The U.S. men’s grooming market reached $7.1 billion in 2025, growing 6.9% year over year, according to NielsenIQ, with fragrance among the categories driving that growth. At the same time, fragrance has continued to outperform the wider prestige beauty market, helped by younger shoppers treating scent as a collectible and increasingly social category.
Now, Snif and Ulta Beauty are betting that young male fragrance enthusiasts can become a meaningful new retail customer.
On July 29, Snif, the digitally native fragrance brand known for its playful, gender-fluid scents and accessible pricing, will introduce Notewrks on Ulta.com, followed by an in-store launch on August 2. Notewrks is a cologne sub-brand designed around traditionally masculine scent profiles and explicitly marketed to young male fragrance shoppers.
Notewrks launched direct-to-consumer through Snif’s website in late 2025, but Snif co-founder and CEO Bryan Edwards said the concept was developed several years earlier through conversations with Ulta. The Ulta assortment will include three existing $74 fragrances, Clean Getaway, Room for Dessert and Sunny Is a Feeling, alongside a new scent, Double Take, featuring orange blossom, apricot, sesame and sandalwood.
The commercial ambition is significant. Snif already sells 45 products through Ulta, including $68 eau de toilettes, including Sweet Ash, Crumb Couture and Heal the Way. Other products include body mists, sample sets, candles and laundry fragrance products. Notewrks is expected to add approximately 25% to that existing Ulta business in 2026, before growing to 35-40% of Snif’s sales at the retailer next year.
The launch pushes Snif into a men’s fragrance assortment still largely ed by established designer names. Ulta currently spotlights brands including Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein in its men’s fragrance lineup, with Chanel, Dior and Givenchy represented through its wider luxury fragrance offer. Edwards said Notewrks will be the retailer’s first dedicated masstige men’s fragrance brand, targeting the gap between mass cologne and a prestige assortment where, according to Snif, around 85% of sales come from products priced at $90 or more.
The bet is that boys who currently discover scent on TikTok, test bottles during mall trips and sometimes rely on parents to pay will develop into long-term prestige beauty shoppers.
Notewrks is the result of Snif noticing more Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha boys shopping fragrance, while also recognizing that its existing positioning was not reaching them.
“When we started to take a look at our demographics, we realized that the way Snif had been positioned isn’t necessarily the way the male fragrance shopper speaks or thinks about fragrance,” Edwards said.
Snif and Ulta identified what Edwards describes as a white space in masstige men’s fragrance. According to Edwards, roughly 85% of Ulta’s fragrance sales occur at prices of $90 or more, leaving limited options for shoppers who want something more elevated than mass-market cologne but less expensive than designer fragrance. Notewrks is intended to fill that gap.
At Ulta, Notewrks will initially receive dedicated out-of-aisle table placement before moving alongside Snif in the fragrance assortment. Distinct colors, metal details, magnetic packaging and straightforward scent descriptions are intended to make the line feel collectible and clearly coded as cologne without relying on traditional men’s fragrance tropes.
“Men’s fragrance continues to be one of the fastest-growing categories at Ulta Beauty, driven by increasing engagement from both male and female shoppers,” said Linda Suliafu, Ulta Beauty’s vice president of merchandising.
Young men are becoming more knowledgeable and selective fragrance shoppers. Internal research commissioned by Notewrks found that 86% of surveyed male consumers considered scent itself a deciding factor when making a fragrance purchase, compared to 34% who cited price and 24% who cited packaging.
In Snif’s 2025 survey of 1,168 respondents, 71% said they were comfortable paying at least $60 for fragrance, while 51% said they would pay $90 or more. That willingness to spend is not always matched by independent purchasing power. Notewrks’ research found that mothers make 60% of fragrance purchases for males under age 18. Among 18- to 28-year-olds, 46% of purchases are self-funded.
The tension is central to the opportunity. These shoppers are often developing prestige-level tastes before they have prestige-level incomes. They are also trading the idea of a single signature fragrance for a rotating fragrance wardrobe. Snif said its most engaged male customers own an average of 12 fragrances across brands.
Parker Miller, a 23-year-old Notewrks customer who previously participated in a Snif focus group, said fragrance has been part of how he presents himself since an early age. “To me, scent is an accessory as important as a watch or cool shades,” he said. “When done right, it feels like a way to show maturity without too much effort.”
Around 45% of respondents to Notewrks’ acquisition survey said they entered a store after discovering a fragrance online. TikTok functions as the initial search engine, while YouTube is used for longer reviews and comparison. In Snif’s research, approximately 40% of consumers said they shop for fragrance at Ulta, compared to around 33% at Sephora.
“They are not doing blind buys,” Edwards said. “They feel like they’re smart enough, and they are smart enough, to know what is good.”
That behavior has created a growing ecosystem of male fragrance creators. Accounts including Scent by Evan, Paul Fino and Cal Cologne have built audiences ranging from roughly 497,000 to 2.9 million followers.
Snif is working with 21-year-old TikTok creator Yusef Dachmach, known as CologneCrown, to promote the Ulta launch. Dachmach is also a longtime fan of Notewrks’ Clean Getaway. “What started as a daily habit eventually became a genuine passion,” he said. “It became much more than collecting bottles. It became about understanding the artistry, craftsmanship and individuality behind every scent.”
Snif’s research found that younger fragrance shoppers place a high value on creator authenticity and quickly discount recommendations that appear overly scripted or indiscriminately positive.
As such, Edwards said he told creators Snif approached for the launch not to promote the scents unless they genuinely like them.
“They are experts, and they’re tough critics,” he said. “A year from now, if we feel like we’ve won them over and they’re spreading the scents that we’ve made, that will be the ultimate testament that we’ve tapped into something bigger than ourselves.”
