Claire Yellowlees bootstrapped her fragrance brand with her house deposit, then faced breast cancer just nine months later. Her story reveals hard-won lessons about resilience and purpose.
What’s happening: Claire Yellowlees launched [noun] collection in December 2023 after bootstrapping the entire venture herself, even using her house deposit to fund the clean fragrance brand.
Why this matters: Her journey reveals the raw reality of entrepreneurship: the sacrifices, the setbacks, and the resilience required when your biggest challenge arrives just as you’re getting started.
“Being faced with one of the biggest challenges of my life also clarified my purpose. It reminded me how important it is to create products that honour both beauty and wellbeing.”
Claire Yellowlees, Founder, [noun] collection
Claire Yellowlees didn’t set out to become an entrepreneur. For years, she worked in corporate roles at companies like Spaceship, InDebted, and Faethm AI, but something never quite fit. The 2021 lockdown forced a reckoning.
“I had spent years in corporate roles that never quite felt like mine,” she says. “The stillness of that period pushed me to ask myself what I really wanted to create.”
The answer came from an unexpected place: a tiny bottle of perfume oil she’d bought years earlier in Ibiza. One breath transported her back to sunshine, freedom, and joy. When she tried to source it again, she discovered it originally came from a mysterious woman selling oils from the back of a camel in Pushkar, India.
“The story intrigued me so much that I became determined to understand what was in it and how I could recreate its magic,” Claire says. That scent became the beginning of what she now calls The Pursuit of Sunshine, the journey that ultimately led to [noun] collection.
When vision meets reality
Starting a fragrance brand as a one-woman operation meant confronting brutal realities. Claire committed to clean beauty without compromise, researching ingredients and creating what she calls a “Skin Scentsible” policy to ensure every product aligned with her values of safety and wellbeing.
She recognised a gap: natural perfumes that lacked sophistication, or luxury fragrances filled with ingredients she didn’t feel comfortable using. She wanted something beautifully in the middle, clean, modern, gender-neutral fine fragrances with depth and complexity.
Achieving that vision required patience and persistence. Claire collaborated with professional perfumers and worked through more than 60 scent iterations to finalise her first three fragrances. She invested heavily in design, insisting on a stone lid despite overwhelming minimum order quantities. “It took six months of research and navigating overwhelming MOQs,” she says. “The extra effort and delay was worth it.”
Building a business from scratch requires resilience, adaptability, and self-trust, qualities Claire discovered she’d need in abundance.
The cost of compromise
Meeting supplier MOQs, especially for packaging, proved one of the biggest challenges. The stone lid became a particular obstacle. Claire contacted countless manufacturers, faced high MOQs, and was repeatedly told to choose an easier option. “But I held onto the vision, stayed patient, and eventually found the right partner,” she says. “It was worth every moment of persistence.”
Entering a market dominated by global giants presented another hurdle. Many people doubted whether a small Australian brand could stand alongside luxury names with big budgets.
Currently, Claire hand-fills each bottle herself. This hands-on approach ensures the craft, care, and authenticity she wants the brand to embody. Each fragrance starts with a word, its meaning, feeling, and poetry, then translates that into scent. Syzygy, for example, means celestial alignment. The scent mirrors that cosmic mystery, opening with sweet raspberry and bergamot before drying down into smoky oud. Even NASA’s research on the smell of space became part of the inspiration.
She launched [noun] collection in December 2023 after bootstrapping the brand herself, even sacrificing her hard-earned house deposit to bring her vision to life.
Turning crisis into clarity
Nine months after launching, Claire received devastating news. At just 38, she was diagnosed with hormone-positive breast cancer.
“Everything changed overnight,” she says. “I underwent surgeries, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone treatment that put me straight into menopause.”
The timing was cruel. She’d poured her savings, energy, and vision into building something meaningful, only to face one of life’s biggest challenges just as the business was finding its footing.
But the diagnosis also clarified her purpose. “Being faced with one of the biggest challenges of my life also clarified my purpose,” Claire says. “It reminded me how important it is to create products that honour both beauty and wellbeing. Reaffirming why creating clean, meaningful products matters.”
Her cancer developed from a hormonal cell mutation, a type increasingly affecting younger women that can be influenced by multiple factors, including exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals commonly found in mainstream perfumes. The very reason she’d started [noun] collection became intensely personal.
Now cancer-free and returning to the brand she built from the ground up, Claire is relaunching [noun] collection with a refreshed identity and a powerful new initiative called “Breast Friday”, a campaign that flips Black Friday on its head, encouraging women to check their breasts while saving on clean fragrances. “After everything, I feel like I’ve come back stronger, not just as a founder, but as a woman,” she says.
Lessons from the hard road
Looking back, Claire’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs centres on patience and purpose. “Follow the things that light you up, those small obsessions often point you toward your purpose,” she says. “Don’t be afraid to be brave, to take risks, and to create something that feels true to you.”
She emphasises staying committed to your values, even when it’s difficult. Many founders discover that building something from scratch tests every assumption about what they’re capable of enduring. “Trust your instincts, especially when others don’t see what you see,” Claire says. “Be prepared for it to be hard. Building a business takes time, sacrifice, and resilience, but it’s also an incredible adventure.”
Her greatest lessons? Patience is crucial. Vision matters more than speed. And when your business reflects who you are, it becomes something deeply meaningful.
“Be patient. Be persistent. And let your story guide your work,” she says. “It’s still early days for me, but I’ve learned so much already, and I hope my journey inspires others to start theirs.”
Read other Founder Friday features
Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
