Consumers have long been comfortable spending on luxury skincare, fragrance, and makeup products and proudly displaying them in curated rows on their bathroom shelves. Typically, these items would sit alongside (or in front of) mass-market toothpaste, shower gel, and body lotion. But, recently, those so-called functional everyday items have been pushing themselves to the front with design makeovers and reformulations.

Today, all corners of the beauty industry are in premiumization mode, as consumers more readily invest in entry-level daily luxuries, and the products people didn’t think twice about five years ago are undergoing an aesthetic and formulaic transformation.

Daniel Bense, a former Aesop and Sunspel executive, saw this as an opportunity. In 2024, he launched personal care and fragrance brand, To My Ships, with an initial focus on natural deodorant. The brand’s mission is to make consumers care about what they roll or spray under their arms, with a responsible, aesthetically pleasing packaging and natural formulations, free of alcohol and aluminum salts.

In the 18 months since coming to market, To My Ships has extended into antiperspirants (a roll-on or spray that uses aluminum to block sweat glands), hand and body wash, and fragrances.

There’s growth potential for brands that get it right. According to Euromonitor, the beauty and personal care category is on track to grow 5.2% to $704 billion by 2027, with fragrances forecast to grow 8.1% to $94 billion and deodorants 6.9% to $31 billion by the same year.

Caroline Weintraub, VP at True Beauty Ventures, says the fragrance market continues to outperform across price points, which is where brands can unlock new potential in refillable formats and elevated body products — the white space that To My Ships is filling with its holistic approach to body scents.

On May 27, To My Ships will introduce its third scent, The Incessant Anxiety Geranium, an extension of the antiperspirant deodorant that was launched in July 2025. “We’re building a fragrance wardrobe that complements your deodorant and bodycare products,” says Bense, adding that deodorants make up 40% of the business, with fragrance and bodywash both accounting for 30%, respectively.

Bense says he built the brand to scale it. Here, he discusses infiltrating a saturated market, the challenges of standing out, and his financial goals for the brand.

Vogue: Stepping into the saturated fragrance market is a bold move. What gap in the market are you filling?

I was reading something the other day that said there are now 4,000 new fragrances launched per year, and it used to be 400 not that long ago. It’s an incredibly busy space, but every fragrance we launch has its origin in deodorant — the formulation is more restrained, but for the eau de parfum, we dial up the concentration.

Our perfumes have fewer than five key ingredients, which makes it more intimate because so much of what’s on the market is so performative, loud, and immediate. We want to be on the opposite end of that spectrum and to sit close to the body, where the fragrance unfolds slowly. We also looked into how natural ingredients are extracted, so much of [extraction] uses petrochemical-based chemicals, but we removed a lot of these ingredients.

Vogue: Are you targeting a mass or luxury audience with your fragrance offering?

What is real luxury? Luxury has gone a little bit haywire and maybe almost horseshoes back around to mass in a way, but premium is the space we’re in, and it’s the category where you’re still selecting the ingredients, and the customer respects it. In this day and age, people want value for money, and £35 for a deodorant may not feel like value for money, but it is for the level of ingredients we’re using, especially for an intimate part of your body that’s more sensitive than the rest. Our roadmap is to really not skimp on ingredients for the sake of gross margin.

Vogue: As a challenger brand, how do you measure the success of launches?

We recently launched our antiperspirant, and many customers have commented on how much they like the scent. If those same customers move to buy fragrances from us, that will be a key determinant of success, but across the whole line, my real success metric is how many people come back to buy refill sizes of our products. That’s sitting at the 20% mark at the moment, which, for a brand that started 18 months ago, means we’re not just getting return customers but people who are buying into a product for six months at a time.

Vogue: Entering the beauty market with deodorant is quite unorthodox. What challenges are you facing with the brand?

Breaking consumer habits in the underarms category is really hard. Natural deodorants and antiperspirants have gotten a bad reputation recently, with a lot of people trying them and ending up with [smelly] armpits. Underarm products take three days to have a cumulative effect, and some people aren’t prepared to go through that. For us, the challenge is getting people to try products on their skin. The word-of-mouth is very strong, but accelerating that strategy isn’t always super easy because it requires people to tell a story about their armpits, which they’re not so used to doing.

Another challenge is having a bit of restraint and not launching constantly. Some retailers will advise you to have seven fragrances before agreeing to work with you. There’s also been a challenge in how we’ve crafted the products with clear glass, which means there’s no UV protection, and it’s much harder to keep the formulation stable and in its right condition.

Vogue: To My Ships is all about clean design and ingredients, but that’s become a saturated space. How are you standing out against the competition?

A lot of design today is more performative than actual consideration. Our clean approach and aesthetic of the brand is more output of our decisions, and that was not always intentional design. We worked with a design agency out of Milan called Formafantasma, a research-led studio that pushed us to choose packaging that uses the fewest resources possible while still being compatible with our products. We have tall, skinny bottles because they use less aluminum, and we have small labels because they use less ink and glue while still fitting all the regulatory information. It’s an incredibly demanding and crowded space, but we hope that our customers see through that.

Vogue: What areas of the business are you focusing on and growing?

Ultimately, our growth will come from new customers and geographies, as well as new product categories, but we want to be considered in that approach. To crack through a category such as bodycare and fragrances is sticky in a good way. We’re really focusing on winning at home in the UK and Europe, where we’re based. I want to build out three channels — a retail space, wholesale, and direct-to-consumer. After we’ve given those three a shot, we’ll expand into international markets and cities where we’re seeing momentum. The US is our second-largest market right now, after the UK. We’re seeing super strong growth, but I want to be careful and have a considered plan to enter that market with care and attention.

Vogue: What are your financial goals for the brand, and what’s the strategy to achieve them?

Since launching 18 months ago, we’re now stocked in about 120 doors globally across 25 countries in wholesale, and we ship to 41 countries through our DTC channel. I want to double the business every year for our first five years, and we’re seeing strong double-digit growth. I’d like to reach at least £15 million in revenue by year five. The strategy is to select distribution with partners that reflects the category we’re in and in building a wardrobe for bodycare and fragrances.