Chriselle Lim’s ‘ Cool Girl’ Fragrance Brand Phlur Bolsters C- suite
The brand has added two beauty veterans to its camp as it embarks on the next leg of its growth.
the fragrance brand which influencer-founder Chriselle Lim has spent two years reinventing to much success, is adding two major hires to its C-suite.
Elizabeth Ashmun, most recently president of Moon Juice, has joined as chief executive officer, while Linette Kim — who hails from Bliss and before that, L'Oréal — has been named chief marketing officer.
Both are the first to occupy their respective roles at Phlur.
“I'm very proud of where we've been able to bring Phlur over the last two years since relaunching the brand,” said Lim, who took the reigns as founder in 2021 following the brand's acquisition earlier that year by Ben Bennett's Los Angeles-based incubator, The Center. “I've been able to [create] that growth with myself and my current team — but in order for us to truly scale and get to the next level I knew I needed to bring in key hires that would allow us to do that.”
Previously billed as a “clean” fragrance brand, under Lim's leadership Phlur has established a storytelling M.O. which eschews the notion of signature fragrances in favor of a wider-ranging “fragrance wardrobe,” seeking to cater to the many moods of individual consumers.
“We're building Phlur in a nontraditional way for a fragrance house,” said Lim. “I often say we're more in line with a fashion or even a color cosmetics company because of the number of drops we do and how we tell our story.”
Though Lim did not comment on the size of the business, industry sources peg Phlur — which sells at Sephora, on TikTok Shop and is slated to soon enter Space NK in the U.K. — to be on track to reach between $60 million to $70 million in net sales in 2024.
Seventy percent of the brand's business, Ashmun said, comes from its direct-toconsumer channel — a dynamic Phlur is looking to maintain even as it expands its retail purview.
“DTC is important to us because we want to own that relationship with the consumer and that 1-to-1 communication we're able to have,” said Ashmun, who was drawn to Phlur in part due to Lim's mission to evolve the fragrance category at large. “I have a passion for working with creative founders and helping them achieve their vision. Phlur is doing things in a way that is unconventional, it's very fresh and modern, and we're thinking about things in a different way than I've done previously.”
Kim, who in fact got her start working in beauty at another influencer-led brand (Michelle Phan's Em Cosmetics) saw a similar appeal.
“Who doesn't want to be on a hot girl brand? That's the moment Phlur is having right now, and it's so exciting,” said the CMO, adding that between Lim's social savvy and the brand's high-quality creative content, Phlur's routine virality has catapulted its TikTok Shop sales performance.
While Lim did not offer specific sales figures, Phlur's TikTok Shop showed that more than 103,000 purchases have been made via that storefront to date. The brand's 50-ml. eau de parfums retail for $99, while its full-size body mists and oils retail for $35 and $45, respectively.
“It was important for me that our next hires had a traditional background, but also understood the trend-drivenness of our brand,” said Lim, pointing to the brand's recent Strawberry Letter fragrance launch. Initially intended as a limitededition run, the eau de parfum coincided with TikTok's “strawberry makeup” craze and was an instant success. “We bought six months of inventory and it sold out in eight hours,” said Ashmun, adding that the fragrance has since become a permanent addition to Phlur's collection.
“We're going to continue drawing up newness on a very regular cadence in order to continue engaging with our consumer — that's fundamental to the brand, and continue storytelling around different emotions so the consumer can look at
Phlur and feel it represents who they are and where they are in life,” Ashmun said.