Scentbird co-founder and chief executive Mariya Nurislamova is no stranger to the entrepreneurship speaking circuit. She regularly takes the stage at business conferences and shares her views on podcasts, where she expounds on how she approaches fundraising, marketing, branding and products at her start-up, which sells subscriptions to receive fragrance samples from brands such as Burberry and D.S. & Durga.

At the same time, Nurislamova has built a parallel following as a guru, who talks to some 300,000 followers across YouTube, Spotify, TikTok and Instagram about extraterrestrials and how we are all living in “the Matrix,” along with wellness tropes such as meditation, chakras and crystals. On those channels, she describes herself as a “spiritual teacher, intuitive, channel and writer.”

The founder’s two worlds rarely intersected until recently. But Nurislamova’s more extreme spiritual musings have begun making the rounds on social media; YouTube videos dissecting her views have garnered over 670,000 views. For the first time, large numbers of Scentbird customers and brand ambassadors are seeing clips of Nurislamova’s beliefs.

Many don’t like what they’re seeing.

“I won’t be working with them moving forward if they offer me anything in the future,” wrote YouTuber Zachary Michael, an influencer who had worked with Scentbird. He shared the comment under a video about Nurislamova posted last week by the channel Keya’s World, which is focused on debunking spiritual guru claims.

The video, and others like it, comb through TikTok posts and 603 YouTube videos shared by Nurislamova since May 2020. They show her asserting it is possible to “heal yourself” from cancer or AIDS in seven days, that miscarriage is a “choice” and not an “accident” and that abortion will negatively impact one’s karma. These clips are posted alongside ideas such as “consuming honey makes you a better person,” that crooked teeth are not “random,” “tomatoes and potatoes are here to keep you sick” and “coffee is bad for your aura.”

Nurislamova’s views on “the Matrix” have attracted the most attention. She frequently endorses the idea that humans are living inside a video game-like, “virtual reality-type system,” as she calls it in one of her videos. It was while discussing this concept in a May 2022 video with her husband, Scentbird co-founder and chief product officer Sergei Gusev, that she described Hitler as “the greatest – one of the greater – sources of knowledge of 3D planet earth warfare.”

“Do you know how many millions of souls benefited from learning from the experience he has created? So is he evil? Not really. I don’t think so,” she said.

When asked by The Business of Beauty about that statement, Nurislamova said, “Videos are really taken out of context, so they take a very small portion of what actually was said, and when you remove the context, the message really changes.” She also stated, “Because I perceive everything as oneness, of course, murder is not okay. Absolutely freaking not. I would never endorse that. Never, ever in a billion years.”

Complaints about Nurislamova’s viewpoints are so far contained to comments sections on social media, and beauty and fragrance Reddit threads. But her videos present a jarring contrast with Scentbird, a 10-year-old business that bills itself the “Netflix of fragrance,” where customers can opt to receive samples via mail for a monthly fee. Unlike many wellness brands that can be found at Goop or Erewhon, the closest Scentbird comes to mystical, new-age marketing language is a “scent horoscope” recommendation tool on its site.

The company emerged during the mid-2010s boom in subscription fashion and beauty boxes, participating in the tech incubator Y Combinator and raising $25 million from venture capital firms including Goodwater Capital, Rainfall Ventures, FundersClub, Soma Capital and others.

Nurislamova told The Business of Beauty that Scentbird has had growth of “45 to 50 percent year-over-year for the past two years,” and that the company has been profitable since 2019. She said revenue is “well above $100 million” annually with over 700,000 subscribers.

She said she does not bring her beliefs into the workplace, and used only her first name on most of her spirituality content in an effort to “protect Scentbird.” She noted, “I’d be surprised if my investors knew,” and that they “know my character.” Several investors contacted by The Business of Beauty did not respond to requests for comment. While Gusev appears frequently in her spirituality videos, where she says he hypnotised her to bring her into a “deep theta state,” she said Andrei Rebrov, a co-founder and chief technology officer, “did not know I had an account until two days ago.” Rebrov did not provide a response by the time of publication. A fourth co-founder, Rachel ten Brink, left the company in 2019 and did not respond to a request for comment.

“My name was really not all that much out there,” Nurislamova said.

Origin Story

Nurislamova says on her YouTube channel that she had a spiritual “awakening” in 2018. She said she began watching videos about astral projection and eventually had visions in a dream involving a spirit speaking to her.

She began posting on the new accounts early in the pandemic, a time when conspiracy theories, new-age spirituality and pseudoscientific health content were taking off online. One of her earliest podcasts in 2020, recorded with Gusev, criticised Covid-19 measures including mask-wearing and stay-inside policies, saying a “victim mentality” and “underlying energy” would make it more likely to contract Covid-19 or increase its severity.

Nurislamova told The Business of Beauty “I am not a conspiracy theorist.” However, the subjects of her hundreds of videos have ranged widely, and often dovetail with beliefs held by right-wing conspiracy theorists. That includes her recent exploration of the “Starseed” theory that posits the existence of human-alien hybrids, a belief system held by the “Q-Anon Shaman” made famous by his unusual appearance at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, among others. She describes her belief in “visitor souls coming from all types of planets, constellations, star systems, different galaxies, even.”

Nurislamova has built a business around her beliefs, including books and events. Last month, she held a 28-person, spiritual retreat in Glastonbury that, for $1,111, promised to “tap into the mystical energies associated with Glastonbury.” She charges $3,000 for a private online spirit-channelling session and $125,000 for a “one-on-one in-person transformational retreat.”

But to a different audience, many of her statements are bizarre, and offensive.

In a Jun. 6 video receiving over 100,000 views, YouTuber Noor Jasmine, who has done sponsored content for Scentbird in the past, called out Nurislamova’s claims made about hair colour, including “it’s hard for people with black hair colour to be intuitive in decision-making. They’re also not as good at discernment. Things like dancing and moving their body comes very naturally; things like sports come very naturally.”

“If you guys have watched my channel, you’ll know that Scentbird has sponsored a lot of my videos,” said Jasmine in the 38-minute video. When commenters on a recent sponsored post alerted her to Nurislamova’s content, “I was like, ‘damn,’ like really? This sucks. … I really like Scentbird,” she said.

While Nurislamova said she did her best to keep her two worlds separate, now that her content is being directly linked with her brand, she doesn’t plan to take anything down.

“I think it’s a good thing, actually, that this whole convergence is happening,” she said. “I think it was just a matter of time. … I’m glad that it’s coming to the surface that I’m both of those things.”

France looks headed for political instability after a surprise win by a left-wing coalition in Sunday’s legislative election offered no party a path to claim the majority needed to govern.

The New Popular Front — which includes the Socialists and far-left France Unbowed — won 178 seats in the National Assembly, according to data compiled by the Interior Ministry. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which pollsters last week had seen winning the election, came third with 143, while President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance notched up 156.

Even with smaller parties or individual lawmakers aligning with the larger groups, all will fall far short of the 289 required for an absolute majority in the 577-seat lower house. It’s unclear therefore how the country, which doesn’t have a tradition of coalitions, will form a government that is able to pass laws.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced that he would present his resignation to Macron on Monday, which would start the process for the formation of a new government.

The euro and French bond futures slipped at the start of trading, as investors digested a result that few had anticipated and brings back to the fore concern about the country’s fiscal problems, given parties’ commitment to a major increase in public spending.

The Institut Montaigne estimates that the campaign pledges by the New Popular Front would require nearly €179 billion ($194 billion) in extra funds per year. The far-right National Rally’s plans would cost about €71 billion, while Macron’s party and its allies would incur extra spending of close to €21 billion.

Le Pen put a positive spin on the results, pointing out that National Rally, which had 89 spots in the previous legislature, is on course to get the most seats of any single party.

“The tide is rising,” Le Pen said. “It hasn’t risen high enough this time, but it’s still rising.”

The unexpected result means no single alliance has the numbers to govern with an absolute majority, fragmenting the legislature into three distinct groups with divergent agendas. Macron will wait for the new configuration of the National Assembly before making any further decisions on naming the next prime minister, according to a statement from an Elysee official.

France will now face two options, which have little precedent in the history of the modern republic. Macron could try to cobble together a coalition among willing but not always like-minded parties, but that would require the New Popular Front to break apart and reconfigure behind the president without its more radical elements.

Or Macron could name a technocratic administration that could bridge the period of political turmoil. Both solutions will likely mean a weakened government that will have trouble passing any meaningful legislation and with less influence on the international stage.

“The absence of majority and the absence of government will expose France and French people to formidable danger,” Macron’s first prime minister, Edouard Philippe, warned on Sunday night. “Central political forces now have a responsibility they cannot duck: They must work for an agreement without dishonor that will stabilize the political situation.”

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of France Unbowed, told supporters Sunday that the New Popular Front would implement its program in its entirety and that he would refuse to enter into a deal with Macron. But Socialist leader Olivier Faure struck a more conciliatory note, saying it’s the party’s job to “find a path” to respond to the needs and demands of French people.

While a lower-than-expected seat count for Le Pen’s party and a bump for Macron’s bloc thus came as a relief to some traders, the win for the left bloc is likely to hurt French assets in the weeks to come.

For Vincent Juvyns, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, that could pop up in the spread between French and German bond yields, which he sees widening.

“The European Commission and rating agencies are expecting €20 billion to €30 billion euros of cuts but the government will actually have to deal with a party which want to increase spending by €120 billion,” Juvyns said. “This could create tension across markets in the coming weeks. Markets may demand a higher spread as long as the new government hasn’t clarified its fiscal position.”

Sunday’s projections offer some vindication for Macron’s call to dissolve parliament following a crushing defeat to Le Pen’s party last month. He was widely criticized for the decision after his party finished a distant third in the first round of voting last week in which Le Pen seized the initiative.

The past week has seen frantic efforts to activate the so called Republican Front — an arrangement in which mainstream parties strategically pull candidates from certain races to bolster votes against the National Rally. Macron’s party withdrew 76 candidates from runoff contests where they had little chance of winning, in order to avoid splitting the anti-Le Pen vote. The New Popular Front withdrew 130.

National Rally President Jordan Bardella criticized the strategy, saying that the approach orchestrated by the Elysee palace “is not going anywhere.”

Antonio Barroso, deputy director of research at Teneo, wrote in a note that the formation of a new government would be complicated and could take a long time.

“This indecision runs a risk for the country that nobody should underestimate,” Philippe said. “The credibility of our country could be hit, as well as its credit ruined.”

By Samy Adghirni, Ania Nussbaum, and William Horobin with assistance from Julien Ponthus, Albertina Torsoli, James Regan and Tara Patel.

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The notion that there are wholesale brands and direct-to-consumer brands is dying.

Just look at Glossier, one of the defining DTC start-ups of the last decade, which after years of resisting wholesale, began selling its $40 lip balms and $22 eyebrow pomades in Sephora in 2023. On the flip side is century-old Levi’s, a legacy wholesale brand that has been reducing inventory at multi-brand retailers in a bid to do 55 percent of its sales direct to consumers by 2027.

That’s the tip of an industry-wide shakedown. Digitally native disruptors like Allbirds have flocked to wholesale in recent years to widen their reach as the costs to acquire customers online skyrockets. Traditional wholesale brands, such as Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and a host of luxury labels, are investing more in their DTC businesses and pulling back from third-party retailers as those partners struggle and brands seek more control over their pricing, image and customer relationships.

Today, the idea of being either a DTC or wholesale brand is being supplanted by the understanding that each channel has its strengths and weaknesses, and that most brands need both to thrive. Shoppers are just as quick to stand on a line for a brand’s pop-up store as they are to peruse Ssense for the best deals or visit Sephora to indulge in beauty trends. Brands have to make themselves available wherever they think their customers will be, and that’s increasingly everywhere.

“We need this diverse shopping environment,” said Claudia D’Arpizio, a senior partner at management consulting firm Bain & Company. “I don’t envisage a world where you only buy in a mono-brand environment … It’s difficult for the brands to keep an assortment that is ok for all the markets and for all the customers.”

But striking the right balance can be difficult even for the most successful players. After Nike started pulling sneakers off the shelves of retail partners in 2017 and driving more sales through its own stores, website and app, it found that customers weren’t always following it to its own channels. In the past year, it revitalised wholesale partnerships after seeing its sales growth slow and only modest increases in its profit margins.

In this case study, The Business of Fashion lays out how brands can ensure that each channel is contributing to overall sales and profit growth without cannibalising one another. Brands investing in wholesale, like activewear start-up Vuori, womenswear label Cult Gaia and shoe brand Aldo, are tapping retail partners to test new markets, improving how they tailor their assortments for each channel and using the data they get to better target prospective consumers. The companies that are leaning into DTC, such as denim brand Paige and Rebecca Minkoff, are using it to promote their full array of products and push their more expensive items.

Ultimately there is no magical formula for the right mix of wholesale and DTC sales. The correct balance is different for each brand and its individual business needs. But the insights in this case study will allow brands to work out how each channel can best serve them. The goal of balancing the wholesale and direct-to-consumer models is that sales should be growing concurrently in both.

British fashion house Burberry Group Plc is expected to shed hundreds of jobs, mostly in the UK, following a sharp drop in its stock market value, the Telegraph reported.

Employees were informed during a Zoom meeting in late June, with those affected told they were facing redundancy or having to reapply for their roles, the newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information.

Burberry has reportedly begun a 45-day consultation, signaling that hundreds of positions could be cut.

It’s understood that union officials are coordinating redundancy settlements with a select group of employees. Employees fear as many as 400 jobs could be at risk. Burberry declined to comment to the Telegraph.

Burberry employed an average of 9,169 full-time equivalent workers during the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to its most recent annual report.

The reported cuts would follow 500 positions slashed in 2020, when the iconic trench-coat maker sought to save £55 million ($70.5m) amid pressures from the pandemic.

By Jack Wittels

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