After a rocky 2023, this year got off with a bang for dealmakers. A half-dozen marquee assets, including K18, Dr Dennis Gross, RoC, Barbara Sturm, The Honeypot Co. and D. S. & Durga all traded within a few weeks of one another. With inflation seemingly under control and interest rates expected to go down, it looked as if beauty dealmaking was back in full force–and across all categories. 

And then... then not much happened.  While there has been more dealmaking activity, especially among early-stage investors, the top-end of the market has been surprisingly quiet. There were a few notable transactions, such as L Catterton/Kiki Milano and TSG/Summer Fridays, but, knowing how many more assets were looking to trade, dealmaking activity felt light. In this panel we discuss, among other things, the latest rounds of dealmaking and examine why more is not happening.

Running a corporate venture fund in a big beauty strategic was akin to being the vegetarian option on a steakhouse menu. M&A was where the real action took place, and corporate venture was where you parked promising executives in-between meatier rotations. And the challenges were obvious: so much that makes a VC successful–nimbleness, appetite for risk, out-of-box thinking, small check sizes, founder management–were exactly the things that large Strategics have always struggled with. So these funds were few and far between.

How times have changed. Today, every major beauty strategic has a corporate venture arm. While they come in different shapes and sizes, and with different mandates and operating models, every strategic has realized that they can no longer ignore early-stage investing. Moreover, these funds are having an impact on the market and playing a meaningful role in shaping the nature and direction of early stage investing.

In this panel we examine the range of corporate ventures—from their mandate, to focus and operating models. We also discuss key lessons learned, what founders should expect, and how the field is expected to evolve over time.

Keeping up with aesthetic innovations can give even the most devout beauty enthusiast whiplash– exosomes, Polynucleotide injections, bio-tech backed molecules. Once thought of as product or treatments sold via doctor’s offices, science-backed brands have injected themselves into skin, hair and body care products you can buy in a multitude of channels. And whether, age appropriate or not, Gen alpha’s interest in anti-aging is opening up new opportunities and ethical dilemmas for operators in this space. Who are the leaders in the space now and how are the edging out the competition? How will these brands shape the experiences of consumers across the aging spectrum, and what implications does this have for investment opportunities? Finally, we examine where the areas of growth remain.

What constitutes an “ideal deal” today? How can dealmakers optimize likelihood to transact, while maximizing deal size and multiple value? 

Using a decade of dealmaking data, the BI team analyzed thousands of transactions to determine key trends and narrowed down a list of 52 marquee deals that are most indicative of the direction of dealmaking in Beauty and Wellness.

Through this analysis we have further identified some key deal attributes that best characterize the “ideal deal” today and identified the “one deal” that best exemplifies the ideal deal.