Vyrao has sold perfume as a treatment for mood, with a crystal in every bottle and a neuroscience programme behind the label. Its new majority owner buys brands on the strength of their evidence.
Every 50ml bottle of Vyrao’s Witchy Woo contains a Herkimer diamond, a small quartz crystal that the Australian retailer Mecca says has been energised by the brand’s healer, Louise Mita. Other stockists describe the fragrance’s effects more precisely. According to the Science of Wellness programme at International Flavors & Fragrances, it raises self-esteem by 90 per cent, mindfulness by 81 per cent and seduction by 33 per cent. Free 00, from the same launch, claims a 66 per cent lift in happiness and a more modest 22 per cent on seduction.
At the end of September, Vyrao was bought by Tresalis, a new holding company formed by the Munich family office ATHOS and the entrepreneur Dr Fernando Tamez to acquire consumer health, beauty and wellness brands that it describes as science- and efficacy-led. Vyrao is its first purchase. Yasmin Sewell, who founded the house in 2021, keeps a minority stake and becomes chief brand officer, responsible for creative and strategic direction. The price has not been disclosed. Reports of a sale had been circulating in the trade press since August.
Sewell spent most of her career buying fashion, at Browns and Liberty and, from 2017, at Farfetch. She also holds a reiki certification. Her first five fragrances, made with the perfumer Lyn Harris, combined conventional perfumery with flower remedies and the crystals. The science came later. The Sixth, released in 2022 with the promise of reducing stress, was developed with IFF’s programme, which links particular materials to emotional responses recorded in brain scans. Later scents followed the same method, including Ludeaux and Ludatrix, a pair formulated to spark arousal and launched in a campaign with Mia Khalifa and Isamaya Ffrench. The original perfumes now carry IFF figures too. The crystals stayed.
That second half of the business is presumably what Tresalis paid for. Announcing the deal, Tamez described Vyrao as combining luxury fragrance and emotional wellbeing with “credible science”, and Tresalis has offered the brand its clinical experience along with support for international expansion. The figures on the label come from IFF, which also supplies much of the perfume industry with its raw materials. A fragrance can sell for years on how it smells and how it is photographed. A percentage printed beside the word seduction attracts a different reader, one who wants to know how it was measured and on whom. An owner whose stated interest is efficacy is likely to be that reader. Vyrao’s next few years may depend as much on substantiating what its perfumes do as on making another one people want to buy.
The sale is a change of ownership rather than Vyrao’s first encounter with outside money. Estée Lauder’s New Incubation Ventures took a minority stake in March 2023. In September 2024, L Catterton’s Elevate Beauty fund led a further round, joined by Manzanita Capital and Estée Lauder again. The existing investors keep their minority interests under Tresalis. By the time it changed hands, the company had answered to institutional shareholders for three of its five years.
Manzanita has been here before. It owned Byredo from 2013 and sold a majority of it to Puig in 2022, at a reported valuation of around €1 billion. Puig bought the rest around its stock market listing in 2024. Ben Gorham, Byredo’s founder, stayed on as chief creative officer under a transitional agreement that ended in June 2025, and then he left. The brand has not struggled for customers. In the first half of this year, Puig reported double-digit growth across its niche fragrance portfolio, led by Byredo. Estée Lauder has owned Le Labo since 2014. The qualities that earned these houses the word niche are the ones buyers pay for: a distinct identity, a high price, and customers who own several bottles instead of one.
Vyrao is already sold in about 20 countries, through Liberty, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Saks and Mecca among others, and Tresalis intends to sell it in more. The range now includes candles, incense and a Cream Scent for Hand & Neck at £49 a tube. Wider distribution need not change what goes into the bottle, although it changes where a customer comes across it. The business benefits from being easier to find. Whether its reputation benefits quite as much is less certain.
Tresalis has said Vyrao will keep its identity and leadership. It has not said who has the final word on where the brand is sold, how often it launches or how far the name can stretch. Majority ownership and creative control are separate arrangements. Gorham’s ran to a fixed term.
For the customer, a change of ownership rarely shows when it happens. The bottles remain familiar, each with its crystal, the founder continues to appear in campaigns and the language surrounding the brand stays largely intact.