Yellow Wood Partners has carved out the Elida Beauty brands portfolio from publicly traded Unilever.
Elida Beauty was formed by Unilever in 2021 as part of a reorganization of its beauty and personal care portfolio. The unit was created to house a collection of heritage brands that required a different strategic approach compared to Unilever’s other major beauty brands.
Today, the Elida Beauty portfolio includes more than 20 beauty and personal care brands including Q-tip cotton swabs, Impulse body sprays and fragrances, Caress body wash and bar soaps, Tigi hair care and styling products, Timotei hair care products, Monsavon deodorants, shower gels, and soaps, Pond’s skincare products, Noxzema skincare products, Brylcreem hair styling products, Brut fragrances and grooming products, Moussel shower gels, Alberto Balsam hair care products, and VO5 hair care products. According to Unilever, the Elida Beauty portfolio of brands had more than $860 million in revenue in 2022.
Upon closing of the acquisition, Elida Beauty will operate from offices in Dallas, London, and Paris, and will be led by Alfie Vivian who has been named as the company’s new chief executive officer. Since 2022, Mr. Vivian has been a senior vice president and group general manager at Tyson Foods. Earlier in his career he was with Unilever for more than 29 years in a range of brand development and general management positions.
“Yellow Wood’s creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and commitment to excellence combined with the Elida Beauty team’s experience will continue our evolution into a powerful multi-brand beauty company,” said Mr. Vivian. “Yellow Wood’s partnership allows us to build on the legacy of these brands and accelerate development of our product portfolio across global markets.”
“We have a successful formula and broad expertise to identify great consumer brands that can benefit from independent, focused ownership,” said Dana Schmaltz, a partner at Yellow Wood. “The true nature of success in completing these corporate carveouts is based in the Yellow Wood Consumer Operating DNA strategy. This playbook, executed by our team, allows us to work seamlessly with the large global CPG companies to create the stand-alone operating infrastructures necessary to begin these brands’ evolution as independent companies.”
The acquisition of Elida Beauty is Yellow Wood’s second carve out from Unilever and follows its February 2023 acquisition of its North American beauty and personal care brand, Suave. Suave’s branded products are used by women, men, and children and include shampoos, conditioners, treatments and serums, body washes, antiperspirants and deodorants, and skin care lotions.
“We are excited to complete this carve out with Unilever and formally welcome Alfie Vivian and the Elida Beauty team into the Yellow Wood family,” said Tad Yanagi, a partner at Yellow Wood. “Elida Beauty’s brands are recognized around the world and align perfectly with our existing portfolio. Alfie’s and our collective brand building experience across North American and international markets will help unlock Elida’s global growth potential as a newly independent company.”
Elida Beauty is the fifth corporate carve out that Yellow Wood has closed over the past four years from large multi-national consumer packaged goods companies including Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Reckitt Benckiser, Haleon, and Unilever.
Yellow Wood invests in consumer brands and companies that operate in the mass, drug, food, specialty, value, club, and e-commerce channels, and have EBITDA from $10 million and $50 million. In April 2022, Yellow Wood closed Yellow Wood Capital Partners III LP at its hard cap with $750 million of limited partner capital commitments. Fund III was oversubscribed and included commitments from many of Yellow Wood’s long-time limited partners. Yellow Wood’s earlier fund closed in July 2017 with an oversubscribed $370 million of committed capital. With the buy of Elida Beauty, Yellow Wood’s portfolio now includes over 50 consumer brands with total retail sales of approximately $3 billion.
Unilever (NYSE: UL) is a multinational consumer goods company that produces and sells food, beverages, cleaning agents, and personal care products. The company’s products are sold in over 190 countries, and it has more than 400 brands in its portfolio, including well-known names such as Dove, Knorr, Vaseline, Ben & Jerry’s, Lipton, Axe, and Hellmann’s. Unilever was founded in 1929 and is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, and Rotterdam, Netherlands.
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