Australia’s Glasshouse Fragrances shares a similar origin story as many indies: it began with an idea to fill a gap in the marketplace, and a founder willing to roll up her sleeves and start a new business. While many indies never make it big, Glasshouse Fragrances Founder Nicole Eckels has built a brand that’s become a top seller in Australia and throughout Asia.

Glasshouse Fragrances is now sold in the US, having launched during the peak of the pandemic. The company recorded 241% growth from 2022 to 2023 and was tracking to grow by 60% in 2023 through retail partners like Neiman’s and Bloomingdale’s. Not too shabby for Eckels, who more or less stumbled upon the idea in 2005 after relocating to Australia. She was searching for a nice candle for her new apartment, and simply couldn’t find one.
Noting the white space in the market, Eckels recruited a soap maker from a local farmer’s market to teach her how to make candles. That lesson—and time spent crafting candles in her kitchen—led to the creation of Glasshouse Fragrances in 2005.

From those humble beginnings, Glasshouse Fragrances has, in its own words, become the largest fragrance house in the Southern Hemisphere. It is best known for its fine fragrance blends and premium scented candles and diffusers. Glasshouse Fragrances also sells eau de parfum, bath and body products, and recently launched interior fragrances and car diffusers.

This past Summer, Glasshouse Fragrances created a limited-edition candle for the wildly successful “Barbie” movie. The Glasshouse Fragrances Barbie Dreamhouse Triple Scented Candle featured a scent that was “nostalgic and sweet, capturing the fruity, flirty, playful essence of fresh berries—along with an accord intended to transport one back to the thrill of unwrapping a new Barbie doll,” according to the company. 

Growing The Business

While finding the right accords to translate “plastic doll” into a home fragrance seems complicated, so too is building a brand from the ground up.

“There’s always ups and downs in business—and with any startup, the learning curve is so extreme and your network is limited, especially if you’re an entrepreneur like me who started in my kitchen versus someone that might have gone down a financial pathway,” Eckels told Happi.

She continued, “What keeps you going is the belief that if you persist, something is going to happen.”

For Eckels, an early challenge was staffing.

“I think my biggest mistake was with people as we grew— and we were growing so quickly. I was bringing people that had, on their resume, a level of experience in another business, and I thought: OK, this person is going to know what to do. And I’d hire them—and not give them any clear direction about vision or where we want to go, or what I was expecting of them,” she shared.

She expected that they would “deliver value” based on their experience.

But there was a missing piece.

“Invariably, every time, it ends up a mess because people need to know what you expect from them and what your vision is so they can execute that. Otherwise, they’re executing a vision that they think you have or that they would have if they were in your shoes,” she said.

“I’m a lot more careful now,” Eckels admitted.

In fact, she called it the “single biggest rookie mistake” that all founders make.

Eckels has moved back to the US but remains at the helm as the company grows its reach. The latest market is Canada; Glasshouse Fragrances launched into Hudson’s Bay in October 2023.

Through this rapid growth, Glasshouse Fragrances has remained privately owned.

“It creates all kinds of advantages from a clear brand execution point of view,” Eckels told Happi. “We know who we are. There is a degree of creativity and irreverence that you don’t find every day in a brand our size, And that’s usually because, by the time they are our size, it’s all shareholders. It’s all about stock turn.”

Instead, she added, “We do what we love.”

Eckels says her team of 200 shares that love.

“The people that I love working with most are people who are really passionate and care so much about their business that it’s almost a selfless approach to the case and dedication to the company,” she said.

And this has helped build up a level of trust, too.

“They are the guys that pull me up and say: ‘Hey Nicole, that’s off-brand or that’s off culture.’ And that’s what I love to have: a group of people around me that are making sure that we’re on track at all times. Those are the sort of people I love working with the most.”

Next Up: Flower Show

Glasshouse Fragrances is ready for Spring 2024, with its newest candle, Flower Show, which is available now.

The limited-edition candle’s Blossoms and Blooms fragrance is described as a “vibrant burst of spring.” It has top notes of green apple, blackcurrant, pineapple and grapefruit; a middle of jasmine, orange flower, ylang ylang and pink pepper; and a base of amber, rosewood, and almond blossom.

Handmade in Australia, it is available for $55 in Bloomingdale’s and at us.glasshousefragrances.com.