Hotel Lobby Candle Launches Personal Fragrance

Hotel Lobby Candle is jumping on the personal fragrance craze. 

The brand, best known for its luxury hotel- and travel-inspired scents, is launching five eau de parfums, which will be available direct-to-consumer. Each is inspired by one of the brand’s signature candles, including New York, Signature Skin, Poolside, Miami and London. To start, the scents will be available in travel sizes, $48 each or $200 for the full set, and the brand will roll out full-size versions in the next 12 to 18 months. The line, which is gender neutral, is expected to reach $2 million in sales its first year, according to industry sources. 

Given its background in scent, personal fragrance was a natural evolution, said founder Lindsay Silberman. 

“We have a close relationship with our customers, and since the first year that we launched, people have been saying that the scents we make are scents that they want to wear,” she said. “This just felt like the right time. Obviously the fine fragrance category is exploding, and we felt that there was enough of a desire amongst our customers.” 

Of course, there were two scents customers wanted most in fine fragrance: Signature and New York, the top two bestsellers across the brand’s assortment.

“It’s not even just as a fragrance. People are like, ‘I need this as a body wash. I need this as a laundry detergent. I want this in every aspect of my life,’” Silberman. 

Given this feedback, Silberman said the original idea was to create eau de parfums of the top five home scents. However, some didn’t translate as well, so the five fragrances were handpicked and developed over the course of two years to be wearable. For example, Silberman said that for Signature, they employed “softer, skin-like notes.” 

“They’re a nice array and a nice collection that each hit on a different fragrance category,” said Silberman.

For example, Poolside is a crisper scent with notes of neroli, orange blossom and bergamot zest, while London is a bit cozier with notes of sugared amber, whipped vanilla milk and soft musk.

With the fragrance category continuing to boom, Hotel Lobby Candle’s latest collection lends itself to the trend of layering and building scent wardrobes. 

“For 10 years, I had my signature scent, and that’s all that I wore,” said Silberman. “Now it’s a little bit more fun and a sense of self-expression to play and layer and wear a different scent every day and mix different scents.” 

She added: “[Before,] you walked into an elevator in New York [and] five out of six people were wearing Le Labo Santal, and now, people are craving something that feels a little bit more individual, where when someone says, you smell amazing, they have the opportunity to tell the story about this little hidden gem of a fragrance that they discovered.” 

With the travel set, Silberman said customers will have this sense of discovery and opportunity to layer and customize their fragrance each day. In addition to rolling out full-size versions of the fragrances, Silberman said the line will continue to evolve, perhaps to include scents not tied to the signature candles. In addition, the brand is moving slowly and strategically to expand its assortment, but the long-term goal is to have a breadth of ancillary products.