From Poop Drops To Pet Products, DedCool Founder Carina Chaz Is Dead Set On Pushing The Boundaries Of Fragrance

Carina Chaz’s first scent memory is of a Clinique fragrance she wasn’t allowed to use. Her mom Sabina, who co-founded the skincare brand LaNatura in 1987, had gotten the fragrance while previously working at Estée Lauder, but it sat untouched on her vanity.

“She never wore it because she only used clean and green products, so I was never able to wear it,” recalls Chaz. “I remember smelling it and wanting something like that so bad, but never being able to find anything that necessarily spoke to me as a wearer.”

Chaz, who prefers the shortened version of her last name Chazanas professionally, has spent years chasing fragrances that speak to her and creating brands and products around them. In 2010, she introduced an eponymous brand she says was “cutesy and girly” and “totally not myself.” Six years later, she launched DedCool, a unisex, vegan, indie and, of course, cool fragrance brand that aligned with her ethos.

Today, DedCool has stretched beyond standard perfume formats with merchandise like laundry detergent, air fresheners, poop drops, lip balms and candles. Hair products, pet shampoos and sprays are on the way. “We’re really focused on becoming the next household brand,” says Chaz.

Ahead, we chat with Chaz about everything from being ghosted by Nasty Gal to DedCool’s recent partnership with Sephora, where the brand has sold out repeatedly and its vanilla fragrance Taunt has become a bestseller.

How did DedCool get its start?

I started it as a hobby and a passion project, never really thinking it could turn into what it is today. I have pinch me moments all the time. It was really a way for me to express myself through fragrance, which is something I’ve always been passionate about.

I come from a world of beauty. My mom has worked in corporate beauty then, come the ‘80s, she meets my dad, and they start their own company of what green beauty was at the start. I was always in their lab. That’s where I spent my after school activities or my summer vacation, which is quite unique. I’ve been experimenting since I was a child, and I didn’t really start making fragrances seriously until I was 16. It was really just a fun thing for me to do to express my own art.

The concept of  DedCool started on Instagram as just a vibes page in 2016. I knew nothing about beauty Instagram and, for some reason, it got seen by the people at Nasty Gal, and they were interested in the concept. This was, of course, prior to them closing, and that was the thing that kind of inspired me to continue my journey and gave me that boost of confidence. Like, “Wow, if Nasty Gal is interested in something that I’m doing, maybe I’m on the right path.”

It was very, very grassroots, bootstrapped. It started with me knocking on doors for local beauty shops with products I didn’t even have manufactured. They were just samples, and they were sold on consignment. It took a long time to build because I didn’t really have the resources or the funds to build it. Everything I made went back into the business, and it started very slow and organic. We’re looking at a very different picture at the end of 2020.

When Nasty Gal reached out, were they interested in stocking the brand?

Yes, they were interested in stocking the brand. At that time, I had zero product. It was just a photo of what it could possibly be that I very makeshift Photoshopped, and they had asked me to bring samples to their headquarters. I ordered samples from local suppliers because samples essentially from suppliers are free, and you can pay $100 to get something screen printed. So, I got 10 samples and five of those samples went to Nasty Gal. I delivered it to their headquarters in downtown LA.

I remember my mom drove me, and I got in the elevator and the penthouse had the Nasty Gal button in the elevator. I was like, “This is so crazy.” I dropped it off and never heard from them again. A week after, my dad gave me a clipping that they were going under, and I was like, “Oh my God, my one chance.” Then, I was like, “Actually, no, maybe people other than Nasty Gal will be interested.”

How much money did it take to launch the brand, and about how long did it take to develop it?

It cost $10,000, which was money that I had saved up from my Bat Mitzvah, to buy inventory, so purchasing bottles, getting it printed, getting boxes, and it took six months to pay back that initial loan. To get the business off the ground, I would say it took three, four years.

DedCool really, really took shape in 2020 where I was able to really focus 100% on the brand as well as looking at growth and having real marketing plans and inventory projections. Prior to that, it was very much a little mom-and-pop shop, which was just me doing everything.

What are DedCool’s bestsellers, and how do you think about expanding the lineup?  

Our bestselling products are currently fragrances right now followed by our air fresheners and laundry category. We’re seeing a lot of cross-pollination between the subcategories that then can share what we’re doing at DedCool, which is expanding fragrance beyond a bottle. We see that people come in interested in the fragrance, and we see how their experience from the fragrance then translates to other scents. It’s driving us to really rethink the product offerings and the categories we’re launching.

Laundry is something I’m super excited about. I love innovation. For me, it’s looking at everything holistically. When you look at fragrance and you experience fragrance, it’s figuring out how else you can implement that in your daily life where it doesn’t have to be expensive or something that you’re dedicating your life to, maybe there are scents that you’re liking in your car as opposed to on your clothes or your body. Our consumer is the hero, and we want to inspire people to be unique and experience the product how they want. Personalization is everything.

Obviously, the pandemic taught a lot of brands what consumers are needing and wanting, and for us it was essentialism and figuring out how we can infuse the juices we have into everyday scented items. We’re creating products that people love to experience and, at the end of the day, it evokes mood. At this point we could all use a little joy, so we hope to inspire that.

What’s the bestselling fragrance? 

Our bestselling fragrance is currently Milk, and its a fragrance that lives within all of our 10 DedCool fragrances. It’s now a standalone version of our layering scent. It’s your everyday skin scent with bergamot, white musk and amber. It’s very light. If you are close to someone you can smell it, but it’s not overwhelming or overpowering.

We’ve launched a version of Milk called Extra Milk as a little bit of a stronger scent profile. We looked at our analytics yesterday, and we’ve sold 58 less of Extra Milk than Milk our original, and Extra Milk has only been on the market for four months. So, we’re seeing it really, really catch up. People are just really dedicated to this Milk scent, which is like my everyday office scent.

As a brand that offers laundry detergent, what’s your take is on The Laundress recalling products due to a bacteria-causing illness, and how the brand handled it?

I was pretty shocked to see The Laundress make the statement. I saw that products were being recalled from two years ago almost, which was wild to me. It’s hard for me to really understand how it happened since, for us, every single thing that comes out of our facility is batch-tested and nothing leaves without having quality results.

I hope that they can come back from this, but it’s hard when there are safety claims involved. I’m not sure what happened, but I think they handled it in the best way that they possibly could. It’s definitely detrimental to a business, especially during the holidays, so I hope they figure it out, and they don’t lose too many consumers.

DedCool entered into Sephora in the summer. What was the retail launch strategy? 

Our launch plan really focused on working with their marketing team directly. We didn’t necessarily have the marketing budget, we did what we could with our small team. So, it looked a lot like seeding their Sephora Squad, teasing it throughout a six-month period.

TikTok has been really big for us, and we really engage with our community in a way where we speak to them and they speak to us. We started teasing that we’re launching in a big retailer, and there was the question whether it was Ulta or Sephora.

Sephora brought in so many new eyes to the brand, and the sales have been incredible. We’ve sold out 12 times. Red Dakota sold out, which is our viral scent on TikTok. Madonna Lilly, the air freshener, sold out many times. The laundry sold out a bunch. Taunt I believe is Sephora’s bestselling fragrance. In the first week of launch, we had sold out of four or five SKUs.

Early on, DedCool was in Riley Rose, Neiman Marcus and Urban Outfitters, among other retailers. How has the distribution strategy evolved, and what do you anticipate it looking like in the future?

Those early years I pretty much said yes to any opportunity I could take. That was getting it in as many doors as possible, really just to build brand awareness and focusing on how we can get the product in the hands of people. In 2017, I don’t even think that we had a website, so a lot was on consignment, working with buyers directly, cold-calling them.

Now, our strategy looks so different. We’re sold in about 150 mom-and-pop shops, which we’ll always continue doing. Those are the stores that really started our brand and gave me the opportunity and the platform to really share my product with their customers, which is so amazing and powerful.

With Sephora, we’re in about 210 stores in our first year. As we scale and move throughout our contract, we hope to be in all Sephora stores. So, it’s really a matter of looking at our distribution within Sephora and continuing working with the mom-and-pop shops. There aren’t as many as there once were, which is a shame. I know COVID had a lot to do with stores closing. Unfortunately, a lot of people lost their businesses.

We’re not planning on expanding within a major distribution in the U.S., but we do have plans for next year to launch in a major retailer overseas.

What is DedCool’s e-commerce strategy today? Is the website a major revenue source or a thorn in your side?

Our DTC is a major revenue source of ours. Prior to Sephora, we were 70% DTC and the rest was the mom-and-pop shops. Now, we’re seeing a big split, 50/50. Sephora has been super successful with the brand. If anything, Sephora boosted our stability and helped our DTC grow. So, we’ve always had a really strong DTC business since 2020, and we’ve continued to build that. Now, we look at Sephora as also a major revenue driver for us.

What have you found works for DedCool’s content, and how has it changed over the years?

For us, with very limited budget, we were never able to get in the hands of big influencers because we couldn’t afford to pay them. So, it was us really focusing on the community. Now, you’re seeing such a shift where people only want to see real user-generated content as opposed to these paid ads that have taken over the market for so long.

We work with influencers now of course, but we were very lucky that it shifted when it did because it’s fragrance. It’s definitely not your average DTC brand where you see something on a bottle, and you buy it because you think it would look good on you or that shade of pink would look great with your hair color, whatever it is. With fragrance, you definitely have to sell a mood, you have to sell a story. For us, user-generated content is so valuable. The community that we’ve built is really the community lifting us up and getting us in the hands of their friends and the loyal customers.

We are in the hands of tastemakers, we’re in the hands of people who have no followers. We just love anyone who shares their wholehearted opinion, review of the brand. We love their support, and we continue to work with them on what capacity makes sense, but it’s definitely something that we tailor to our community. They’re our shining stars.

If you had to pick, what would the soundtrack to DedCool sound like?

We actually have Spotify playlists for every scent because every scent is so unique with every kind of mood and however you’re feeling, however you’re dressing in that moment. So, I would say it’s probably easier to define them by each scent, but, if I had to choose, I love oldies, but I’m always scared to associate with oldies because I don’t want to be a vintage brand [laughs].

What brands or products other than your own would we find in your medicine cabinet?

I always show my friends my beauty cabinet, and I’m like, “This is my mini Sephora,” because I just have endless products. I’m a huge skincare junkie. I don’t love makeup as much as I probably should or hair. You’ll see a lot of Youth To The People, they’re good friends of the brand. Dieux Skin, which is created by my friends Marta [Freedman], Charlotte [Palermino] and Joyce [de Lemos]. Starface is also another friend of the brand. You’ll see me using a lot of my peers’ products, but definitely focusing on skincare.

As an entrepreneur, what’s your biggest fear?

There isn’t a moment of the day where I’m not thinking about the business or the brand. There’s always that question, if you take off one day, is everything going to be OK? Since I’ve done this for so long, and since it was just an individual project for so long, I’m trying to learn how to let go and let my team handle it. That’s definitely still a work in progress, but we’ve built such an amazing and nimble team. Day to day, we have 25 people working on the brand, and that’s a mix of full-time employees as well as fractional resources.

Looking ahead, what are short-term and long-term goals for DedCool? 

We want to really focus on more activations. This year was so crazy with the launch of Sephora and where we want to really focus on community building. That’s where we’re seeing the strongest call to action as well as focusing on building out what that looks like in Sephora.