When I was building 39BC, the insight was actually quite simple. Fragrance was booming. Body care was booming. But when I looked closer, the category didn’t reflect how I experienced either of those things.
Fragrance houses treated body wash like an afterthought. Body care brands were obsessed with actives, efficiency, fixing. Everything felt clinical. Or minimalist to the point of emptiness. And culturally, it felt narrow.
The narrative of what it means to be “clean” and “luxurious” has been shaped for a very long time by a very specific worldview — largely European, largely white, largely disconnected from the rituals that I, and many others, grew up with or felt drawn back to later in life. There was no space for bathing as something spiritual.
As something sensual.
As something historical.
As something that connects you to lineage, to memory, to self.
And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it. So the work became: what does a response look like? Not just aesthetically, but philosophically.
For me, that meant building fragrance-first body care — not as an extension, but as the core. It meant removing the obsession with “hero ingredients” and performance claims. It meant designing products that feel tactile, alive, almost like objects you want to keep, not throw away. And most importantly, it meant telling stories.
Unearthing them. Reframing them.
Giving them back their weight.
Because I also knew that there was a customer — and I include myself in this — who wanted more than just a product. She wanted context. She wanted depth. She wanted to feel something. And she was willing to read, to learn, to engage. But no one was really speaking to her. When you start to map this out properly, something interesting happens. You stop seeing “competitors” as just other brands, and start seeing patterns.
Patterns = Categories.
You realise that many brands are actually doing the same thing, just in slightly different packaging. You see where things have become formulaic. You see how everyone is copying the same reference points. Where the imagination has flattened.
And then, if you look carefully enough, you start to see the gaps.
The spaces no one has filled. I always think of it less as “white space” and more as a crack — somewhere the light is getting through.
And the question becomes:
Can you position yourself there?
Not in a way that feels forced or strategic, but in a way that feels inevitable.
Like of course it had to be you.
Because you saw it. Because you felt it.
Because you couldn’t ignore it.
That’s the energy I want people to build from.
Not trends.Not aesthetics.Not what’s selling right now.
But a genuine, almost irrational belief that something needs to change — and that you’re the person to do it. Because that’s the only thing that sustains you when it gets hard. And it will get hard. And it’s also the thing that makes other people believe you. Whether that’s customers, collaborators, or investors. They can feel the difference.
So if you take anything from this week’s session, let it be this: Don’t rush past what’s broken. Sit in it a little longer. Get specific. Get honest. Get a bit uncomfortable. And then ask yourself, very clearly:
What am I actually going to do about it?
