We recently connected with Grant Pearce and have shared our conversation below.

Grant, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so one thing we think people don’t talk about nearly enough is investments – either time or money. What’s one of the best or worst investments you’ve made and what did you learned from the experience?

One of the best investments we’ve made at GUY FOX was mainly a major investment of time. As a fragrance company, we had considered expanding into candles during our first few years in business, but when the pandemic kicked off, we decided we couldn’t wait any longer. We knew there was going to be a lot less guys putting on cologne to go out (since they really couldn’t “go out”), and there was going to be a much greater demand for a home that smelled great. At the time, I was living in LA and my co-founder Liam was living in San Francisco. Since flying wasn’t really an option, I did the 6ish hour drive up, and we poured something like 400 candles in his apartment over the next few days. (Plus, we did handwritten Thank You notes to every customer…major hand cramps.) The ventilation wasn’t ideal, and we had more than our fair share of wax spills onto the carpet, but the candles were a huge hit and they continue to be an important part of our DTC and wholesale businesses.
Obviously, we try to do everything we can to streamline our processes, but sometimes you just have to take the long drive, get your hands dirty, and write a ton of Thank You notes to make a product launch successful.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Absolutely! I’m Grant, founder and CMO of GUY FOX. We’re an indie fragrance company based in San Diego. My co-founder and I started GUY FOX in 2018 because we felt like the world of designer fragrances just didn’t appeal to us in any way. Not only was the marketing artsy (at times bordering on nonsensical), but the prices felt ridiculous for our fresh-out-of-college budgets. Lastly, going to a department store fragrance counter and being bombarded by dozens of samples one after another was an impossible buying experience. With all this in mind, we set out to create a fragrance company that would appeal to guys like us who wanted to smell great without the nonsense.
Now we have nine original fine fragrances, six fantastic candles, and our products are carried in 140+ stores across the country.
We’re really proud that we’ve been able to build a really fun business together, and we’re excited to welcome more and more people to a better smelling life in the future!

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Liam and I both attended Sonoma State University (commonly known as the Harvard of the West). He rushed the fraternity I was in, and we hit it off right away! Fast forward 13ish years and now we’re business partners and best friends!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

The fragrance world has some really die-hard fans. Like sneakerheads or watch lovers, they are always interested in trying new things, but they also have no problem sharing their strong opinions. To gain traction with people who love fragrance more than most, we originally gave our cologne sample set away for free (customers only had to cover the shipping). Taking a small loss on these samples allowed us to get in front of people who had no problem paying for full size bottles of fragrance if it was quality, and we knew ours wouldn’t disappoint. In addition to this, we made an effort to send samples to people in the community who review fragrances on YouTube. Since their opinions were trusted more than most, their positive reviews of our products went a very long way.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.guyfox.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guyfoxco
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GuyFoxCA