Luckyscent / Scent Bar: Bringing Independent Perfume to People Far Away

What sets us apart from department stores is listening and being patient.

Franco Wright, 2017

A screen cannot deliver a scent. Yet it can help deliver perfume to the person on the other side. Founded in Los Angeles in 2002, Luckyscent has bridged that gap with small sample vials and words that tell the stories of perfumes.

Its physical stores are called Scent Bar. Across a counter, customers discuss their preferences and compare scents across brands. Rather than separate businesses, the website and stores are two entrances to the same encounter between people and unfamiliar perfumes.

Essential Information
The Founders and the Store’s Beginnings
Curation and the Work of Connecting People with Perfume
Current Stores and Access from Japan
References

Essential Information

Name: Luckyscent / physical stores: Scent Bar
Online business founded: autumn 2002
First physical store opened: 2006, Los Angeles
Co-founders: Adam Eastwood and Franco Wright
Origin: Los Angeles, California, United States
Business: online sales, samples, and in-store curation and service, focused on niche and independent perfumes
Official website: Luckyscent

Niche perfumery describes approaches to creating and selling perfume that differ from mass-market distribution. Luckyscent’s history is also the story of expanding American customers’ opportunities to encounter these perfumes, both online and in stores.

The Founders and the Store’s Beginnings

Two People Who Met Through Graphic Design

Eastwood and Wright met at a graphic design company in Venice, Los Angeles. Wanting a business of their own, they founded a design agency in 1999. They worked on websites and advertising, gradually developing relationships with beauty clients.

Selling perfume had not been their original career plan. If they were building clients’ websites, why not try e-commerce themselves? Wright initially imagined a luxury website offering handbags, shoes, and perfume. Discussions with Eastwood narrowed the focus to fragrance. A Comme des Garçons eau de cologne they could not find online was another inspiration.

The two designers turned their own interests into a selection of products. Their first customer was unexpectedly close at hand.

Our very first customer was our Fedex delivery driver!

Franco Wright, 2017

Autumn 2002: Taking Los Angeles Independent Perfumery Further Afield

Small perfume brands were already emerging around them: kai fragrance, Child, Sage, and Sarah Horowitz’s Creative Scentualization. Could scents available in Los Angeles be introduced across America and beyond? That was the practical motivation behind Luckyscent’s launch in autumn 2002.

Their marketing and design experience helped them present perfume through images and words. Background stories, photography, and a distinctive selection gave unfamiliar brands a way to reach customers. Meanwhile, fragrance conversations were developing on forums such as MakeupAlley and in specialist groups. Hand-filled samples turned online curiosity into something people could smell at home.

Started alongside their beauty and technology work, the website reached people dissatisfied with the usual mass-market choices. In 2003 they closed their design agency to focus on Luckyscent. An experiment on the side had become their main business.

2006: From Online Retailer to Scent Bar

Opening a physical store was not an obvious next step. Eastwood initially had doubts. Some European perfume brands, however, were reluctant to work with online-only retailers. Having premises could open relationships with new makers.

The first Scent Bar opened in Los Angeles in 2006, in a small space on Beverly Boulevard distinct from the current Hollywood store. It later moved to larger premises on the same street. Customers could see bottles in ways a website could not convey, handle them, and respond in person. The store became more than somewhere to put merchandise.

A second store opened at ROW DTLA in 2017, extending the conversations developed at a small counter into another part of the city. In 2019, a store followed in New York’s Nolita neighborhood. The physical presence of an online-born retailer now stretched from the West Coast to the East Coast.

A Fifteenth-Anniversary Perfume Born of Relationships with Makers

Supporting small brands meant more than increasing the product range. In 2018, Eastwood recalled introducing Andy Tauer’s perfumes to the United States. Early bottles of L’Air du Désert Marocain were small and square, with labels Tauer printed and applied himself. Luckyscent connected makers at that stage with customers.

Those relationships also produced limited editions for the company’s fifteenth anniversary. Noun, created with Antonio Gardoni of Bogue Profumo, began with a conversation about rare patchouli and rose absolute he had on hand. Over months of receiving trials, Wright placed particular importance on the perfumer’s freedom.

I like the perfumers to have creative autonomy.

Franco Wright, 2018

Even for a retailer’s anniversary edition, the aim was to bring the maker’s expression to customers rather than dictate the finished result in detail. That stance also informed the work of selecting existing perfumes.

Investment in 2025 and a Brooklyn Store in 2026

The business the two had built together eventually reached a turning point in ownership. In November 2025, reports announced that Monogram Capital Partners had acquired a majority stake. The transaction had closed that January. An approach from another investment firm in 2023 had prompted them to consider outside capital.

Their aim was to develop the organization and its American store network. How could they retain attentive, unhurried service while building staffing and operations? Growth put that work itself to the test. The founders expressed the view that personal experiences had supported the stores’ success and would remain essential as the business expanded.

A store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, joined the network in 2026. A pre-opening report on April 24 described a layout that made bottles easier for customers to handle themselves, with more space for events than the existing Nolita store. While retaining a scent-category approach, each location used its space differently.

Luckyscent and Scent Bar: A Timeline

Year	Event
1999	Eastwood and Wright establish their design agency.
Autumn 2002	Luckyscent launches as an online perfume specialist.
2003	The design agency closes so they can focus on perfume.
2006	The first Scent Bar opens in Los Angeles.
2017	A second store opens at ROW DTLA. Collaborations mark the fifteenth anniversary.
2019	A store opens in Nolita, New York.
2025	Monogram acquires a majority stake. The transaction closes in January and is reported in November.
2026	The Brooklyn store joins the network. Four stores are listed officially as of October.

Curation and the Work of Connecting People with Perfume

Considering a Perfume’s Role, Not Just Its Rarity

In the early years, they traveled around Europe looking for distinctive brands and perfumes. Later, discoveries came online, through social media and customers, and from brands applying directly. Describing the selection process in 2022, Eastwood explained that Wright made the initial assessment and store staff also contributed. It mattered that the people introducing a brand to customers were interested in it themselves.

A story attracts attention; the scent is then assessed. But a compelling narrative and an unusual fragrance do not automatically secure a place. Wright described weighing the concept, scent profile, price, distribution, customer trends, rarity, and popularity together.

Do we need this? Do we already sell this?

Franco Wright, 2022

They also consider how a perfume might be received online and in person. Curation is not just about one brand, but about the range of fragrance experiences the whole store can offer. Profit margin is not always decisive, either. Obscurity is not a virtue in itself; what matters is having a reason to introduce a perfume to customers.

A Counter for Comparing Scents Across Brands

Scent Bar groups perfumes by their characteristics rather than confining them to brand-specific displays. Someone interested in vanilla, leather, or incense can compare interpretations by different makers in one sequence. Like a cocktail bar grouping bottles by type of spirit, the shelves are approached through the customer’s interests.

This requires staff to understand several brands. Instead of recommending one name and stopping there, they listen, observe the response, and think about the next possibility. Even someone unfamiliar with brand names can begin with a favorite kind of smell.

The Brooklyn store’s 2026 guidance likewise encourages customers to try perfume on skin and observe its changes over time. Organizing the bottles and allowing time for judgment are both part of designing an in-person experience.

Samples: Time to Think Away from the Store

Luckyscent’s samples are more than an accessory to buying a full bottle. They carry part of the shop to distant customers and create opportunities to try perfume at home. In 2022, Eastwood also described the effort of filling, labeling, and managing the samples themselves. As the range grew, preparing those small vials became more complex.

The current official website offers themed sample sets alongside selections bearing staff members’ names. With Fragrance Fitting, customers explain the occasions, preferences, dislikes, and scents they have in mind, and Scent Bar staff choose six perfumes. A person reads the answers and makes the selection.

Customers can choose their own candidates or borrow someone else’s perspective. Even without knowing the whole range, they can find a way into perfumery. Luckyscent’s character lies not just in increasing the choices, but in providing routes through them.

A Sculptor’s Experience Becomes a Language for Perfume

The store’s work also extended outward through video. Steven Gontarski moved from sculpture into work at Scent Bar in 2009. With the founders, he considered ways to share candid impressions of perfumes on camera.

His background included the practice of critique: putting into words what an artwork made him feel and think. Teaching and lecturing in art also helped him speak on camera. Rather than merely reciting ingredients, he explained what a work did to him. That experience found a place in discussing perfume.

People unable to visit can hear someone familiar with the conversations at the counter. The official website links to videos and the It’s Just Perfume podcast. Even without travel plans, viewers can discover which perfumes interest the store and how its staff talk about them.

Current Stores and Access from Japan

As of October 2026, the official website lists the following four Scent Bar stores. Each store’s official page provides up-to-date address and opening information.

Hollywood: 7405 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036
DTLA: 777 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, CA 90021
NYC: 244 Elizabeth St., New York, NY 10012
Brooklyn: 663 Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211

Japan currently appears on the official list of eligible shipping countries. Before ordering samples or perfume, check each product’s sales and shipping conditions and the official customer service guidance. Shipping and customs conditions may change, so no universal charge is quoted here.

Luckyscent has built both a place to find perfumes difficult to obtain in America and a way to connect them with individual interests. Customers enter through images and words, test a small vial, and seek a person’s advice if needed. That exchange reflects years of effort to keep unfamiliar scents from remaining out of reach simply because they are unfamiliar.