Nette Founder Carol Han Pyle On The Science Of Scent And The Sephora DM That Changed Everything

Most of us would be thrilled if Sephora slid into our DMs. For Carol Han Pyle, that message arrived just six months after launching Nette, the fragrance brand she founded in New York in 2021. Two years into the business, its scents were landing at the beauty retailer. But getting there involved rather more than having a good nose.

A former ELLE editor and the founder of social media and creative agency Community Atelier, Carol had spent years helping brands tell their stories before creating one of her own. Her fascination with fragrance began even earlier, in her mother’s candle shop in Sausalito, where she watched pillars being hand-dipped and carved. Today, every Nette fragrance starts with a poem she writes, which a perfumer then translates into scent.

Alongside the poetry comes a fascination with the science of how fragrance makes us feel. Carol works with fragrance houses exploring the relationship between scent and emotion, an area where AI, neuroscience and consumer research are opening up new possibilities. Think of the perfume you reach for before a date, a big meeting or a much-needed fresh start: she is interested in what happens beyond smelling good.

Here, Carol shares the reality of building a fragrance business without institutional investment, the sell-out that became a six-month headache, and why her daily tech essentials include ChatGPT, AirPods and a very hardworking milk frother.

The Download with Carol Han Pyle:

My route into fragrance began with…

Before Nette, my career was in editorial and digital storytelling. I worked in fashion and beauty editorial at ELLE before eventually founding Community Atelier, a social media and creative agency, so I’ve spent most of my career thinking about how brands tell stories and build worlds around themselves.

I’ve also always been fascinated by fragrance. My mom was a candle maker when I was growing up. She owned a candle shop in Sausalito where I spent a lot of time watching her hand-dip and carve pillars. I loved the smell of that shop. Fragrance is so magical. It can transport you, bring back a memory, change the feeling of a moment.

At the same time, I’ve always loved poetry and the written word. I’ve written poetry my whole life to process emotions and experiences. Nette grew out of wanting to explore the idea of poetry through the lens of fragrance.

Every fragrance begins with a poem I write around a feeling, memory or imagined world, which we then translate into scent with some of the world’s most incredible master perfumers. At the same time, we work with leading fragrance houses and their research into the science of scent and emotion to think about not only how a fragrance smells, but how it can make you feel.

The result is fragrances that I hope feel beautiful, sophisticated and deeply emotional. To me, the best perfume smells stunning, and also makes you feel something.

The gap I wanted Nette to fill was…

I’ve been obsessed with fragrance for as long as I can remember, but when I started thinking about Nette, I felt like there was a gap between the beautiful, sophisticated world of fine fragrance and the growing conversation around wellness and how the things we surround ourselves with affect the way we feel.

Aromatherapy existed, of course, but it didn’t necessarily speak to someone who loves really nuanced, complex perfume. I wanted to see what would happen if you brought those two worlds together.

Coming from an editorial and storytelling background, I also wanted to approach fragrance differently from the very beginning of the creative process. Every Nette scent starts with a poem I write about a feeling, a memory, an imagined world. We then work with incredible perfumers to translate that poem into scent, using both their artistry and the latest research into the connection between fragrance and emotion.

I was also watching fragrance become much more personal and identity-driven. People weren’t necessarily looking for one signature scent to wear for the rest of their lives; they were building fragrance wardrobes and choosing what to wear based on their mood, where they were going or how they wanted to feel that day.

That intersection became the opportunity for Nette: poetry and science, emotion and fine perfumery.

Turning the idea into a business started with…

I started with the product and the world I wanted Nette to live in. I spent a huge amount of time thinking about what I felt was missing from fragrance, writing, researching, smelling everything I could get my hands on, and developing a very specific point of view around what Nette should be. My house was filled with every candle on the market in those days!

From there, I started finding the people who could help me translate that vision, including perfumers, fragrance houses, designers and manufacturers. Our earliest fragrances began with the same process we still use today: I would write the story, the poem and emotional world I wanted the scent to inhabit, and then work closely with a perfumer through countless iterations until we had captured it.

 

At the same time, I was building the brand. The name, identity, packaging, photography, tone of voice, website. My background in editorial and social media was useful because I knew I wanted to create a world people would want to be part of. When I found our branding and design agency, Regular Practice, that’s when a lot of those elements clicked into place.

But overall, there was definitely no perfectly linear roadmap! A lot of those early days were learning a completely new industry in real time, asking a million questions, finding the right partners and refining things until they felt good to me!

The steepest learning curve was…

One of the biggest challenges was learning how to turn a creative idea into an actual physical product and business. I came from editorial and marketing, not fragrance manufacturing, so there was a crazy amount I had to learn very quickly! Formulation, packaging development, production timelines, inventory, wholesale, cash flow: it was endless. With a physical product, every decision has a consequence six months down the road, and I definitely learned some of those lessons the hard way.

The other challenge was staying true to the original vision while building something commercially viable. I had a very specific idea of what I wanted Nette to look, smell and feel like, and in the beginning there are constant reasons to compromise: cost, minimums, timelines, what already exists in the market. Learning which things could bend and which things were fundamental to the brand was a huge part of those early years.

And then, of course, there’s the challenge every new brand faces, which is getting people to care. You can make something you think is amazing, but nobody is waiting for it to exist. Building that initial community and earning people’s attention and trust takes time. It was very humbling and still is! We’ve come a long way but still have so far to go.

Financing Nette has meant…

We have still not raised any institutional capital. We did a very small friends and family round early on just with a few close friends, but beyond that, we’ve put in every dollar ourselves. I’m very proud of the fact that we’ve been able to build Nette this far on our own steam, but it has had its stressful days, for sure.

The message that changed everything was…

A huge turning point for us was launching at Sephora about two years after starting Nette. They slid into our DMs about six months post-launch, wanting to talk! As a young fragrance brand, that level of validation from one of the most important beauty retailers in the world was very meaningful, but it also fundamentally changed the scale at which we had to operate.

Suddenly, Nette was being discovered by an enormous new audience, and we had to grow up as a business very quickly, from inventory and operations to marketing, education and thinking about how our fragrances showed up in a physical retail environment.

What I’m most proud of is that we were able to grow without changing what made Nette special in the first place. Sephora gave us a much larger platform, but the poetry, the perfumers, the emotional science and the very specific way we approach fragrance remained completely intact.

The mistake that taught me the most was…

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that running out of product isn’t a good problem to have! As a young brand, you’re constantly trying to balance inventory with cash flow, and there were moments when we were too conservative with our buys and ended up selling out of products for much longer than we wanted to.

When we launched our Pear Jam fragrance, we sold out of Sephora very fast and couldn’t replenish for six months. It was kind of a disaster.

In fragrance, replenishment can take months, so by the time you realise demand is outpacing your forecast, it can already be too late to react quickly. You lose sales, of course, but you can also lose momentum at exactly the moment a product is starting to take off.

I think growth just requires a certain amount of conviction. You obviously have to be responsible with capital, but you also have to be willing to bet on yourself and prepare for the business you’re trying to become, rather than only the business you are today.

On the difficult days, I come back to…

For me, the creative part of the business is what keeps me going. There are plenty of days spent thinking about inventory, cash flow, production delays and all of the less glamorous realities of running a company, but then I’ll sit down with a perfumer and smell a new fragrance for the first time, or write the poem that becomes the beginning of our next scent, and I remember immediately why I started Nette.

I’m also so motivated by seeing people connect with something that began as an idea in my head! Reading a message from someone who has made one of our fragrances part of their wedding day, a trip or some other meaningful moment in their life never gets old.

And I think I’m naturally very future-focused. I’m always thinking about the next fragrance, the next collaboration or the next world we can create. There’s still so much I want Nette to become that even on the hard days, I’m much more excited about what’s ahead than discouraged by whatever challenge is in front of me.

What I’d tell a first-time founder is…

I would say to start before you feel completely ready, but have a very clear point of view about why your business needs to exist. There will always be things you don’t know. I definitely knew very little about manufacturing, supply chain or inventory when I started Nette! But ultimately those things can be learned. What’s much harder to manufacture is a differentiated idea and a strong sense of what you want to put into the world.

I’d also tell founders to get very comfortable with things not going according to plan. Building a business is basically an ongoing exercise in problem-solving, and some of the things that feel catastrophic in the moment end up teaching you the most.

And finally, protect the part of the business that made you want to start it in the first place. As the company grows, your days can very quickly become consumed by operations, finances and meetings. I’ve learned that I need to keep making room for writing, smelling, creating and dreaming up what comes next. And that’s not separate from the work of running the business! It’s actually the reason the business exists in the first place.

The three gadgets I rely on are…

My iPhone, embarrassingly, is number one. I run two businesses, so an alarming amount of my life happens from my phone.

My AirPods are probably second. I’m constantly moving between calls, but I also use them for meditation. I love Dr. Wayne Dyer’s meditations on Spotify and I do 30 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes right before sleeping.

And third, my little milk frother. I make matcha at home every morning. It’s a tiny ritual, but one I look forward to every day, and my matcha is just not the same without it.

The apps keeping my working day together are…

Slack is probably the centre of my workday because I’m constantly moving between Nette and Community Atelier and need to keep a lot of conversations and projects moving at once. I live in Google Docs for writing, everything from fragrance poems and campaign concepts to strategy.

I also use ChatGPT every day. I tend to have a lot of ideas moving through my head at once, so I use it almost like a thought partner to pressure-test ideas, organise my thinking, research something, etc. I’m very particular about the final output, but it’s made the messy middle of the creative process much faster.

The technology I’m most curious about is…

I’m obviously incredibly excited by AI and how quickly it’s changing the creative process. I don’t see it as a replacement for human creativity at all. I think it’s so interesting how it can help you explore ideas, make connections and move from thought to execution much faster.

I’m also fascinated by what’s happening within fragrance technology. At Nette, we work with fragrance houses that are using AI, neuroscience and huge amounts of consumer data to better understand the relationship between scent and emotion. We can now explore questions like: what ingredients are associated with feelings of happiness, mindfulness, attraction or energy?

The social media habit I’d happily retire is…

I wish brands would stop chasing every trend just because it’s trending. Social media has made it really easy for everyone to start sounding and looking exactly the same. Same trending audio, same meme format, same language, same aesthetic. You can get so focused on what the algorithm wants that you lose sight of what actually makes your brand interesting.

I think the brands that are most compelling on social right now have a really strong point of view and know when a trend makes sense for them and when it doesn’t. Relevance is important, but having a recognisable voice is much more valuable.

On my reading and listening list…

I’m always drawn to books that make me think differently about ambition, creativity and the way we move through the world. Mind Magic by James Doty really stayed with me. The idea that our attention and intention can shape the lives we build is something I find so fascinating.

I also love Emma Grede’s podcast! She is so fun to listen to and such an inspiration. I love founder stories, especially ones that are candid about what it actually takes to build and scale a business, and Emma has this combination of ambition, practicality and conviction that makes her feel like a business big sister.

And The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer has probably influenced me in a completely different way. As a founder, your instinct is often to try to control every possible outcome, and that book is such an interesting argument for loosening your grip a little and being open to where life takes you.

The wearable on my wish list is…

I’m dying to get the new Oura ring. I have to find time to get into a store and try it on, but it looks way slimmer and chicer than previous iterations.

The platform I’ve recently discovered is…

ShopMy! We just joined at Nette and I’m loving the analytics of it all.

Modems Byte-Sized Questions:

💻 iOS or Android?
iOS.

🎧 Earbuds or headphones?
Earbuds.

📱 Text or voice notes?
Text.

📸 Phone selfie or proper digi camera?
Phone selfie.

💡 Dark mode or light mode?
Light mode.

💄 Filters or no filter?
No filter.

💳 Apple Pay or designer wallet?
Apple Pay.

📺 Netflix marathon or TikTok scroll?
TikTok scroll.

📖 E-book or audiobook?
E-book.

🎶 Spotify playlists or YouTube deep dives?
Spotify playlists.

🖥️ Desktop setup or laptop on-the-go?
Laptop on-the-go.

😀 Most used emoji?
😂 The cry-laughing one. Really showing my elder millennial age.