Yellow Wood Partners has acquired Freeman Beauty, a specialty beauty company with a portfolio of brands across the skin care, hair care, foot care and specialty bath and body categories, from Champlain Capital which acquired the company in September 2005.
Freeman Beauty’s brand names include Feeling Beautiful (facial masks), Beauty Infusion (facial masks), Feeling Legendary (facial masks for men), Bare Foot (foot care), Psssst! (dry shampoo), and c.Booth (bath and body care). Freeman’s products are sold through the food, mass, drug and specialty retail channels. The company, led by CEO Jon Achenbaum, was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Los Angeles (www.freemanbeauty.com).
“Freeman is a beauty industry pioneer that has created strong differentiated brand identity throughout its history,” said Dana Schmaltz, Founding Partner of Yellow Wood Partners. “The company’s brands are recognized as leaders in the mass facial mask and dry shampoo categories and enjoy broad distribution in mass and specialty oriented beauty and personal care channels.”
“We believe there is a substantial opportunity to grow distribution with all of our customers, and especially to expand outside of the US and Canada into international markets including South America and Europe,” said Mr. Achenbaum. “The team at Yellow Wood fully understands our brands and customers, and together with their functional-area operating experience can help expand our products to new and existing categories and identify consumers around the world who will enjoy our products.”
Last month, Yellow Wood completed fund raising for Yellow Wood Capital Partners II LP at an oversubscribed $370 million of committed capital. Like its first fund, Fund II invests in consumer brands and companies that operate in the mass, drug, food, specialty, club and e-commerce channels and have revenues between $30 million and $200 million. Categories of specific interest include beauty and personal care; health and wellness; household, food and beverage; and pet care. It is expected that Fund II will invest from $50 million to $150 million of equity in up to five platform companies.
“Freeman has a proven track record of bringing nature-inspired and efficacious products quickly to the mass channel and we expect to optimize their new product development initiatives by focusing on the key brands,” said Tad Yanagi, Partner at Yellow Wood. “We hope to leverage our success in beauty and personal care to build on Freeman’s leading position in the market and help guide the company through an extraordinary period of growth.”
In late July, Yellow Wood sold PDC Brands, a collection of beauty, personal care, and wellness brands, to CVC Capital Partners for just over $1.4 billion. PDC Brands was acquired by Yellow Wood in September 2012 and over the nearly five year term of ownership Yellow Wood quadrupled the company’s revenue and grew EBITDA by over five times.
Champlain Capital, the seller of Freeman Beauty, invests between $30 million and $100 million in middle-market companies with revenues of $10 million to $100 million and EBITDA of $3 million to $10 million. Sectors of interest include niche manufacturing, business services, consumer products, distribution, and healthcare. The firm was founded in 1992 and has offices in San Francisco and Boston (www.champlaincapital.com).
© 2017 Private Equity Professional | August 15, 2017
