The following is an excerpt from the Glow Journal Podcast. You can listen to the full interview with Glasshouse Fragrances founder Nicole Eckels now on iTunes and Spotify.
GLOW JOURNAL: Prior to launching Glasshouse Fragrances, you studied international business at the State University of New York, and you also worked on the Saks Fifth Avenue beauty floor- but I want to rewind even further. Can you recall your very first memory of beauty?
NICOLE ECKELS: For me, it was definitely those moth to butterfly moments. My mother, who was a stay at home mother (she was a nurse, but then stayed home because I’m one of four [children]), would disappear into her room and emerge smelling and looking amazing. She had an effect. Everyone would change as a result of her change. The power in that was extraordinary, and there was always a scent associated with that. I was very obsessed with that power, that transformation.
At a young age, I had colouring books. Most people colour their books. I just scanned them for faces, and put eyeshadow and lipsticks on them. I was doing face charts, in colouring books, at age five. It was always something that I was really interested in.
Do you think you were doing face charts because you had an interesting beauty, or were you just drawn to the features of people? Or perhaps both?
Maybe it was a combination of both. I think it was certainly colour, and makeup, and “I want to do that to that person.” And it was the boys, too! And the animals! It was out of control. I’d just put makeup on everything!
You mentioned that fragrance was a part of that memory of your mother. Do you remember your first memory of scent, specifically?
Yes, I certainly do. Scent means so many things for so many reasons. I’ve always seen it as a symbol of rebirth- renewal, if you will.
Being from New York, where I’m from, summer is the scent of grass. Spring is the scent of lilacs. In Sydney, jasmine is the smell of summer. There are these signature scents to denote certain times and certain special things that are happening, and they’re always about something new, something fresh, something wonderful, something you need to experience. It’s really, really powerful. For that reason, I think I’ve always been very drawn to [fragrance] and have an extraordinary, if I do say so myself, olfactive memory.
It’s also incredibly emotional. For me, I’m a larger woman and I can buy lots of things to show my personality and show how I’m feeling. Fragrance is one of those major things. Shoes, handbags, fragrance, jewellery. It always fits. And I can be whoever I want.
So you studied International Business. Your studies are pretty far removed from the world of beauty. What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
I didn’t know. I knew that I needed to go to college, as we call it in the States, so I just said “Okay, this is something I need to do.” I was really motivated by (and this is going to show my age), a 1988 film called ‘Working Girl.’ In that film, you saw a woman depict herself as someone very powerful, running a business. That was very interesting to me because, at that time, those roles were exclusively for men. It just made me think. I said “I’ll go to school for International Business because hey, business, international- that will cover it! Then I’ll be able to figure it out as I go.” Which is exactly what I did
Did you have beauty in the back of your mind at all, given that you clearly had an affinity for it at a very young age?
I didn’t, per se. I was practical. I thought that being in beauty would be an absolute dream, but what were the chances? It wasn’t something I necessarily set out to do, not at all. But of course, if I had to paint a fantasy, that was one of the things. But it wasn’t something I thought I’d end up doing.
So what lead you to Chanel and Saks? You were a Chanel makeup artist at Saks Fifth Avenue- what lead you there?
After I finished high school and uni, I took a job in an advertising agency as a coordinator. I was terrible. I’m a big thinker. My attention to detail when it comes to written form is… horrible. So I was the worst assistant on the face of the planet, and I was fired. So I said “I’m going to go and do something I really love now,” which is beauty.
Originally, before I went to Chanel, I was the counter manager for Macy’s Herald Square, and I was poached from there to go to work for Chanel- a huge upgrade. I became the resident there. I loved it. I loved every minute of it.
You did eventually move to corporate and relocated to San Francisco to work in business and sales. Beauty and business might not seem inextricably linked to the outsider, but certainly in Australia and based on my experience, the beauty floor of a department store can be very political. Were there any lessons that you learned from being at Saks Fifth Avenue that you found you applied to your corporate career?
Absolutely. Saks is probably the most political beauty floor I’ve ever seen. One of the reasons is that the people who work on the floor are paid 100% commission. They are territorial, they are fierce, and they are protecting a piece of real estate. That might have changed now, but back then that’s how it was.
Luckily I didn’t own one of those pieces of real estate. I was the asset that those guys used to move the [customer] away so that a new customer could come to that floor or that space. I would take them to a separate area of the store to do the work. And so I learned how to be patient, and how to juggle the different advisers because I was servicing all of them. I also learned how to work with my customers- how to listen. I knew that clientelling is a huge part of that business, because the tourists might come in and buy something, but the core business at any of those doors is the clientelling. You want that customer to trust you and to come back to you for everything.
I also learned what women want. That was the most valuable thing ever. When I left there and went into corporate sales, I felt like I was already way ahead of the game because I had to hustle, but I had to do it ethically and honestly. I had to understand what the needs were and I had to solve problems. When you’re in B2B sales, that’s what you’re doing. You’re looking at their business and trying to solve problems, and beauty is the same.
Vice versa- was there anything that you learned while you were studying business that you then applied to your career in beauty?
Probably more of the theory. I had a really practical education when it came to sales and beauty, and my education at New York University was more about the theory. Practical education, for me, is what has been the most valuable.
The year 2005 saw you relocate to Sydney, Australia. Why Australia?
It’s the zaniest thing and people are going to hear this and think “That Nicole has problems.” I had always wanted to live overseas, always, and I thought to myself, “Okay, you know what? I’m just going to do it now. Before I get too old, I’m going move.” I looked at the entire globe and I thought “Where can I move? It needs to be English speaking because I don’t really speak any other languages competently enough to practice and to work.” For me, there were two places that came up, and this just shows how narrow my thinking was, but in my mind there were two places- either London or Sydney. I just narrowed it right down to two cities. I said “Well, London’s kind of similar to New York, so I’ll just move to Sydney!”
But I didn’t move straight here. I came for a few months, and then I decided “This place is beautiful. I love the people. I just love it here. This is going to be my next four or five years.” 15 years later….
Once you had settled in Australia, you visited a David Jones store because you wanted to replace a candle that you’d brought over with you, and it was that experience that lead to Glasshouse. Can you talk me through it?
By all accounts, I was from one of the biggest beauty markets in the world. When there was a new brand, when there was a new launch, Bergdorf’s would get a six month exclusive, Saks gets it first- it didn’t matter what I wanted to try or experience, I had access to it all. Any makeup brand, any beauty brand, any fragrance or body product, you name it. I was spoiled for choice.
When I moved here, I realised that it wasn’t quite the same. Now I understand totally why- it’s a smaller market and it’s farther away. So I saw a huge gap in the market for a fragrance brand. At that time there was L’Occitane and there was Crabtree & Evelyn, and in the David Jones store there were a lot of mainstream, big fragrance brands. I saw a huge gap or opportunity for an Australian fragrance brand that could be quite niche and cool and be all over the world. So I said “This is what I want to do.”
Personally, I wanted products that I couldn’t buy here, because scented candles and some perfumes are very heavy and expensive to ship from the US. I thought to myself “Colour is fine- I’ll just get my makeup sent over or I’ll pick it up when I’m there.” But candles, perfume, body lotion, shower gel, all of those amazing products, I saw that there was an opportunity here for those items. That’s where Glasshouse Fragrances came from- this idea of creating a beautiful lifestyle fragrance brand that sells lots of products. That’s where I started in my mind. And then, practically speaking, I said “Well, let’s start with the candle because there isn’t one here.” And boom!
Boom indeed! You have just touched on this, but you couldn’t really get a beautifully fragranced candle that wasn’t second mortgage material at that time. Why do you think the offering in Australia was so minimal?
It’s just that Australia is far away. A lot of the brands that were making it here back then were sort of affordable, beautiful products, but they were being sent from the US to a distributor in Australia who was then wholesaling it to a retailer. By the time it got there, it was a hundred dollar candle. That’s not okay! You should be able to enjoy fragrance all the time because it’s a huge stress reliever, for one. It resets your mind. Especially nowadays, everything is so busy, everyone is rushing and is switched on all the time. It’s mental health, you need to have those things.
So that’s why they were so expensive.
Serendipitous timing then!
Half of business is identifying the time and acting on it.
Having worked in both business and beauty in Australia and the US, what would you say are the big differences between the way Australia approaches business and beauty, as opposed to the US?
I think there’s a good degree of brand lead versus product lead that goes on here. The reason that product lead works is that when you’re in a market where a product is brand new and it doesn’t have 15 competitors, you can talk about a product and you can cut through in that way. But when you’re in the US where it’s so full of competition and there are beautiful brands popping up all the time, you have to be brand lead. You have to talk about your brand and why your brand is different and what you stand for as opposed to “Here’s the new whatever scrub.”
So you’ve got this great idea. You’ve obviously got a background in business. You know beauty. What do you do next? How do you start Glasshouse Fragrances?
It was a very daunting process. When I think about it, and I look at it now, we brought a brand that didn’t exist to market in 12 months. It’s just beyond! And there were about 15 skews at that time. It’s extraordinary.
But you need money and it starts with investment. I had a business plan, and with that plan we went to a potential investor, who is now my business partner and co-founder, and we started the business.
It starts with a business plan. It starts with acquiring the investments and setting it all up. It was very, very difficult because I had no idea how to make a candle. It is not as easy as putting some fragrance oil in wax and turning it on. Our first candles were terrible. They were the worst! If I tried to sell that product in the US, I’d be closing the doors tomorrow. But it delivered on fragrance, they smelled amazing, so here, we got away with it!
Do you remember which scent you developed first?
There were 15. The scents that are still in the range are Tahaa, which is vanilla caramel and one one of our iconic scents, Marseilles, which is gardenia, Montego Bay… there were quite a few.
The way that I developed them was I held little focus groups in my Potts Point apartment. I brought my new friends around, and we’d sit in circles just smelling things. I had 100 scents that I loved, and we had to narrow them down because we couldn’t make them all!
So you launched in 2006. We’ve touched on how crazy it is to get a brand off the ground in 12 months- it’s absurd. An intense year, I imagine. What were some of the biggest challenges?
The biggest challenge for me was that I was in a new country. I didn’t know any of the retailers. I didn’t know the difference between Myer and David Jones! I had to find retailers without any information. I used to read the back of magazines to find out where the gifts were coming from or where the items were from that were going to the editor for photos for different features. I would read that, and I would talk to cool girlfriends who lived in different cities, and ask them where they shopped. I just did that and I tried to create a very curated, tight list of the best of the best- and that’s where we went first. I was very clear about having a prestige brand position and wanting to make sure that we had the buy-in from the best retailers that I could find, and that was difficult. But we managed.
The other thing that was really interesting, or the big learning for me, was that I was also learning about the culture. The vernacular- I couldn’t spell anything! I think though, in some respects, that really served me because I was fearless. I’d ring anybody and knock on their door because Americans are quite aggressive compared to Australians. So I just went for it. I didn’t care. Now I’m a little more “Oooh, should I call them?”
Learning an entirely different vernacular aside, what were the other big learnings from that time?
The whole thing was such a whirlwind. We were on a straight road to success. All the indications were there, and it was wonderful.
I was selling. I was taking reorders. I was making candles. I was down on the floor making sure that the candle makers were doing a good job. I was literally going through the products at the end of the line, picking out the ones I didn’t like.
When you found a business out of necessity, there’s pros and cons. You have no competition, however you have to educate everyone on this entirely new category. What was the response like, from both retailers and consumers?
The benefit of working with the best shops is they already had an understanding that a scented candle could be beautiful and deliver scent. They also understood that the really beautiful products were way too expensive, so I went to them with this brand and said “Glasshouse Fragrances, we make these beautiful candles, we make them here so they’re not going to cost $100, they’re going to cost $30,” which they did when we first launched. So we really did get quick pickup.
From the consumer side, consumers had been trained to believe that scented candles didn’t really smell because they were buying products at home stores and dollar stores. That’s what their perception of scented candles was. So we had to prove to them that that wasn’t going to be the case with us. It was imperative that all of the retailers were burning these products in store because I knew they would do the job- all they had to do was light it. The customer would come in, smell it, and that was it. Whatever they burned [in store], they’d sell.
Glasshouse experienced growth in excess of 50% year on year from pretty much the day you launched until now. What are the challenges that come with growing a business that quickly?
Fast growth businesses need people. There’s always new roles, new people, and you’re trying to steer the ship, per se, get alignment, get people together to make decisions, to move the company forward. When you’re growing that fast, you’re constantly adding people.
That’s a bit of a challenge because the more people you have, the more complicated it is to run a business without good process. You’re moving so fast that you’re not having time to develop the processes that keep everything together and functioning really well. That was probably the challenge for us. You’re constantly putting in processes and people.
We’ve talked about how, at that time, it was just Glasshouse. If you wanted a beautiful scented candle, it was Glasshouse or nothing. That’s obviously not the case now, and this is one of the things that happens when you create a category. How did you cope, both in business and personally, as competitors started to emerge?
Personally I was fine, because as a beauty obsessed junkie, everything needs to be perfect. I’m highly critical of products, so to make a product as well as we do takes experience. It takes resources, it takes time, it takes access to great perfumers. We have never been in decline. So it doesn’t matter how many competitors go around. Our commitment is to making the best product, having the best perfume, transforming that moment for that person that uses our product.
Sure, there’s competition. I knew that was going to happen- you can’t exist without it. It just isn’t the way the world works. The lucky thing for us was the category was growing as new brands were coming in, so there were more customers. So it wasn’t diluting us. It was bringing new customers into a category.
Beneath the umbrella of the Sapphire Group, you also launched Circa Home. What lead to that launch and what did you feel was still missing from the market that Glasshouse perhaps wasn’t the best vessel to deliver?
Glasshouse Fragrances is our lifestyle fragrance brand. That’s why we’ve just launched (finally!) the eau de parfum, the beautiful body wash and body lotion. It’s the brand that propels you, that makes you want to try new things, go places. It has an electric scent, if you will.
Circa Home is our home fragrance brand. It’s intrinsic. It’s about nesting. It’s about your family. It’s about coming down from your busy day. So they have different clear positions and the customers or the consumers of those brands are different.
At present there are more Glasshouse fragrances than I can count…
There’s 20 core fragrances, but our rhythm is completely driven by our customers because, like me, they’re just complete scent addicts and they want more, more, more. So we always have our amazing limited fragrances that we launch a couple of times a year. Usually there’s always a summer fragrance and a winter fragrance. We also have our mother’s day program, and then we have our Christmas collection. So it’s kind of those four key moments.
When you are developing a new scent, be it part of core or limited edition, are you doing that based on what the consumers are asking for or are you always thinking of the next scent?
It’s a combination of both. A lot of the fragrances that we are selling or that are available on our eCommerce site are fragrances that are customers love and want to continue to buy. We make sure we have those for those guys.
When we talk about limited edition, we have a responsibility as leaders in perfume and fragrance to bring to Australia some of the world’s best trends. That is our responsibility. That is something I’m very passionate about. I spend a lot of time overseas working with perfumers, trying to find trends and fragrances that are different. Avant garde, if you will. That’s our commitment. That’s where limited editions come into it.
We do listen to our customer. If there’s a fragrance or something trending or a note or an idea, the best idea wins. We’ll do anything.
We need to talk about the personal fragrances because it’s so exciting that they’ve launched. Can you talk me through the difference between the way you approach developing a personal fragrance compared to a fragrance for the home?
There’s a few differences. Number one- the most important thing to understand is when you are developing a candle, you have to work around this flame. That level of heat does something to a fragrance. Skin does not do that. So you have to understand the chemistry around fragrance.
If you’re creating a fine fragrance, in a case of our eau de parfums, there are perfumers we work with for that. If you are creating a pure home fragrance, there are perfumers you work with for that- and they’re not the same people.
Of the seven eau de parfums that we just launched, a lot of them are also available in a candle. For example, Kyoto, which is now called Kyoto In Bloom, is in a candle. There’s a few of them that follow that, and but those fragrances in the candle started out as fine fragrances, so it’s called trickle down. They were fine fragrances that turned were interpreted into a candle fragrance, not the other way around.
The thing about the seven fragrances we’ve launched is they all began their lives as fine fragrances that turned into a candle. There aren’t any that went the other way, and the reason for that is we knew that this was going to happen for a very long time, so we started speaking with some amazing perfumers. There’s seven different perfumers that worked on the collection that are some of the world’s best, and they work on amazing big brands like Tom Ford. Those guys created these perfumes and some of them have turned into candles. Rendezvous is another one. There’s a bunch of them.
While we’re on the art of developing scents- in as little or as much detail as you wish, how does the process work of working out which notes work together, whether that’s in a candle or personal fragrance?
We work with perfumers in perfume houses. My role, and I have two other amazing developers on my team, we’re art directing fragrances. So the chemistry around perfume, what things will work together… because sometimes you might think things smell well together and they might, but when you mix them together one negates the other and it completely changes or they blow up. It’s a chemical thing. The perfumer understands that. When we work with the perfumer, we talk about the art direction- what we’re trying to create.
We might focus on a note. For example, Midnight in Milan (which is extraordinary), that is a saffron based fragrance because I’m really interested in saffron and I think it’s a great, really interesting, slightly smokey note that I love. When we worked with the perfumer, we said “You know what? Let’s do something with saffron.” And that perfumer said “Great, let’s add some rose, because that really works.” And then it just kind of starts from there. You look at about five or six, or sometimes 25 different versions, and you just narrow them down.
From a brand perspective, you’ve talked about how you have this responsibility to bring trends from around the world to Australia. Are there any notes or any fragrances, or a combination, that are a guaranteed sell?
It’s a good question, because when you look at big selling fragrances that are performing all the world over, once in a while people just stumble upon a winner. Like Coco Mademoiselle. Depending on what country you’re in, there are certain profiles of fragrance that will work better than others, and we’re aware of those, but there’s no guarantees.
This seven we launched, it’s really funny because we said “Okay, let’s guess which three are going to be the best, and let’s just go right ahead and put it into a twist and spray.” There’s a 14mL travel size, and then there’s this twist and spray. Because the twist and spray product is quite expensive, and the MOQ [minimum order quantities] were high, we said “Okay, we have to select three. What should we guess are going to be the top selling?” We guessed Kyoto Bloom, Forever Florence and Midnight in Milan were going to be the best [sellers]. These just launched last week, and there is a clear trend of those leading. So I think we guessed it right!
That’s the game. You never quite know.
Is there any longevity in “fragrance trends”, or do these things change with the season?
I think that there’s some fragrances that are eternal and they’re timeless. If you look at our range, there’s a fragrance called Forever Florence that is absolutely timeless. It does not date. It’s just the smell of your skin, the smell of you.
But then things like oud, for example. When I go home and I visit my brother and everywhere around New York everyone reeks of oud, and I love oud, but sometimes I don’t want to smell that constantly. So I think that’s going to date, because something’s going to come that’s going to take that over. It’s a polarising scent that everybody got used to.
But I do love that. I love the idea of something different that you’ve never experienced and you’re not so sure of it, and then suddenly it grows on you and grows on you until you love it. And then it’s really distinctive. That’s the best part of perfumery.
You talked about how your earliest memories of scent are still so vivid. Fragrance is such a personal thing and scent really does trigger that olfactory response in people. How does it feel, as someone who creates fragrances, knowing that there are people out there who associate your Glasshouse Fragrances with some of the most important moments in their lives?
It’s a great honour and it’s humbling. It’s incredible to be part of that and to have played a role in that.
The link between scent and memory has a lot to do with this idea of signature scents. I can guarantee that just about anyone listening to this has smelt a Glasshouse Fragrance before- if they don’t have one in their home, they’ve definitely walked past Peter Alexander and smelt Tahaa. I can’t smell that candle now without thinking “I need to buy some new pyjamas!” Are there any Glasshouse Fragrances that trigger specific memories for you?
Tahaa, which is now called A Tahaa Affair, was one of the first fragrances we were going to discontinue. The reason for that was, at the time, we were in these white shops- everything was white and gorgeous and clean, and Tahaa was a caramel colour, so the retailers didn’t like it because they couldn’t merchandise it. Scotty, who is the buyer at PA [Peter Alexander], said “We love this fragrance and we’re going to put it on the counter and we’re going to burn it.” That business was transformed overnight. And now it’s number one!
There is a scent that we discontinued not too long ago called Kakadu. For me, that scent is the beginning of Glasshouse. Kakadu was the scent that I loved the most and the one that I used. When I smell that I think “Oh my gosh, it’s 2006, and I’m hustling and staying up ’til 4 in the morning doing retailer lists.”
We’ve talked about limited edition scents and we’ve talked about the core fragrances. I would love to talk to you about the art of collaboration. You have collaborated with brands like Peter Alexander and Tigerlily, and with artists like Gemma O’Brien. How does the collaborative process work for you, and how does it differ from your usual product development process?
I am a great admirer of creativity and of people who have ideas and do things a little bit differently. When we are designing product, it is part of the NPD process because we’re thinking “What should we do and where should we focus?” We look at the scent we’re developing, and then we think “Is there a form that really expresses that?” That’s what happened with Gemma [O’Brien]. I just absolutely loved her work. The fragrance, Melbourne Muse- it just made sense. The rest is history.
I think with Peter Alexander, it was much more collaborative with Peter himself. They have these luscious, gourmand scents. If you look at their collection, it’s very juicy. You want to eat it, it [smells] edible! That is what they do, and they do that really well. We worked together on that. That’s a lot of fun because gourmand fragrances are just delicious and so indulgent.
What would you say is the key to a successful collaboration?
Like-minded brands and like-minded creativity. They need to make sense. There needs to be a base there that is authentic.
It has been 14 years since you launched Glasshouse and even longer since you started working in beauty at Saks Fifth Avenue. Over that time, what have been the biggest changes that you have seen within the beauty industry?
The big change is just the way people are shopping. It was all about department store beauty
forever, and then suddenly everything started to change. With that is your ability to touch, feel and trial the smell. Mecca is one of the most important retailers in Australia because they facilitate that access to brands that are new and different and tactile. You can have that experience. It’s been a very interesting change.
The other thing is when that happens, the entry barriers are lower. More brands come in and you have more access to things. That’s been great for people, particularly because you get a lot of choice. I think that it’s been a really good thing in some ways.
In other ways it’s been very challenging for big retailers to adjust. We’ve been very fortunate because we, primarily, are wholesalers. We do have our retail wing, which is our eCommerce site, and we have a pop up in Macquarie Shopping Centre in Sydney, but we work very closely with department stores and with our retailers to make sure that we’re driving newness and excitement to give that customer a reason to come back into their store to experience something new.
What is next for Glasshouse fragrances?
We set out to be this lifestyle lifestyle fragrance brand, as I talked about, with our amazing eau de parfums that have taken 14 years to bring to the business. The truth is, we’ve been working on this for many years, but actually bringing the products to market has been two years of hardcore development of just the skews. We just launched exactly 100 skews- six new categories of product. That is a tonne of product development. Now, we can start to think about expansion globally, because it was very important to me that I complete what we set out to do before we start to build our business in other markets. You go with how you intend to finish. Now that we’ve done that, we want to be the first Australian brand to be a fragrance brand across the globe. That’s what we want to do.
To listen to the full interview with Nicole Eckels, subscribe to the Glow Journal podcast now on iTunes or Spotify
Photography and styling: Gemma Watts
