Influencer-founded brands have become a beauty category unto themselves — so much so that Glossy Pop created a whole guide to who’s created what. In the year and a half since the guide went live, the landscape has continued to shift. Many new brands have launched, others have gone out of business, and still others have seen impressive growth. But, to date, not one has been acquired. According to experts in the space, however, that’s set to change.
2023 has been a slow year for beauty acquisitions and, in the grand scheme of things, most influencer-founded brands are still in their infancy. Some of the OG brands in the space, like Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland’s Summer Fridays and Manny Gutierrez’s Lunar Beauty, only date back to 2018. Huda Kattan’s Huda Beauty is one of the oldest, having launched in 2013 with only false lashes.
Many growing brands are much earlier in their journeys. Amber Fillerup’s Dae, Patrick Starrr’s One Size and Siffat Haider’s Arrae all kicked off in 2020, now infamously a challenging year to start a business.
Of course, a number of brands with famous faces have been acquired. Charlotte Tilbury was acquired by Puig in late 2020 and Ouai was acquired in late 2021. However, Charlotte Tilbury and Jen Atkin got famous for their crafts of makeup artistry and hair styling respectively. They are expert-led brands, which is a category with a long history. Think of Oribe, Vidal Sassoon or the entire category of dermatologist-founded skin care.
For Glossy’s guide, we defined influencer-founded brands as brands founded by individuals who’ve built their platforms solely through creating content on social media. To examine their potential paths to acquisition, I spoke to a number of experts in connected fields, including VCs and leaders of brand incubators, as well as influencer-entrepreneurs themselves.
According to Tina Bou-Saba, co-founder and managing partner of Verity Venture Partners, it’s important…
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