Bath & Body Works

Bath & Body Works is an American personal care and home fragrance retailer founded in 1990 in New Albany, Ohio, as part of what was then The Limited, Inc. The brand grew rapidly in the early 1990s, reaching its 50th store by 1991 and becoming the largest bath shop chain in the United States by 1997. It operates as the core brand of Bath & Body Works, Inc., a Columbus, Ohio based specialty retail company that reported $7.4 billion in revenue in 2023.

The company built its identity around accessible, fragrance‑driven body care and home products, with early hits like Gingham in 1993, Sun-Ripened Raspberry (the top-selling fragrance from 1996 to 1998), and Cucumber Melon, which became its first fragrance to reach $100 million in sales by 2000. In the late 1990s it expanded its concept with Bath & Body Works at Home (1997) and the White Barn Candle Company (1999), the latter becoming a major contributor in the scented candle and home fragrance segment.

Bath & Body Works now sells fine fragrance mists, body lotions and creams, 3-wick candles, hand soaps, sanitizers, and diffusers across a network of more than 1,900 stores and online. The brand is notable for limited-time collections, frequent reformulations and renames of scents, and a catalog that mixes long-running staples like Japanese Cherry Blossom, Sweet Pea, and Gingham with seasonal and trend-led launches. In recent years it has introduced lines such as Aromatherapy (launched in 2001 to tap into wellness and self-care) and the Everyday Luxuries collection, described by the company as “prestige-inspired” and developed with major fragrance houses.

Fragrance development is highly iterative and volume-driven: reporting indicates that Bath & Body Works creates more than 200 new scents a year, often issuing a single fragrance across numerous product formats. The brand’s predominantly U.S.-based supply chain is geared to push out on-trend profiles quickly while keeping prices relatively affordable, which has helped it rank among the top beauty destinations for U.S. teens in recent retail surveys.