Picking out your signature scent is no easy feat. The sense of smell is closely linked with memory, and the slightest hint of perfume or cologne can instantly recall a moment or person from your past. In this regard, you want to make sure the smell other people associate you with is a good one, and not one of the Sex Panther variety. But before the entrepreneur in you resorts to creating your own line of fragrances Tom Haverford-style, Scentbird is here to save you.
Scentbird is a subscription service for colognes and perfumes. While designer fragrances are often a long-term investment, the company allows customers a chance to “date” luxury perfumes before “marrying” them.
For $14.95 per month, users will get access to a 30-day supply of over 450 designer brands. Using this model, subscribers can test run a variety of perfumes before they buy a full bottle. Additionally, Scentbird incorporates a perfume recommender into its offerings, leveraging a database of scent profiles to provide customers with customized fragrance suggestions.
Once customers decide which scents they would like to sample, they can simply add the selections to their queue and wait for a shipment. Sample sizes come in 8ml/0.27 oz bottles of perfume of cologne—that’s enough for four sprays per day for 30 days.
The company was founded in 2014 by Mariya Nirislamova, Rachel ten Brink, Sergei Gusev and Andrei Rebrov and participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2015 cohort. In August 2015, the company raised a $1 million seed round.
Today, the company announced an additional $2.8 million round of funding. Investors including Eclipse Ventures, Vaizra Investments, Ludlow Ventures, FundersClub, Scrum Ventures, SGH Capital, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian Y Combinator partner Michael Seibel, Parse and Scribd founder Tikhon Bernstam, and Casper CEO and cofounder Philip Krim.
The company plans to use the new capital to expand its leadership and operations team and ramp up its marketing efforts.
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