粉丝不等于顾客：Roxie Nafousi 关掉香水品牌后总结的 5 条创业教训

November 3, 2026

Photo: Courtesy of Roxie Nafousi

Roxie Nafousi knows a thing or two about turning an audience into a business. The self-development coach and manifestation author has sold two million books since 2022, all the while building a lucrative ecosystem spanning an app, workshops and other products like journals and affirmation cards all centered on personal development. Translating that community into a successful consumer brand, however, proved a different challenge.

With Alia, her fragrance line, Nafousi set out to create something that could extend beyond her own personal brand. “I genuinely believed that we could create a major international fragrance brand,” she says over Zoom. “I hoped it would expand beyond fragrance into candles and incense. I thought the sky was the limit, and I felt so full of hope and excitement.”

The reality was a little more complicated: production delays, disagreements with a business partner and a resulting larger-than-expected financial commitment (£300,000 in total, against an originally expected £50,000 investment) all put pressure on the business. And while a high-profile launch that included celebrity events and retail placements seemed promising, delayed inventory and lackluster sales compounded the challenges. A cease-and-desist letter from a global brand ultimately brought the venture to a close, which Nafousi announced earlier this week on her personal Instagram.

Speaking to Vogue Business exclusively in the days after, Nafousi says a big part of the struggle was comparing online narratives of success with her own journey. “Social media is full of stories about people who create a brand and sell out overnight. There’s so much of that, and not nearly enough of the reality that it’s really hard and sometimes things don’t work out,” she says. “I really want people to make sure they understand what they’re getting into.”

“During the first few months [of launching Alia], when sales were trickling in and things weren’t really happening, I felt ashamed,” Nafousi adds. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m irrelevant. I was so stupid to think I could make this work.’ I was comparing myself with these amazing brands, so it took me time to realize that not succeeding in my fragrance business wasn’t a failure. It was an amazing lesson.”

Here, Nafousi reveals her five biggest business lessons off the back of the brand.

1. An existing audience is no substitute for market research

The rise of the creator-founder has fueled a popular narrative whereby building a social media following is a natural precursor to building a consumer business. Big online followings can theoretically bypass some of the traditional barriers to launching a brand, from customer acquisition to building trust, but appetite for someone’s content or recommendations does not necessarily translate into demand for an entirely different category.

“It’s absolutely not a given that you can have an audience for one thing and expect them to transfer easily over to another,” Nafousi says. “Attention is not the same as demand. So many people confuse the number of followers they have with the number of people who actually want to spend their own money on something they create.”

In Alia’s case, Nafousi believed there was a natural connection between the fragrance brand and the world she built around self-development and empowerment, with scent offering another way for women to embody different parts of themselves. Its debut Alter Ego collection featured fragrances named Main Character, Power House and Scene Stealer, reflecting the themes that had become central to Nafousi’s personal brand across her Manifest and Confidence books.

“I did think that, because the messages were aligned, it would make sense,” she says. “I talk about empowerment and becoming the best version of yourself, and to me, Alia was just an extension of that. I definitely thought my audience would understand it.”

In hindsight, Nafousi believes more market and consumer research could have established whether fragrance was the right category in the first place. “People’s money is precious, and the way they spend it is changing. You need to do the research into what they actually want from you. What’s missing from their lives? What do they need? And just because you love something doesn’t mean someone else will,” she says. “I’d probably challenge myself more.”

2. Build contingency into the business plan

Initially expected to invest £50,000 in Alia through a 50-50 partnership, Nafousi unfortunately found herself having to buy out her business partner when the relationship became strained. Her initial investment effectively doubled, while costs continued to mount as she took on additional responsibilities within the business. Nafousi found herself having to recruit additional support, bringing unexpected recruitment fees and a new salary into the equation alongside lawyers and accountants.

“The money and investment required were far greater than I’d imagined. There just seemed to be bills coming out of nowhere. I remember getting a bill for £70,000 in January this year, and I couldn’t understand where it had come from. It was production costs,” she says. The financial pressure then extended to decisions around how much inventory to commit to. For Nafousi, having sold two million copies of her book, 12,000 starting units felt relatively modest by comparison, but surplus stock and resulting production delays quickly became an issue.

“That was a big mistake, ordering far too much stock at the beginning,” she says. There were also problems with the timing of production: the perfumes arrived late, missing the initial momentum. “I really wouldn’t do it alone. I’d find the right partner, someone I’d gone through some shit with first. I’d really ask them how they deal with conflict and get to know their communication style, to make sure we could handle things together as a team.”

3. Generating awareness is not the same as acquiring customers

“For me, the most interesting thing was that we had all the ingredients you’d expect to work,” Nafousi says. “We had incredible press and huge events attended by so many wonderful celebrities, influencers and other people. All the ingredients were there for a great launch that should have translated into sales.”

Yet generating attention is only part of the challenge. With consumers becoming more selective about their spending and competition for visibility intensifying, brands face growing costs to acquire customers. “In general, we’re seeing that consumers are much more mindful of their spending,” Nafousi says. “It takes a lot more to acquire a customer than it used to. There’s so much competition, and consumers are bombarded with things. You can’t simply post something on your Stories or your feed and say, ‘Guys, I’ve got this thing,’ and expect that to be enough anymore.”

The unpredictability of organic reach can also lead to brands spending heavily on content and imagery without necessarily engaging a meaningful audience. For founders, this makes it important to diversify their marketing efforts rather than relying on social media alone, testing different ways to reach and engage potential customers. “The algorithm fucks us all, really. I might have spent so much money on social media and having someone create beautiful imagery for Alia, but nobody’s seeing it. Maybe 100 people are seeing it.”

Nafousi also found that some of the launch strategies commonly used by similar brands — such as gifting products to influencers — generated visibility without necessarily prompting purchases. What proved more effective was a direct appeal to her own community. Nafousi invited followers who genuinely wanted to try Alia to receive the product in exchange for sharing their thoughts. The resulting user-generated content, often from those with relatively small audiences, performed better than traditional gifting.

In-person activations also helped bridge the gap between awareness and purchase. At her Manifest Live show, a pop-up store allowed attendees to smell the fragrance and interact with the product, an experience she says performed particularly well.

4. Retail is not a sales strategy in itself

For many emerging brands, securing a retail partnership can feel like a major milestone. “Having spoken to a lot of other founders, I’ve heard the same thing repeatedly. They get so excited about getting into retail that they don’t realize how much money they then have to spend to maintain their position and earn their place on the shelves,” she says. Retailers want to see that brands are generating sales, Nafousi explains, yet driving those conversions can require more spending on marketing and in-store visibility.

Early on, Alia supplied Lookfantastic with around 3,000 specially made 10ml fragrances for its advent calendar — assuming it would influence the decisions of further retailers and consumers to buy into the brand. While the initiative put the product into thousands of consumers’ hands, it didn’t directly drive sales. “I was so excited, because it was right at the beginning of the journey. We were getting the product into the hands of around 3,000 people, which was really fun,” Nafousi says. “But it was also quite a big expense.”

There were exceptions. Violet Grey, the US beauty retailer known for its tightly curated selection, performed particularly well for Alia. Nafousi believes the retailer’s niche positioning and trusted relationship with its customers helped the brand connect with the right audience. The value of a retail partnership, therefore, depends not simply on the number of doors a brand enters, but on whether the retailer’s customer base and positioning align with the product.

5. Have the confidence to walk away

For founders, persistence is often celebrated, but knowing when to stop investing in a business can be just as important as having the conviction to start one.

Although production delays and packaging issues created friction in the early stages, Nafousi saw them as common setbacks. “At that point, I thought, ‘You know what? Every founder has these issues,’ so I wasn’t particularly worried about it,” she says. The bigger concern came when sales failed to gain traction. “I wanted to close it down when we launched. I think we made about two sales in the first week. The following week, there were no sales. Then, there was one sale. It was so deflating.”

Still, discovery sets were yet to launch and a forthcoming Space NK listing offered another opportunity to build momentum. Nafousi continued experimenting with sampling and brand activations, but soon realized that greater investment in advertising and awareness was needed. “I just thought, ‘God, I don’t know if I’m ready to invest even more money when I don’t know whether it’s going to work,’” she explains.

Nafousi was also approached by potential investors midway through the journey, but turned them down to keep her autonomy. “If I wanted to say, ‘You know what? I’m going to close this down,’ I didn’t want to lose that freedom,” she says. Ultimately, the decision to close Alia was made for her when she received a cease-and-desist letter from another brand operating under a similar name, giving her until December 31 to sell all remaining stock. Although she could have rebranded to continue trading, Nafousi saw it as a sign that it was time to move on. “I genuinely believe I manifested it in some way. I think it was a gift from the universe.”

Now, she is viewing the experience as one of growth. “The way I see it is that every entrepreneur will have something along their journey that doesn’t work out the way they hoped,” she says.

In her confidence book, one of the central tenets is learning to do hard things. “It’s not about feeling like you’re able to do everything or that you’re amazing at everything. A big part of confidence is knowing that even when things go wrong, you can handle it. That’s the resilience part. It’s knowing that I’m going to be able to cope with whatever comes my way, and I feel that now more than ever.”

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