is “the perfect date night fragrance. Wear it to your favourite dimly lit, intimate restaurant on a cold winter’s night & let the allure of your scent invite the long-awaited kiss on your neck you have been waiting for.”
Bouris believes the personas will help the brand stand out in a market dominated by luxury labels and celebrity names, and give people the confidence to buy its fragrances online.
“You can’t smell a photo,” he said.
User-generated content also plays an important role in the new marketing strategy.
“We really leaned into user-generated content in the last six months,” he said. “Real people sharing their experiences of interacting with our product, and where they use it.”
Growing direct-to-consumer sales
Today, Who Is Elijah is stocked in over 300 stores, and about half of its revenue comes from its wholesale partners.
“In the beginning, it was wholesale dominant because selling fragrance online is difficult, but our online presence is really strong now and both wholesale and direct-to-consumer work hand in hand,” Bouris said.
The brand currently ships to Australia, New Zealand and the US, and is looking to set up third-party logistics in the UK and Canada this year.
It also aims to grow its wholesale presence in the US. It is currently available in about 35 high-end boutiques and online through Urban Outfitters and Free People.
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