How Ulta Beauty is reaching Gen Zalpha teen boys through first men’s masstige fragrance launch

Teen boys have become an increasingly important consumer demographic over the past few years thanks, primarily, to their insatiable appetite for fragrance. 

This includes the accumulation of "fragrance wardrobes," where users rotate their fragrances daily based on mood and occasion, often selecting from a robust collection of both designer and dupe scents. Teen boys also care about their fragrance atomizers and save for niche fragrances that signal access and knowledge about the category. Much of this stems from TikTok or Reddit, where "fragheads" — short for "fragrance heads" — follow the latest trends and industry news. 

“It is very much a collector mentality,” said Glossy senior editor Emily Jensen. “There are actually a lot of parallels with how [teen boys] are discovering and purchasing [fragrances today] with the ‘sneakerhead’ community that was big in the 2010s.”

But teens are also notoriously fickle, changing their minds with such vigor that it can be considered a curse to attract too much focus from young people. For example, attention from teens and tweens crushed the once skin-care darling Drunk Elephant after young shoppers claimed the brand as their own, then quickly moved on, causing quarterly sales to fall by as much as 65%. 

Teen boys today straddle two generations: Gen Alpha boys 16 and younger and Gen Z boys 17 and older. Together, they’ve been dubbed Gen Zalpha. 

So how do brands and retailers reach Gen Zalpha boys hungry for the latest fragrance to add to their wardrobes? 

In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, we unpack the latest strategy shift from Ulta Beauty reported by Glossy’s international fashion reporter Zofia Zwieglinska. Launching this week, the retailer is partnering with fragrance brand Snif to attract young male fragrance enthusiasts with its first dedicated masstige men’s fragrance brand, Notewrks. Through this, the brand and retailer hope to target the gap between mass and prestige fragrance. 

Host Lexy Lebsack is joined by Jensen and Zwieglinska to unpack the rise of the Gen Zalpha fraghead and how Ulta Beauty is hoping to woo them.