Strategy
Kaer Let a Creator’s Community Co-Design a Fragrance That Sold Out in Less Than a Day
Fatima Farouk, founder of the fragrance and body care brand Kaer, was a fan of lifestyle creator Alexis Wilkerson and decided to send her a direct message.
That DM became the starting point for “Our Skin,” a perfume oil that generated more than $96,000 in sales in roughly 19 hours, with total Kaer revenue for the same period reaching nearly $112,000. That single-day total surpassed Kaer’s best previous month by a wide margin (approximately $63,000 in February 2026), and amounted to roughly 70% of the brand’s full-year 2025 revenue. Of the roughly 1,600 orders placed during the launch window, over 80% came from first-time Kaer customers.
Fatima, who founded Kaer in late 2024 around perfume oils, scented dry body oils, and body care products, says the outcome reflects how the collaboration was structured from the start. “It wasn’t like we have a fragrance and then we slap ‘Alexis’ on the bottle,” she says. “She was involved throughout the entire process.” Alexis, a lifestyle, beauty, and fashion creator, had been using Kaer’s existing products organically before any partnership conversation began.
From Fan to Founder: How ‘Our Skin’ Started
Fatima describes herself as a supporter of Alexis “before Kaer existed, before the idea of Kaer existed.” About six months after launching the brand, she sent Alexis a DM asking if she could send PR. The relationship grew from there, with a third connection eventually catalyzing the shift from gifting to co-creation.
“I had been following her already,” Fatima says of Alexis. “I messaged her. We hopped on a call, and this conversation started.”
The product that came from those conversations hadn’t been planned. Kaer did not have a fragrance in development. “We only created the fragrance because of the collaboration,” Fatima says. Initial conversations began in the summer of 2025. Formulation work ran through fall 2025 into early 2026, and the launch took place in August 2026. Both put the end-to-end timeline at roughly one year.
Community as the Third Co-Creator
Before any scent was chosen, Alexis asked her audience what they wanted: notes, scent families, overall direction. The final formulation was a perfume oil with coconut powder, Madagascar vanilla, white musk, and heliotrope, reflecting the audience’s input alongside Alexis’s own preferences. She wanted something soft yet bold, wearable year-round, not tied to a specific season or occasion. She describes it as a “second skin” fragrance: more of an aura than a statement scent.
The name came from the same thinking. “Second skin” shaped the word choice; “our” came from the community’s involvement. “It wasn’t mine alone at any point,” Alexis says. Fatima gave Alexis creative control over scent direction and naming, while retaining ownership over formulation and manufacturing.
That involvement served a function beyond product development. By contributing to the fragrance from the start, Alexis’s community developed a sense of ownership before launch day. “Instead of me just springing it on them and being like, ‘Hey, I just launched this fragrance, you guys should go buy it,'” Alexis says, “it was like, ‘Hey, we created this together. You want to see your final product?'”
Pre-Launch Events and Accumulated Demand
Kaer produced 1,030 units of the 10ml size and 597 units of the 40ml size, both figures higher than originally planned after Fatima increased production in response to early demand signals. One indicator came from a Coach-hosted event held before launch, where Alexis brought samples and let roughly 50 attendees smell the fragrance in person for the first time.
A New York City launch event followed, drawing approximately 25 to 30 people, also held before the product went on sale. The pre-launch timing was intentional. “It was strategically smart,” Alexis says. “We are in the age of influencer events, and that creates more demand because the event was before it even launched.”
Alexis also wore the fragrance consistently in videos during the months leading up to launch without publicly naming it, then mentioned it across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube once she could speak about it openly. Longer-form content went on YouTube, where she also vlogs. The demand that accumulated was, she says, largely organic: “We just kind of built that demand organically.”
The Numbers, and What They Triggered
Our Skin launched at 3 p.m. on August 29. The last order came in at 10 a.m. the following day. In that 19-hour window, Kaer recorded approximately 1,600 orders, with Our Skin accounting for $96,159 of the $111,597 total.
Source: Kaer
Buyers also purchased other Kaer products alongside “Our Skin,” including Gourmand Girl, Coco Vanilla Dream, and discovery sets, a pattern Fatima attributes to Alexis’s prior organic coverage of those products. “It was nice to see that people were curious enough to see what else Kaer has to offer,” she says.
The speed of the sellout created operational demands that Fatima had prepared for but not fully anticipated in scale. Her fulfillment center required upfront payment on the shipping invoice because the order volume exceeded what it could absorb on deferred billing. Customer service coordination on launch weekend, which fell on a Sunday, required advance planning.
What Brands Get Wrong About Creative Control
Both Fatima and Alexis point to the same issue when discussing co-creations: brands can hold too tightly to creative direction.
“Don’t be a dictator,” Alexis says. “Trust the creator. They know their audience, they know who they are, and they know how they’ve shown up online. And if you’re the creator, trust the brand: they’re the expert in the field. Just be open and trustworthy about who it is you’re working with.”
Fatima draws on what she says she regularly hears from creators about Influencer Marketing more broadly. “No one knows their community better than the creator themselves,” she says. “I see a lot of creators talking about this online: that there is a lack in terms of brands giving creators enough control and trust. Allowing them to create content in a way that communicates best to their customers, that’ll only help you as the brand.”
Her own approach put that in practice. She gave Alexis autonomy over scent direction and naming while retaining control over formulation and manufacturing operations, a division of responsibility she describes as “balance.”
Restock, and a New Baseline
A waitlist of over 2,700 people across all three SKUs is waiting for “Our Skin” to return. A restock is planned. “People have been hounding me,” Fatima says. “Every time I post anything, it’s: ‘What’s the restock?'”
The launch has reset how Fatima thinks about what’s achievable for Kaer. “Although this came because of this collaboration and because of Alexis’s really supportive, engaged community, it’s shown me that this is really just the beginning,” she says. “Someday that’ll be a regular day.”
For Alexis, the experience registers as much personally as commercially. “It has built trust, but it’s also just giving me more fulfillment,” she says. “To be able to co-create this and have it in people’s hands, it’s like a child in a way.”
Photo credit: Tremain Photography
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