This includes the accumulation of “fragrance wardrobes,” where users rotate their fragrances daily based on mood and occasion, often selecting from a robust collection of both designer and dupe scents. Teen boys also care about their fragrance atomizers and save for niche fragrances that signal access and knowledge about the category. Much of this stems from TikTok or Reddit, where “fragheads” — short for “fragrance heads” — follow the latest trends and industry news. 

“It is very much a collector mentality,” said Glossy senior editor Emily Jensen. “There are actually a lot of parallels with how [teen boys] are discovering and purchasing [fragrances today] with the ‘sneakerhead’ community that was big in the 2010s.”

But teens are also notoriously fickle, changing their minds with such vigor that it can be considered a curse to attract too much focus from young people. For example, attention from teens and tweens crushed the once skin-care darling Drunk Elephant after young shoppers claimed the brand as their own, then quickly moved on, causing quarterly sales to fall by as much as 65%. 

Teen boys today straddle two generations: Gen Alpha boys 16 and younger and Gen Z boys 17 and older. Together, they’ve been dubbed Gen Zalpha. 

So how do brands and retailers reach Gen Zalpha boys hungry for the latest fragrance to add to their wardrobes? 

In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, we unpack the latest strategy shift from Ulta Beauty reported by Glossy’s international fashion reporter Zofia Zwieglinska. Launching this week, the retailer is partnering with fragrance brand Snif to attract young male fragrance enthusiasts with its first dedicated masstige men’s fragrance brand, Notewrks. Through this, the brand and retailer hope to target the gap between mass and prestige fragrance. 

Host Lexy Lebsack is joined by Jensen and Zwieglinska to unpack the rise of the Gen Zalpha fraghead and how Ulta Beauty is hoping to woo them. 

On the rise of teen ‘fragheads’

Jensen: “There are actually a lot of parallels with how [teen boys] are discovering and purchasing [fragrances today] with the sneakerhead community that was big in the 2010s. Obviously, that’s still around, and there are still people collecting sneakers and whatnot. But if you think about [it], it was, at one time, a very niche community of people discovering this limited-edition [sneaker] release. [It’s similar] to a holy grail scent [today], or this like hard-to-come-by scent that is very much an ‘if you know you know’ kind of world. It is very much a collector mentality. …”

On Ulta Beauty leaning into niche communities

Zwieglinska: “Ulta’s been going into a lot of different categories recently. I think they’re actually investing in a lot of these more niche communities. For example, things like wellness, that all of us have written about, is a big market for them. But it’s also about getting into some of these communities that have grown, or kind of erupted, over the last couple of years because of social media. So they’re leaning into the niche communities on TikTok and Reddit, and I think that’s where this need for niche brands also comes in. They have a little bit of a track record of supporting those younger brands, even if they might not have as big of a range, or portfolio, as some of the bigger [fragrance brands]. Snif is also trying to make something that is both elevated and collectible [with the launch of Notewrks], which I don’t think you see as much with some of these designer fragrances. They’re kind of broad launches [within conventional fragrance brand launches, such as] the same scent in various formulations. You won’t really have multiple kinds of very niche launches [like you will with Notewrks]. It’s also about the scents that they actually invest in. So, for example, some of Notewrks’ fragrances lead into gourmand fragrances for men. That’s a really unusual category, and not something that you would see from some of these higher-end prestige brands.”