David Teitelbaum, co-founder and CEO of clean fragrance and personal care brand Laurel Bath House, is on a mission to make men better—or at a minimum smell better. He says, “I want to own the bathroom space and all the products men use in it.”
In slightly over a year since Laurel Bath House’s launch, he’s accomplished significant progress in that direction. The brand rooted in direct-to-consumer distribution is projecting $5 million in 2025 sales, having already achieved $3 million in annual revenue, and has struck retail partnerships with Goop, Nordstrom, Happier Grocer and FWRD along with 25 boutiques and Amazon.
In DTC, Laurel Bath House is notching a 45% customer retention rate. “There have been some amazing responses to the products and insanely positive love for the feel of the brand and all its touch points,” says Teitelbaum. “One man even said the products changed and saved his marriage, which is cool!”
The idea for Laurel Bath House came to Teitelbaum, who previously spent over 15 years at streetwear brand Rose In Good Faith in various roles, including CEO and creative director, when he was scouring data about male personal care. He says, “I kept seeing that women primarily buy products for their significant others, yet there was this huge subset of the audience being missed.”
Once he began to develop Laurel Bath House’s products, he noticed most formulas didn’t meet his standards. “Everything, no matter how cheap or expensive it was, contained chemicals that left the skin dry and irritated,” he says. “The ingredients were of poor quality, and those with a scent barely lasted.”
Laurel Bath House kicked off with body wash manufactured in Los Angeles containing gentle coconut-derived surfactants, vitamins A, C and E, and niacinamide. The body wash has four scents: Mourning Wood, Nudie, Cuffed and Araki 40. Priced from $22 to $24, it’s currently sold out online across its scents.
Mourning Wood has oud, cedar and rose notes. Nudie has bergamot, jasmine and sambac musk notes. Cuffed has leather, raspberry and tobacco notes. Araki 40 has almond, cherry blossom and black cherry notes and was co-created with the musician SCARLXRD.
“We are riding the wave of the fragrance boom.”
From body wash, the brand went into fine functional fragrances priced from $90 to $120 and Solid Serum Deodorant priced at $22. In addition to offering three body wash scents as fine functional fragrances—Mourning Wood, Cuffed and Araki 40—the fine functional fragrance collection features the scents Rocket Moon and Banana Hammock. A forthcoming fine functional fragrance scent, Cannoli, has been introduced in pre-order.
Rocket Moon has notes of pink peppercorn, amber and Egyptian orange flower. Banana Hammock has notes of bergamot, coconut and teak wood. Cannoli has notes of Sicilian lemon, pistachio and cinnamon milk. Solid Serum Deodorant is in the scents Banana Hammock, Cuffed, Mourning Wood and Cannoli. Laurel Bath House worked with Givaudan to concoct its natural oil-based scents.
“My thinking, when speaking to men, who are our core customers, is to always lean into the scent and keep it prominent,” says Teitelbaum. “The scent is the hinge to try new things while still offering formulas that provide a benefit.” He elaborates that, within 30 minutes of application, Laurel Bath House’s scents transform. He explains, “Because we use as many natural oils as possible, our fragrances end up with these very complex notes that have a transitional start to finish.”
Teitelbaum points to Laurel Bath House’s fragrances as being strong growth drivers. They’ve joined an accelerating fragrance market—market research firm Circana estimates prestige fragrance sales were up 6% in the first half of the year compared to 2% for prestige beauty generally—in which men’s fragrance growth has been outpacing women’s fragrance growth. Teitelbaum says, “We are riding the wave of the fragrance boom.”
Laurel Bath House is riding the wave with a smile. Its frisky scent names and provocative catchphrases (an ad tells men to “stop putting junk on your junk,” for instance) are no accident. Laurel Bath House isn’t afraid to push the envelope. Case in point: a social media ad with a tagline using adjectives like girthy was blocked by Meta.
“Brands should be fun and at least make people laugh a little.”
“Brands should be fun and at least make people laugh a little,” says Teitelbaum. “You can always find a product that’s better, more efficient or made with cleaner ingredients, but you can’t find the brand story and deep human connection that speaks to you as a person. That’s been our push into the space.”
He emphasizes storytelling is at the heart of Laurel Bath House, and the brand draws consumers into a humorous, culturally plugged-in retro world. Teitelbaum handles all the creative, from emails to advertising, himself as well as answering every direct message and customer service request. He says, “I want our customers to feel like everything flows and like we are talking to them one on one versus getting a mass email or something generated from AI.”
In its design, Laurel Bath House’s graphics nod to the 1970s, and each of its body wash scents has a distinct look, eschewing the uniformity that characterizes much of personal care packaging. Teitelbaum says, “When I entered the clean beauty space, which is innately known as boring and repetitive and where every brand has the same minimalistic aesthetic, I decided to do things very differently.”
Getting Laurel Bath House off the ground was no easy feat. Teitelbaum invested his personal savings into the brand and runs it with his wife, Laura Pandolfo, as a bootstrapped company. It took 19 iterations of the body wash to nail the formula, costing approximately $100,000 in development fees. Teitelbaum says Laurel Bath House is ready to raise external capital.
Among the future product possibilities for Laurel Bath House’s assortment are sprayable body oils and body moisturizers packed with active ingredients like niacinamide, sake ferment and hyaluronic acid. Teitelbaum says, “I wanted to create something that feels almost like a body butter, but in a way that’s marketed as a moisturizer for men because there really aren’t all that many options for them.”
Also on the docket is incorporating more deeply nostalgic fragrance notes that spark core memories from Teitelbaum’s teenagerhood. He says, “Right now, we have the IP of scent, and we really want to integrate it into every aspect of the bathroom.”
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