Meet Lifelines, a Sensory Immersion Brand
Lifelines is harnessing the power of sensory immersion.
The brand, founded by Melissa Bernstein, is aiming to provide stress relief via the six senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste and the mind’s eye. The idea for the brand came to life when Bernstein, who also founded toy company Melissa & Doug, was on a walk looking to destress after testing an array of relief techniques that left her more stressed.
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“I was in my head and at one point, the breeze blew the hair back from my face,” she said. “I instinctively put my head up and felt that beautiful sunshine on my face and the breeze and it dawned on me that I had, in an instant, untethered from everything I was thinking.”
It’s this experience that she’s aiming to create with Lifelines, which is launching with products that speak to the sense of smell.
“We’re starting with the sense of smell because it’s most familiar to consumers,” Bernstein said.
The lineup includes Essential Oil Blends, $6, in five scent families, including Citrus Grove, Crisp Mountain Air, Walk in the Woods, In Bloom and Spice Rush.
“We homed in on those five as being very distinct scent families that people tend to fall into,” Bernstein said, noting consumers can take the brand’s online quiz to determine which is best for them.
In addition to these, consumers can opt for four well-being blends, including Calm, Energy, Focus and Joy. For example, one might opt for a Joy blend in Citrus Grove or an Energy blend in Crisp Mountain Air.
Other tactile products include the pen diffuser, $10, which diffuses scent as one writes; Grounding Stones, $20, two meditative fidget tools combined with aromatherapy; shower diffuser, $30; bath diffuser, $20, and more.
“I started to think about what are all the experiences I go through on a daily basis where I could really see scent,” Bernstein said, noting she started with a morning shower and continued on to a nighttime bath.
To launch, the brand, which currently has 16 patents out for its products, is entirely focused on retail, launching at key stores like Target, Macy’s, Kohl’s, CVS and Barnes & Noble college stores, as well as independent retailers.
“Barnes & Noble college bookstores is one of our most important target markets because college students are experiencing epidemic levels of anxiety,” Bernstein said.
With this, the brand will not be selling products on its own website, as this will be a platform for education — consumers can explore products, take the scent quiz and read content about sensory immersion. To best promote this platform, each product in retail has a QR code which consumers can scan and be directed to the website.
Following the brand launch, Bernstein intends to continue to expand the brand’s sense-based products, moving on to a collection called Busy Hands, Calm Mind focused on touch. More scent-based offerings and a collection focused on sight are to follow. Lifelines will launch between 20 and 30 products a year, according to Bernstein.
According to the brand, retail sales are expected to be in the millions this year and quadruple next year.
