The young mum behind a genderless perfume empire worth $20 million has added a new unisex scent to her Who is Elijah line-up — and it’s already selling out.
In 2017, Raquel, who is now 29, was at Coachella Music Festival in the US when she bumped into someone wearing a cheap fragrance oil and fell in love with the smell.
By the time she got back to Australia, she knew she firstly wanted to get her hands on it — and secondly, she wanted to recreate it.
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“I took a photo of the fragrance bottle at Coachella and when I got back to Sydney, I bought 40 bottles as the only way to buy it was wholesale,” Raquel told Best Picks.
“Once I started wearing it, I often had people come up to me and ask what fragrance I was wearing. I wasn’t the only one who loved it.”
This sparked an idea for Raquel: What if she could create her own fragrance?
Six years later, Raquel’s genderless perfume brand Who Is Elijah is worth $20 million.
It’s the best-selling fragrance brand on THE ICONIC and she sells a bottle of her top perfume, NOMAD, every two minutes.
The latest fragrance in the Who Is Elijah genderless line-up is a scent called Oceans Of Love ($179).
A bright and invigorating blend of grapefruit and mandarin orange, it features refreshing notes of sea salt and juniper, as well as lingering notes of musk and amberwood which add warmth to the scent.
Like all of her other scents, it is genderless, designed to be worn by men and women.
Speaking previously to Best Picks, Raquel shared how she came up with her business.
“I developed His/Her perfume with a perfumier over a four-month period and there was a lot of trial and error,” Raquel recalled.
“There was a lot of sampling, and in the midst of the perfume creation, I started to build an Instagram page and brand voice.
“It was all very new to me as I had zero experience in marketing.
“But once I launched the website and we had the first product to sell, I started approaching retail stores and quickly secured 20 stores around Australia.”
Raquel says she remembers to this day her “first online sale”.
“It was a 10mL bottle of His/Her and I packed it within seconds!” she said.
It took a while to get Who Is Elijah off the ground, and she says she remembers that it took several months to sell the first 150 bottles and a couple of years until online sales “became steady sales”.
But now, Who Is Elijah is wildly popular, selling a bottle “every two minutes” in Australia.
The most popular perfume is NOMAD ($135 for 50mL).
“It’s such a beautiful fragrance, complex but versatile. Customers are wearing it from the morning to the night,” Raquel said.
With the launch of Ocean Eyes, Raquel has no plans to slow down just yet.
She manages home, family and business affairs with the help of her parents and in-laws, who “live five minutes down the road from us and are very hands-on with the kids”.
“We are very lucky to have a lot of help. My advice is you have a business idea, just do it,” she said.
For more information about Who Is Elijah and to shop the range, head here now.
