An Inside Look at Scentbird, with Founder Mariya Nurislamova

Scent World

To try new fragrances, it was common to make a trip to a department store perfume counter. In came Scentbird. In 2014, Mariya and her co-founders built a scent recommendation platform. Soon people started asking to sample the fragrances, and almost five iterations later, the idea came to be: a 30-day supply of a fragrance of your choice. Today Scentbird offers 800+ fragrances to 700,000+ monthly subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. “We’re just getting started,” says Mariya, reflecting on the extraordinary growth and eying expansion to Europe.

In this episode, Mariya sits down with guest host Jenny B. Fine, Executive Editor of Beauty at WWD and Beauty Inc. They take a trip down memory lane, revisiting pivotal moments on Scentbird’s 10-year journey. Mariya opens up about her early roots, shares her favorite fragrances of the moment, and reacts to stories from the community.
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Highlights:
• An intro from Jenny
• Scentbird’s 10th Anniversary Party
• The world of Scentbird today
• Rethinking traditional perfume counters
• 2014: The origin story
• Fundraising and early pitches
• Noir de Noir by Tom Ford
• $2M goal, $6.5M delivered
• Left vs. right brain
• Creating her first fragrance
• Does Mariya think of herself as a rebel?
• 2022: The rebrand, “that’s when true Scentbird was born”
• Acquiring Drift
• Red Moscow by The New Dawn
• “How accessible was fragrance as you were growing up?”
• Turning a love of fragrance into a career path
• “I want to fail at the thing that I loved”
• What the team looks for in a brand
• Scent Connection: Day to Night Edition
• What’s your favorite fragrance in the morning?
• What do you love to wear on your birthday?
• Do you have a go-to fragrance for a pitch meeting?
• What do you wear on a long flight?
• What’s a good scent for a first meeting with the King of England?
• A special treat: Mariya reacts to community stories and questions
• The smell of fresh-cut grass
• If you could be the CEO of any company, which one would it be?
• Hello from Scentbird’s first employee
• The perfect person to work at Scentbird
• Where the name “Scentbird” comes from
• What the next chapter looks like for Scentbird

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