Cos Bar Sells To Mitchell Family Office After Violet Grey Doesn’t Move Forward With Acquisition

Cos Bar has found a buyer after a potential deal combining it with Violet Grey and The Detox Market didn’t happen.

The luxury beauty retailer announced Tuesday that Birmingham, Mich.-based private investment firm Mitchell Family Office has acquired it for an undisclosed sum in a deal that some beauty industry insiders questioned as not meaningfully changing Cos Bar’s trajectory, and others applauded as giving it a better chance to take on its bigger rivals like Macy’s Inc.-owned Bluemercury. Cos Bar represents Mitchell Family Office’s first foray into beauty retail. It’s getting into the sector as more beauty sales are moving online, which is capturing almost half of beauty transactions, according to an estimate from NielsenIQ.

The private investment firm’s acquisition of Cos Bar follows a Women’s Wear Daily report last month that beauty retail, content and e-commerce company Violet Grey was in the process of purchasing Cos Bar after acquiring clean beauty retailer The Detox Market. Puck News added that the deal between Violet Grey and Cos Bar had been in diligence for months and was “definitely happening.” Violet Grey had been raising funds to finance it. However, Violet Grey CEO Sherif Guirgis told The Business of Fashion last week that it wouldn’t acquire Cos Bar nor any other company in the immediate future. 

Established in 2015 by Mark Mitchell, who founded and grew in-house medical provider U.S. Medical Management, now HarmonyCares, and sold a majority stake to Centene Corp. in 2014 for approximately $200 million, Mitchell Family Office has Swan Beauty, an artificial intelligence-powered beauty device company, apparel brand Ddam and luxury hotel The Daxton in its portfolio, among others. In the decade it’s been in existence, the firm has backed over 20 companies.

In a statement, Mark Mitchell, managing partner of Mitchell Family Office, says, “Cos Bar is a brand with deep heritage, a loyal client base and a phenomenal reputation for excellence in luxury beauty. We are thrilled to partner with the Cos Bar team to honor the company’s legacy while positioning it for future growth. At MFO, we invest in brands with strong founders and passionate leaders, and we see tremendous opportunity to build on Cos Bar’s success with innovation, scale, services and technology.”

Mitchell Family Office’s objective is to strengthen Cos Bar’s omnichannel distribution and enlarge its geographic footprint. The retailer currently operates 21 stores across New York, Colorado, California, New Jersey, Minnesota, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, far below the 50 stores it was forecast to open when private equity firm Tengram Capital Partners initially invested in it in 2015. Cos Bar stocks about 75 luxury beauty brands, including Sisley, La Prairie, Byredo, 111Skin, Tom Ford, La Mer, Chantecaille, Creed, Westman Atelier and Natura Bissé. In 2022, about 85% of its sales came from its stores.

Rich Gersten, co-founder and managing partner of beauty and wellness investment firm True Beauty Ventures and former partner at Tengram, calls Cos Bar’s sale a “great move” for the retailer. “It gives them the capital they sorely need to expand stores and invest in future growth,” he says. “As a 10-year-old brand in the Tengram portfolio, there was no real access to fresh growth capital, which limited their ability to pursue bigger initiatives. With this new deal, Cos Bar can once again explore more aggressive strategies and unlock the next stage of its evolution.”

Gersten argues further that the acquisition will help Cos Bar operate more efficiently in a retail landscape where competition is fierce. “There is no real specialty retailer today focused on exceptional service paired with a tightly curated luxury assortment. The timing is right, too, with department stores weakening and leadership changes at Bluemercury creating an opening to capitalize,” he says, adding, “The main challenges will be retail real estate and making sure they get the locations right. In luxury specialty retail, the box really matters.”

Kelly St. John, founder and CEO of beauty strategic growth consultancy KSJ Collective, identifies balancing Cos Bar’s premium customer service with the strains of scaling up as a key challenge for Mitchell Family Office if it increases Cos Bar’s store count. “The addition of Swan Beauty’s AI-driven personalization capabilities could modernize that service model in a way that blends luxury heritage with innovation,” she says, noting, “Mitchell Family Office’s lack of expertise in the luxury and beauty space makes it feel like an odd match.”

The beauty retail landscape has been marked by consolidation as companies bulk up to draw dollars from customers with fragmented spending. In addition to Violet Grey’s recent acquisition of The Detox Market, Ulta Beauty bought British beauty retailer Space NK in the summer and French beauty retailer Oh My Cream nabbed British beauty e-commerce website Naturismo in April. Gersten says retail consolidation will continue “as players look to scale and differentiate in a rapidly evolving retail landscape.”

“It gives them the capital they sorely need to expand stores and invest in future growth.”

The potential combination of Cos Bar, The Detox Market and Violet Grey made business sense as the joint entity could’ve provided a coast-to-coast counterpoint to Sephora and Ulta Beauty for older well-heeled consumers looking to shop in upscale environments designed for them during a period of depressed department stores. However, the three-way partnership didn’t come to fruition. Having notoriously struggled with profitability, Violet Grey is in rebuilding mode after former creative consultant Cassandra Grey sold the business to Farfetch in 2022 and bought it back in 2024 along with private equity investor Guirgis. Grey originally launched Violet Grey in 2013.

Tengram has been eager to find a home for Cos Bar as the field of potential buyers for brick-and-mortar beauty retail businesses has shrunk. A consumer investor who spoke to Beauty Independent on the condition of anonymity estimates that the price paid for Cos Bar wasn’t high. The investor says, “Being a sub-scale beauty retailer is not a great business, so the seller eventually found a family office buyer, presumably with a more flexible mandate than traditional PE [private equity] and perhaps a longer time horizon…Perhaps the buyer will invest a little money in the business to open more locations, but I don’t expect dramatic growth. I don’t think that’s the play here. This is more like a small high-end restaurant chain, they run it for cash flow.”

Oliver Garfield, CEO of Cos Bar and the son of founder Lily Garfield, told Beauty Independent in an interview in March that the company was facing headwinds as luxury beauty shoppers were increasingly judicious with their purchases. Cos Bar’s average customer comes from a household making at least $250,000 annually. “Luxury shoppers are pulling back a little bit, but if it’s a no now, it might be a yes later, and they’re not giving up on it,” he said. “From a leadership perspective, though, I’d say we are taking a bit more of a conservative approach to budgeting and capital projects. We have concern, and we want to be ready to manage downside, if there is downside.”

In the March interview, Garfield shared that Cos Bar’s 2025 sales were trending up from last year, with transactions growing and average order value remaining flat. It was planning to accelerate its brand launch pipeline and double down on high-touch service to regain its momentum. 

“While ‘24 was a year of disruption, ‘25 is a year of absorption and what internally we’re calling ‘back to basics,’” he said. “Honestly, I think the ‘back-to-basics’ strategy always works. Have the right inventory at the right place at the right time. Have really great people in store that are trained. Have stores that look good where we’re clienteling and delivering good service. That’s the most important thing.”

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This article was revised on Sept. 17 to reflect that the potential deal between Violet Grey and Cos Bar was exploratory and didn’t move forward.