Drake‘s world is about to get a lot more fragrant.
The multihyphenate’s fragrance brand, Better World Fragrance House, is launching Summer Mink on Friday. It’s the brand’s first eau de parfum, following the launch of a range of candles and a perfume oil of hero scent Carby Musk. Priced at $148, the scent will later debut across Ulta Beauty‘s full fleet and online.
Drake, and his team, did not take the category expansion lightly. “We’ve been going through scents for this for quite some time,” said Matte Babel, chief brand officer of Drake’s DreamCrew brand. “When you launch your first fragrance, there’s a ton of pressure on what it is, what it’s going to smell like, and all eyes are on that category because it makes up the bulk of the business.”
The brand started with Drake tapping Michael Carby for his own personal scent, Carby Musk, which later culminated in the candle range and a licensing deal with Parlux in 2023. Since then, Better World Fragrance House has expanded into retail, and Parlux president Lori Singer is seeking to keep momentum high.
“We’re building a brand through Better World Fragrance House that really is all types of fragrance and scent. It’s built on storytelling, craft, design, connection, aesthetic and of course, sales and scale,” Singer said. “The brand is now stepping into the world with prestige fragrance with its first eau de parfum. It marks this evolution from scenting space to creating this deeply personal, wearable expression.”
Though neither commented on sales, industry sources expect Summer Mink to top $60 million in sales for its first year on the market. The decision to break into a new format, Singer said, came from the brand’s founder.
“That centered on Drake. Carby Musk was so special, but he felt he envisioned that in its purest form as an oil,” she said. As it pertains to Summer Mink, “He felt there was an opportunity for something bigger, bolder and statement-making.”
“Everything about the brand, we like to say, is about the beauty of juxtaposition, whether it’s the name, the scent or the bottle,” Singer added.
The scent highlights top notes of Italian citrus and sage, features mid-notes of jasmine sambac and dries down to base notes of vetiver and creamy musk.
“Summer Mink was inspired by a yin-yang principle of fusing warm, creamy base notes with cold spices and sparkling citruses,” said Carby, who also nosed Summer Mink, in a statement. The bottle, designed by Jon DiNapoli, was also meant to highlight the same juxtaposition between softer organic forms on a more angular, modernist base.
The differentiation factor drove much of the product’s design, and though the launch is a significant move for the brand, Babel doesn’t expect any other major launches in the immediate future. “Images and products no longer make the profound statement that they used to, a lot of the time,” he said. “You can overwhelm consumers with too many offerings. The more I look at what’s happening, we appreciate curation. Our mandate is to create historical fragrances that people can fall in love with and easily identify.”
When Better World Fragrance House’s candles launched with Ulta, there was a heavy experiential component to the launch, including pop-ups and oversized candles outside of doors in key markets. For Summer Mink, it will entail a 360-degree marketing campaign, Singer said, spanning both the physical and the digital.
“We know our guests always want to refresh their scent wardrobes for the new season, and Summer Mink thoughtfully combines preferences and multiple scent families in an innovative and unique way,” said Linda Suliafu, Ulta’s vice president of fragrance merchandising, who added that it would be the first celebrity-founded men’s fragrance in Ulta’s history.
