Palamon Capital Partners has led a transaction to acquire a majority interest in beauty e-commerce specialist feelunique.com, one of Europe’s fastest growing online beauty retailers.
The transaction was agreed at a head-line enterprise value for feelunique of GBP26m.
feelunique is an online retailer of premium products in haircare, skincare, cosmetics and fragrances, selling full-permissioned stock from almost all of the major brands including Dior, Lancôme, Clarins, Guerlain, Yves Saint Laurent, Benefit and Kerastase. The company has built a strong reputation for its customer service and website editorial content, which is directed by Newby Hands, a beauty journalist and Harper’s Bazaar beauty director-at-large. It was founded in 2005 and employs more than 125 staff at its headquarters and logistics centre in the Channel Islands.
Palamon will purchase a majority shareholding from the founders and earlier-stage investors and will provide further capital to support the company’s growth plan. Sirius Equity will invest alongside Palamon in the transaction. Following Palamon’s investment, Sirius co-founders Robert Bensoussan will join the board of the company as chairman and Jim Sharp will join the board as a non-executive director. Bensoussan also is chairman of L K Bennett, a board member of Interparfums and former investor in and chief executive of Jimmy Choo.
Palamon’s and Sirius’ investment stems from the strong underlying growth in the online beauty retail segment driven by the increasing shift in consumer spend to online, as occurred in the fashion retail sector. feelunique is also taking significant market share by progressively expanding its product range and increasing loyalty through its customer-centric model. This has driven growth in company sales by more than 40 per cent per year to more than GBP30m of annual revenue.
Dan Mytnik, partner at Palamon, says: “We are delighted to be investing in feelunique, a high growth business that is ideally placed to benefit from the fast expanding online retail beauty sector with its established platform, a strong business model and entrepreneurial management team. We are pleased to have the opportunity to partner with founders, Aaron Chatterley and Richard Schiessl, and to welcome Robert Bensoussan and Jim Sharp to the board. The expertise of Robert and Jim in the luxury branded sector will be invaluable in taking the business to the next level.”
Aaron Chatterley, chief executive of feelunique, says: “We are excited to have gained the backing of Palamon whose expertise in the online retail space convinced us that they would be ideal partners. Given our ambitious growth plans and the size of the opportunity, it was important to partner with a firm that had both the financial resources and a clear vision of how the market will evolve. We now look forward to working closely with our new partners as we turn our vision of expansion into reality.”