Yellow Wood Partners completes acquisition of Unilever’s Elida Beauty
Yellow Wood Partners has completed the acquisition of the Elida Beauty brands division from Unilever.
The Elida Beauty portfolio includes Q-tips, Caress, Ponds and St. Ives for North America and Europe, as well as Impulse, Noxzema, Monsavon and Timotei.
“We have a successful formula and broad expertise to identify great consumer brands that can benefit from independent, focused ownership. The true nature of success in completing these corporate carveouts is based in the Yellow Wood Consumer Operating DNA strategy,” said Dana Schmaltz, Yellow Wood partner. “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. Our expertise allows us to do this in very short time frames which benefits the corporate seller, our retail partners and, most importantly, the brands and their consumers as these transitions can create confusion and brands can suffer. Elida Beauty is another example of our disciplined approach where we believe these brands can benefit from additional investment and highly focused attention as an independent company. This marks our second carve out from Unilever following our successful experience working with them on our acquisition of the Suave brand last year, and, Elida is our fifth corporate carve out in the last four years from large multi-national CPG companies including Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Reckitt Benckiser, Haleon, and Unilever.”
In conjunction with the closing, the company shared that Alfie Vivian would be taking over as CEO of Elida. Most recently, Vivian was the former SVP and group general manager of Tyson Foods.
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“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, partner at Yellow Wood Partners. “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.”
Following this acquisition, Yellow Wood’s portfolio of brands now includes more than 50 consumer brands with total retail sales of approximately $3 billion, the company shared.
“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. Yellow Wood's partnership allows us to build on the legacy of these brands and accelerate development of our product portfolio across global markets,” said Vivian, CEO of Elida Beauty.
