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When a Rebrand Backfires
What Boy Smells, Phlur, and 4AM Skin teaches us about selling out vs. scaling up.
Maggie Sellers & Katie Sellers
02 May
The rebrand was supposed to fix everything.
New fonts. New packaging. A fresh identity for a new audience. In theory, a rebrand is a power move. A reset. A reinvention. But for Boy Smells, it quickly became a masterclass in what not to do.
After rumblings from Reddit and fragrance forums, Boy Smells unveiled a Gen Z-focused redesign this month that replaced its once cult-classic, subversive edge with rounded bottles, bubble fonts, and fragrance names like Coco Cream and Sugar Baby. The backlash was immediate. Longtime customers slammed it as a betrayal of the queer roots and genderful ethos the brand was built on. "How did we go from Cowboy Kush to Sephora-core beige?" one Instagram commenter wrote.
It wasn’t just a new look. It was a new vibe. And it alienated the very people who made the brand cool in the first place.
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