The Short Version

• Perfumania and Fragrance Outlet plan to open at least 50 new stores annually over the next five years under parent company Obsession Holdings. 
• Growth is driven by a fragrance boom among tweens, teens and young adults, sparked by social media trends and affordable price points. 
• The brands are flexible on real estate, taking space in outlets, lifestyle centers and enclosed malls nationwide. 
• Typical stores range from 850 to 1,100 square feet, including 2025 openings in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Nashville and Staten Island.
• Inclusive merchandising, well-trained associates and a gender-balanced customer base differentiate the shopping experience. 

As Fragrance Popularity Surges Among Young Shoppers, Perfumania and Fragrance Outlet Accelerate Growth

The popularity of fragrance, especially among younger shoppers, is driving the nationwide growth of Perfumania and Fragrance Outlet. “We’re trying to get a minimum of 50 new stores open each year for the next five years, so it’s a pretty aggressive growth pattern,” said RCS Real Estate Advisors executive vice president Eileen Mitchell, whose firm acts as an outsourced real estate department for Obsession Holdings, the parent of both brands.

Surging consumer demand for both designer fragrances and small-batch proprietary and niche fragrances is part of the fuel for Perfumania and Fragrance Outlet’s aggressive growth strategy, said Obsession Holdings CEO Frank Mroczka. The trend started accelerating during COVID, when locked-down consumers realized they could pamper themselves with fragrance and beauty products without breaking the bank, he explained. “That trend never stopped.”

Over the past few years, more tweens, teens and young adults have discovered fragrance via social media outlets like TikTok and Instagram. “They consume tremendous amounts of information about it,” Mroczka said. “They’re all about layering techniques and what notes are in things. We have over a thousand SKUs. They love to come in and experiment with the fragrances.”

Teens and tweens, even if they just have a part-time job, find it affordable to start their personal fragrance collections, Mroczka said. They also tend to bring their parents into the stores, added Obsession Holdings CFO Bill Aisenberg. “They might not necessarily have shopped us before, so it introduces us to them.”

Flexible Site Strategy Spans Outlets, Lifestyle Centers and Malls

So far, Perfumania and Fragrance Outlet have taken space at lifestyle centers, outlets and enclosed regional malls. Obsession Holdings is on track to open about 30 new stores by the end of the year, generally ranging from 850 to 1,100 square feet. “I would say half of those are under construction right now and should be open well before Thanksgiving,” Mitchell noted.

The 2025 locations include Perimeter Mall in Atlanta, Kenwood Towne Center in Cincinnati, Staten Island Mall in New York and Opry Mills in Nashville. As of late September, the national fleet had grown to 106 stores branded as Fragrance Outlet and 144 as Perfumania, Aisenberg said, adding: “By the end of the year, we should be at about 265 locations."

The company is flexible about its real estate criteria. “We entertain anything from double-A malls all the way to a C mall,” Mroczka noted. “We have found in our store openings over the past three years or so that we’re really successful in all those formats.” Neither Perfumania nor Fragrance Outlet has opened in a power or strip center as yet, but the company is receptive to taking space at such properties, Aisenberg added.

While Fragrance Outlet is almost exclusively outlet-based, about half of Perfumania’s locations are in outlets, as well, Mroczka said. Name-brand fragrances like Carolina Herrera, Dolce & Gabbana, Lancôme, Versace, Valentino, Estée Lauder, Calvin Klein, Kenneth Cole, Burberry, Giorgio Armani, Jean Paul Gaultier and Rabanne are the main attraction at the company’s outlet and full-price stores, but shoppers looking for discount fragrances as gifts or vacation souvenirs are especially enthusiastic about outlet locations. “Outlets are great for fragrance,” Mroczka said. “If it’s a tourist destination, folks will come in, load up their suitcases for people back home, and off they go.”

Main-and-Main Spaces Drive the Brands’ Site Selections

In advising Obsession Holdings, Mitchell prioritizes spaces that offer the highest traffic and visibility within the shopping center itself. “We are looking to be at Main and Main,” she said. “At [enclosed] malls, we want to be as close to the 50-yard line as possible. We like food courts, too, because they pull in a lot of traffic.”

Obsession Holdings welcomes proximity to operators like Apple, Lululemon, Aloe, Ulta Beauty and Sephora, but it does not insist on specific co-tenants, Mroczka said. “If it’s a good mall with a mix of national tenants, we can play with just about everybody.”

Expert Associates and Inclusive Merchandising Define the Shopping Experience

According to Mroczka, some national fragrance retailers cater primarily to women and place men’s fragrances toward the back of the store. Obsession Holdings’ marketing and merchandizing strategies are more gender balanced, the CEO said, and they emphasize rich in-store selections that include “small-batch, harder-to-find” SKUs. As a result, men are increasingly important to the customer base of both brands. “Women might actually be the minority at this point, but I feel comfortable saying that it’s at least 50-50,” Mroczka said.

The store experience also is broadly appealing, Mitchell added. “It is easy to shop and it feels clean,” she said. “That’s very important when you get into personal items such as fragrance. You want to make sure that it feels good when you’re purchasing it.”

And at a time when department store fragrance counters are less prominent, Perfumania and Fragrance Outlet boast informed employees, Mroczka said. “You’re going to go through a training program as a sales associate,” he explained. “You’re exposed to everything. It’s a lot of interaction, including role-playing with the manager.” Thus, salespeople can help even highly informed shoppers make fragrance discoveries, he said. “That’s what our staff does. It’s like: ‘OK, let’s go over here and play with these five fragrances. They’re all going to have similar notes to what you like.’”

Fragrance Market Growth Shows Staying Power

In an August 2025 report, Circana senior vice president and global beauty industry adviser Larissa Jensen compared the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2025, noting that “prestige fragrance sales increased by 6% to $3.9 billion and grew on all metrics including units sold and average selling price.” Those sales also have been accelerating throughout the year, with consumers gravitating toward affordable options. “Fragrance was the fastest-growing category in the mass market, up 17% based on dollar sales,” Jensen wrote.

But beyond the present-day trends, Mroczka points to the enduring appeal of fragrance to consumers. The sense of smell, he said, directly stimulates the brain’s emotional and memory centers in ways that other senses do not. “People like to smell good, but fragrance really does have an effect on your psychology, too. It has been around for millennia precisely because it’s so powerful.”