Fragrance business Ellis Brooklyn has raised a $1 million seed round from Stage 1 Fund and Toni Ko, the founding father of NYX.

Ellis makes eau de parfums, candles and body care. It was founded by Latest York Times’ Skin Deep columnist and writer Bee Shapiro, and was early to the clean-ingredients trend within the fragrance category. 

With the capital, Shapiro plans to deepen Ellis’ international distribution and hire an worker who “can dovetail not only our e-comm, but additionally the e-comms of our retailers,” she said.

“Our e-comm is way up. We had our biggest month ever, like within the history of our brand, in July in e-comm,” Shapiro said.

For a lot of brands, fragrance sales have suffered as stores closed and consumers stayed home in the course of the coronavirus pandemic. In some cases, those sales switched into ancillary categories, like candles or home fragrance. But for Ellis, that wasn’t the case, Shapiro said.

“Lots of reports are like, ‘fragrance and makeup are down.’ I do know some cool brands though which are up, and I’m completely happy to say we’re one among them,” she said. Eau de parfums have sold well for the brand, she noted, which launched two fragrances — Sweet and Salt — right before the pandemic, together with a number of other products. “It was an enormous risk for us from a capital perspective. And truthfully, it completely outperformed our expectations. It outperformed Sephora’s expectations,” Shapiro said.

To navigate the pandemic, Shapiro removed the brand’s paid digital agency in an effort to concentrate on content production. Going forward, the business may also look to diversify geographically, a lesson Shaprio said she learned this yr.

“If there’s one thing the pandemic taught us, it’s that in those really down months of March and April, a few of our other markets handled COVID[-19] rather well,” she said, calling out Australia and Germany. Within the U.S., Ellis is sold at Credo, Sephora and Ulta Beauty. “In the event you asked me before COVID, we probably would have focused on the U.S. for at the least one other yr,” Shaprio said.

The investors won’t be involved in day-to-day operations, but may help guide on macro strategy, Shapiro said. Shaprio knew of Ko from her years writing about beauty, she was formally introduced via Stage1, she said. “She’s a real entrepreneur,” Shapiro said. “Toni’s like, your classic always-up-to-something.”

For more from WWD.com, see: 

Why Clean Fragrance Could Be Beauty’s Next Big Bet