Better For You Wellness Set To Acquire Natural Skincare Brand Mary Louise Cosmetics As It Extends Its Beauty Reach

Better For You Wellness, a special purpose acquisition company or SPAC hunting for plant-based consumer packaged goods brands to purchase along with service providers to support them, is acquiring natural skincare brand Mary Louise Cosmetics.

The purchase price wasn’t released. Mary Louise Cosmetics will be bought entirely with Better For You Wellness shares to be issued following the close of the transaction. Akilah Releford, who founded the brand in 2016, is staying on board as chief visionary officer. She will guide future merchandise and initiatives, and be the face of the brand.

Ian James, CEO of Better For Your Wellness and founder of The Ideation Lab, a CBD brand incubator and investor, describes the deal for Mary Louise Cosmetics as both an acquisition and an acqui-hire. “Beyond the brand’s explosive growth in its short history, Mary Louise Cosmetics founder Akilah Releford sees natural beauty and skincare through a unique lens that resonates with gen Z, gen X, millennials and beyond.” Going forward, Releford says, “I will be overseeing the mission of the brand through product development, the essence of the company through branding marketing and weighing in on how I see the company moving over the next three to four years.”

Releford had no plans to sell Mary Louise Cosmetics prior to Better For You Wellness entering the picture. At the beginning of the year, she started fundraising with the assistance of an accelerator program run by Graham & Walker, the venture capital fund formerly called Female Founders Alliance. Initially, fundraising wasn’t going swimmingly. “I got comments like it’s too early or it’s too saturated or not really understanding differentiating factors of the brand,” says Releford. “So, I was just constantly going back and refining my process, refining the deck.”

A couple of months into fundraising, Better For You Wellness reached out expressing interest in acquiring the brand, which prompted Releford to shift gears. “It was a great opportunity to give Mary Louise a home that I thought it would thrive in and where we could see the brand grow,” she says. Releford adds, “Fundraising in itself is a full-time job and, as we were fundraising, the brand was growing, and it was becoming a lot…I was also working to find a team and handling retail. You always want to keep your business in mind first, so I thought that the acquisition was a great partnership to have experts in their field partner with me so we could make sure that all those areas were executed correctly. I didn’t want my biggest year yet, which 2021 was, to turn into something that was going to plateau.”

Releford launched Mary Louise Cosmetics with $200. In August, she shared with Beauty Independent that the brand generated $1 million in 2020 sales, thanks in part to the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the expanding self-care space. The brand has recently undergone a pastel-colored renovation, whittled down its product lineup, and partnered with Verishop, Thirteen Lune, Macy’s’ website and J.C. Penney as a part of the retailer’s new beauty concept. Releford cites a guest spot on “Tamron Hall Show” in February, Cosmopolitan’s listing of Mary Louise Cosmetics’ Miracle Serum as a holy-grail product for acne and a grant from Anastasia Beverly Hills as playing roles in Mary Louise Cosmetics’ success.

“Hopefully, we won’t have to see headlines like ‘first founder of color’ anymore.”

Better For You Wellness is known as a “micro-SPAC.” As Crunchbase News explains, “SPACs are ‘blank check’ companies created solely to raise capital through an IPO in order to subsequently merge with private companies to take them public.” Among the SPACs touching on the beauty industry are Waldencast Acquisition Corp. and Powered Brands. Formed by Katherine Power, co-founder of Clique Brands, and Dana Settle, founding partner of Greycroft, Powered Brands had a $276 million IPO in March.

In September, Better For You Wellness secured around $30 million for acquisitions of companies largely generating $1 million to $15 million in sales. It’s steering clear of pre-launch companies. Manufacturer and raw material supplier Ironwood Clay Co. and its skincare brand Nena Skincare are other planned acquisitions by Better For You Wellness in the beauty arena. Members of Better For You Wellness’s board of directors include television personality Montel Williams, Stephen Letourneau, chief brand officer of cannabis and hemp investment holding company Green Light Acquisitions, and physician Nicola Finley.

James says Better For You Wellness is assembling a portfolio of “highly synergistic brands” spanning the skincare, nutrition, health, fitness, mindfulness and sleep categories. “Better For You Wellness is targeting brands that have a unique ethos, functional formulas and products, efficacious ingredient inclusion and last but not least a little bit of je ne sais quoi,” he says. “The je ne sais quoi component is important because that can oftentimes be what makes a brand proprietary and special.”

To accelerate Mary Louise Cosmetics, the brand is shooting for a greater presence at retail. Releford identifies Target and Whole Foods as dream partners. Product launches aided by the enhanced supply chain of Better For You Wellness are in the pipeline. James says, “By combining the brand with a full-stack beauty products manufacturer, it will expedite lead times on new and existing Mary Louise Cosmetics products while lowering COGS and more.”

Releford is concentrating on clinical testing and striving for certifications like Leaping Bunny and B Corp. “We want to make sure that we’re focusing on the efficacy of the products while still having that playful, fun approach to skincare, which is the origin of the brand,” she says. “So, I think that the funding will really be able to help us give our customers a better experience at our products and attract new customers as well.”

Releford is eager for the acquisition of her brand to open the door for her fellow founders of color to draw funding and buyers. According to Better For You Wellness, the deal for Mary Louise Cosmetics will make Releford the youngest founder of color to have a beauty company acquired. “I think this is exactly the type of thing that needs to be seen by the masses to encourage other founders of color and VC funds and people who are executing acquisitions and mergers,” she says. “Hopefully, we won’t have to see headlines like ‘first founder of color’ anymore.”