One/Size and IGK Hair are evaluating their next steps.

As 2024 revenues are projected to reach $115 million for One/Size and $80 million for IGK Hair, Miami-based brand incubator Luxury Brand Partners has tapped investment bank The Sage Group as a financial advisor.

One/Size, created in partnership with O.G. YouTube influencer Patrick Starrr, and IGK Hair have seen considerable growth as of late. One/Size’s adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation are 40 percent of its net sales, and its business has quadrupled in the last two years, while IGK Hair grew its direct to consumer sales by nine times between 2021 and 2023, said Luxury Brand Partners founder and chief executive Tev Finger.

Before founding LBP, Finger was part of a team that sold the hair care line Bumble and Bumble to the Estée Lauder Companies in 2000. The company had a continued track record of getting deals done in the late 2010s – it sold Becca Cosmetics to ELC and hair care label Oribe to Kao in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Now, Finger said both One/Size and IGK Hair are carefully weighing a number of options.

While there’s no shortage of established and emerging incubators with buzzy brands, few have seen success in this decade beyond The Center, which sold premium skincare line Naturium to E.l.f. Beauty in 2023 for $355 million. Today, the beauty M&A market is even more crowded than it was a year ago. In colour cosmetics alone, Kosas, Merit, Glossier, Jane Iredale and Rare Beauty are all looking for buyers.

LBP is betting the brands’ long-term potential and impressive financial profiles will give them more optionality.

The Artist is Present

LBP prefers to build its brands around founders with artistry chops. Starrr is known for his makeover content; the IGK founders, Chase Kusero, Aaron Grenia, and brothers Leo and Franck Izquierdo, are all seasoned salon veterans. One of the founders of R+Co, another LBP-owned brand, is the legendary hairstylist Garren.

“If I’m buying an energy drink. I don’t really care who’s promoting it,” said Finger. “But if [a product is] going on my face and hair, I do.”

The focus is on pedigree rather than reach, said Finger, adding that a large social media following or even name recognition is not necessarily what makes a business impactful. Many outside of fashion and beauty circles wouldn’t recognise some of LBP’s founders, but Finger argues that they bring a higher quality threshold.

‘[Hairdressers] are the most difficult customers on the planet,” he said, describing the frustration and elation of creating products that pass their muster. The playbook has also worked for LBP before, in the case of Oribe and Pulp Riot.

By carefully selecting founders who have proven expertise in their field, LBP has been able to establish a strong value proposition for each of its lines. Starrr, for example, may not have the visibility of a celebrity founder (his 4.5 million followers pale in comparison to Hailey Bieber’s 52 million-plus), but he’s been a continued and vocal proponent for greater diversity in the beauty industry. He often shares his own experiences of marginalisation and discrimination alongside his picks for achieving a specific beauty look.

Big beauty conglomerates have talked the talk when it comes to inclusivity, said Finger. But a brand like One/Size would let them “actually walk the walk and own a brand that isn’t traditional.”

Genderless line One/Size was founded in 2020 by Starrr, and is also characterised by its professional quality and long-wearing products. Its On Til’ Dawn Setting Spray is the best-selling SKU at Sephora so far this year, according to the brand.

Lean Machines

Rather than trying to grow One/Size and IGK to have global reach, Finger said he has focused on domestic success as well as lean infrastructures.

“We don’t have a big international distribution of our brands ever,” he said. Both brands crop up in only a handful of international retailers – One/Size is carried in Sephora and IGK Hair in Space NK in the UK, for example.

Finger said he sees that kind of runway as advantageous to any prospective buyer, adding that in the past the conglomerates he has sold to have bigger, more well-established and global distribution networks.

Having the business be almost entirely self-funded, through a combination of reinvestment from past exits and personal investment from its leadership level boosts autonomy. Finger and his colleagues aren’t beholden to external stakeholders, who want to see short-term improvements. “It’s not been our thing,” he said.

Still, a crowded market will mean only the strongest, most promising brands will find a home. With interest rates still high enough to make borrowing cumbersome and many conglomerates looking to refine their focus around tighter niches, private equity firms may end up doing more of the acquiring.

But Finger reckons the odds are still in LBP’s favour to find a big beauty buyer. “We’ve taken all the risk out, and we’ve laid the foundations,” he said.

Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your complimentary, must-read source for the day’s most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.

On a private Zoom call with some of her (second) beauty brand’s most loyal customers, makeup artist Bobbi Brown fields questions, previews new products and doles out blunt beauty advice.

“What is your best eye makeup advice for someone who hates mascara?” Brown reads from a chat window.

“The only tip I have is: get over your hate for mascara,” Brown said aloud.

Brown, who founded Jones Road at 63, some 25 years after selling her eponymous makeup brand to the Estée Lauder Companies, has the firm yet jocular manner of an older sister among fans. She has ample reason to be self-assured – she’s proved naysayers wrong and successfully made lightning strike twice with her sophomore brand.

Retail sales this year are forecast to be upwards of $140 million, a seven-fold increase since its debut in 2020. Aside from a small presence in London’s upmarket Liberty department store – the retailer confirmed the label’s Miracle Balm in Dusty Rose is the store’s best-selling makeup product – the brand is entirely direct-to-consumer, with five stores and an e-commerce site. A sixth store in Brooklyn, New York, is slated to open this summer.

Part of the brand’s success comes down to Brown’s close connection with her customers, who are affectionately referred to as “Roadies.” The Zoom call hosted by Brown this month was the first of its kind – arranged to celebrate the two-year-old Facebook group hitting the milestone of 50,000 members.

It’s the kind of close connectivity many buzzy brands would want – and ones such as Glossier – arguably set out to create. Saie, the premium cosmetics line has a Facebook group called The Clean Beauty Crew with over 6,000 members, while Geneva, a group chat app, has attracted the likes of Everyday Humans and Bubble. More recently, many beauty brands are sending out hopeful requests to Instagram followers to entice them to join their broadcast channels.

Given quasi facetime (participants’ microphones and cameras were turned off) with their beauty hero, Roadies came ready with questions and requests. Stevie, from Silver Springs, MD, wanted a blue-toned red nail polish, like the one Brown was wearing. Shelly from northern Illinois suggested a product testing panel made up of Roadies. Robin from the Bay Area, CA wanted an exfoliating product, and a store to open up near her. But despite ardent affection, customers don’t necessarily understand what’s best for a business’s overall health and trajectory.

Brown’s job is to sift through all that always-on and now live feedback, and work out which ideas will help Jones Road grow.

How Much Is Too Much?

The Facebook group where the Roadies found each other is perhaps one of the last wholesome spaces left on the internet. Compliments abound – “72 looks good on you!” “You look very fresh and natural!!!” “So gorgeous! I love your smile!” – as do offers to ship one another excess or unwanted products.

But Brown has to sometimes say no to requests that don’t fit with her vision.

“If someone asked me [for something], I’m not going to lie to them and say, ‘Oh, yeah, no problem’ and turn around and say, ‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard’,” said Brown following the Roadies Zoom chat. “Not all ideas make sense, and not all of them are possible. If it’s not practical, don’t do it.”

A few examples? On the call, participants were keen to form some kind of product testing panel, something that’s both logistically complex and costly, explained Brown, as are freebies for members.

“It’s like, ‘Guys, I’d love to send you a thank you product, but there’s 50,000 people here, so that’s not going to happen’ ...i f I sent everyone a discount code, you know, [my team’s] brains would blow up,” said Brown.

One way that Brown is able to appease demand whilst also sticking to her guns is through their limited edition kits of products that launch eight to 10 times per year, often timed to holidays and the brand’s birthday in October. ”90 percent of the time we put something new [in it] so that the fans will say, ‘Oh, I have to have it’,” said Brown. Mini versions, new colourways or otherwise limited edition products are often reserved for special edition kits.

A comment under a post from June announcing two travel kits reads “‘I don’t need this’ as I click add to cart. Then added a brow gel. Then checked out.”

But perhaps nothing generates as much as excitement for Roadies than the reveal of some new merchandise.

To great fanfare, Brown turned her back to the camera to show off the slogan emblazoned across the shoulders of her sweatshirt: Roadie. Requests for sizing and colours immediately fired off in the chat.

Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your complimentary, must-read source for the day’s most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.