Beach House Group known for creating celebrity brands including PATTERN with Tracee Ellis Ross, BÉIS with Shay Mitchell, MOON Oral Beauty with Kendall Jenner and Odell Beckham Jr. and FLORENCE BY MILLS with Millie Bobby Brown is launching a beauty and lifestyle venture fund. Their formula for success in incubating these brands is a result of their strong partnerships with global retail giants like Ulta Beauty, Sephora, and specialty retailers. To date, Beach House Group has surpassed $250 million in annual revenue.
Shaun Neff and PJ Brice, founders of Beach House Group, shared that their brands are able to scale with the creation of their best-in-class shared service model that their brands leverage across operations, finance, FP&A, sales, creative, legal, and more. Brice said, “Our model has set us up to give our brands precisely what is required to identify business opportunities and ultimately provide a competitive advantage over competitors. A key piece of success has been hiring industry-leading and highly experienced talent within their respective categories dedicated to the individual brand to have full access to utilize Beach House Group’s shared service platform.”
Now Beach House Group is leveling up that formula into Beach House Ventures. However, this isn’t your typical venture group. “Unlike traditional private equity and venture capital firms, the work doesn’t stop after writing a check. Brands will truly become our partners and we will provide our expertise, along with our successful model and infrastructure that we have built with Beach House Group – a best-in-class shared service platform, all-important capital, high-level operation, and having a pulse on a great product – to apply to brands we invest in under Beach House Ventures,” shared Neff. “The relationships we’ve fostered in the retail space have equipped us to not only secure distribution but also bring the appropriate retailers into the discussion early enough to work collaboratively on optimal distribution and marketing strategies. We already have a proven track record of finding unique businesses, and gaps in the market and taking bets based on intuition, brand scalability, market, etc. We don’t win until we exit.”
Their goal is to target a minimum of two to three deals a year, however, Neff and Brice said when the right opportunity does come along, they aren’t limited by a finite amount of cash to play with. Commitment size will vary between two to ten million dollars per deal taking up the whole round and each deal will be funded differently depending on the company’s needs to scale. “We are trying to find brands and businesses in their nascent stages that have proven stickiness, success, and differentiation. We are looking to do early-stage partnerships and investments without setting parameters for ourselves because we know that there could be some brands that are scaling very quickly that are larger that we might be interested in investing in,” they both shared on the stage of startups they look to invest in.
Shaun Neff and PJ Brice, founders of Beach House Group and Beach House Ventures.
While Beach House Ventures is initially focusing on beauty and lifestyle categories, they are looking at any category that could ultimately be found on the shelves of Ulta Beauty or Sephora. Beach House’s strong relationships with beauty retailers is one of the many reasons they have an edge beyond financial means. Monica Arnaudo, Chief Merchandising Officer at Ulta Beauty, shared why Ulta Beauty is excited about the launch of Beach House Ventures. “Shaun, PJ and the Beach House Group teams have focused on whitespaces in the industry that need to be filled, and as the nation’s largest beauty retailer, we are in constant pursuit of just that. Beach House Ventures is helping bring to light the brands of tomorrow, which is attractive to Ulta Beauty as we exist to be the destination for future leading brands to be discovered and accessible to passionate beauty enthusiasts.”
Ulta Beauty’s existing relationship with Beach House Group has helped debut top brands including PATTERN by Tracee Ellis Ross and Millie Bobby Brown’s Florence by Mills. “When introducing a new brand into our assortment, we offer various levels of support across merchandising, marketing, digital and social channels to ensure a personalized and successful partnership,” Arnaudo added.
Beach House Ventures will only invest in and bring brands into the Beach House ecosystem after deep due diligence and vetting with retailers. “Traditional venture and/or private equity firms take a portfolio approach to investing, taking on a slew of brands knowing a certain percentage could fail, which is a reckoning thing for an entrepreneur to hear. That is not an option for Beach House Ventures. We are going to fight alongside our brands and dedicate our resources and focus to make sure they are successful, much like the ones we’ve launched over the last four years at Beach House Group. All of the brands that we’ve launched so far at Beach House Group have worked incredibly well, and together, we have had a 100% success rate. We will only touch something that we are confident we can help scale and provide an exit,” Neff and Brice shared.
Potential brands can reach out directly via the inquiry form at Beach House Ventures’ website. Each inquiry will be thoughtfully vetted and analyzed by the Beach House Ventures team then turned over to Neff and Brice to engage properly.
