Common scents: sergio tache, Founder, dossier
In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, talks to Sergio Tache, founder and CEO of Dossier Perfume, about building one of the fastest-growing and most innovative brands in beauty: a fragrance house that has made luxury-quality perfume accessible to everyone.
Sergio attended business school and trained as an investment banker. He founded two previous entrepreneurial ventures before landing on the idea that would change everything. The insight was deceptively simple: why is fragrance so expensive? What followed was a masterclass in unit economics, influencer-led growth, and relentless execution. Sergio went from filling perfume bottles by hand with a funnel in a windowless Brooklyn basement to becoming the number one perfume brand at Walmart and selling a majority stake to PE, all on less than $4 million raised.
In This Episode:
How Sergio launched Dossier with 20 dupe fragrances and the simple but brilliant idea of telling online customers exactly what each one smells like
Why he filled the first batch of bottles by hand with a funnel in a Brooklyn basement and walked the orders to USPS himself
How a help@dossier.co email that the customer care team almost deleted turned into a Walmart partnership now spanning 4,000 stores
Why Dossier raised less than $4 million total, had $33 in the bank at one point, and still built a business that just closed a private equity deal with American Pacific Group
How the influencer strategy evolved from reaching out to thousands of small creators in Excel to co-creating Machine Gun Kelly's own perfume line
The unit economics framework Sergio has applied across three companies: if you cannot cover your COGS, marketing, and fixed costs at your current AOV, you do not have a real business (yet)
Sergio's take on raising large venture capital rounds in beauty: know what you are signing up for, and what you are giving up
🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube
🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com
📍 Follow me on LinkedIn for more founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.
🎙️ There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba