Fate Of Serena Williams’ Makeup Brand Wyn Beauty Uncertain After Strategic Partner Collapses
The future of Wyn Beauty, the makeup brand from retired tennis superstar Serena Williams, is up in the air after its strategic partner The Good Glamm Group shuttered in July.
Wyn’s 12-product assortment across face, lips and eyes priced between $19 and $29 is being discounted heavily at Ulta Beauty, where the brand’s sales have declined since it launched at the beauty specialty retailer exclusively in 685 locations and online in April last year. According to data from market research and analytics firm YipitData, the brand’s share of the makeup category at Ulta decreased to .04% in December last year from a peak of about .24% at launch. It registered a modest uptick of .07% in April as it lapped its 1-year anniversary, but has otherwise remained down.
Several of Wyn’s executives have departed in recent months, including former president Shawn Haynes, now president of Revive Collagen, former VP of global product development Christina Ximenez, founder of The Gloss Agency, and Priscilla Salam, former director of product and lifestyle marketing.
Wyn has been plagued both by organizational challenges and a lackluster response from consumers. While Williams retains considerable power to shape public discourse three years after she stepped away from professional tennis, as evidenced by her campaign for Ro’s GLP-1 medications that’s kicked up quite a controversy, her fit with makeup was questioned from the start of the brand and some consumers felt she didn’t have authority in the category.
In a TikTok video posted in October last year, an Ulta store employee with the handle beautifiedbyre said, “We got three drawers full of Wyn Beauty and I’m sorry, Serena Williams, but it does not sell. We been at this since it launched. The packaging, perfect, on point with brand…but I don’t know, it’s not getting to the people. I don’t think a makeup brand is for everybody cause I don’t think people relate to you as a makeup girlie or guru.”
Rebecca Bartlett, founder and CEO of beauty brand consultancy Bartlett Brands, argues Williams’ celebrity on the court didn’t translate into the off-court makeup business. “She is not a credible ‘reason to believe’ for this brand,” she says. “Just because the packaging is eye-catching doesn’t mean the brand can stand the test of time without a meaningful and differentiated story…The products lacked innovation in a category that is highly competitive.” She adds, “When a company exists for the ‘big win’ instead of vision, purpose or passion, consumers can smell it a mile away. Playbook brands may grow fast, but they rarely last.”
With Wyn’s initial product range sporting 10 products in 91 shades, Monica Arnaudo, former chief merchandising officer at Ulta, touted its celebration of “beauty in all its forms,” and the retailer merchandised the brand in chartreuse, gold and netted gondolas in the front of its stores. Despite the store prominence, Wyn’s failure to win at Ulta shows the risk of betting on an unproven beauty brand, even one attached to a famous name. JLo Beauty, Gxve by Gwen Stefani and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Hey Humans, Jared Leto’s defunct Twentynine Palms and EleVen by Venus Williams, a closed sun care brand Venus Williams created with clean beauty retailer Credo, are other brands affiliated with known personalities that have struggled.
Wyn was developed by SW-Sanghvi Beauty USA, a joint venture between Williams and New Delhi-based beauty and personal care conglomerate The Good Glamm Group. It specializes in high-performance color products for active wearers. Product names like Starting Line Peptide Infused Lipliner and MVP: Most Versatile Pigment Multifunction Lip & Cheek Color tie back to Williams’ career as a 23-time Grand Slam champion. The chartreuse packaging also mimics the color of a tennis ball.
“I don’t think people relate to you as a makeup girlie or guru.”
As The Good Glamm Group’s first enterprise in the United States, Wyn broadened the conglomerate’s global distribution. Valued at $1.2 billion in 2021 when it became the first direct-to-consumer beauty startup to reach unicorn status in India, The Good Glamm Group previously had a portfolio of about a dozen brands that it garnered largely through acquisitions. DTC beauty brand MyGlamm, wellness and personal care brands The Moms Co, St. Botanica and Sirona, and digital media platforms POPxo and ScoopWhoop were in the portfolio.
The Good Glamm Group, which generated $120 million in 2021 sales, raised $342 million over 22 rounds from Warburg Pincus, Prosus Ventures, Stride Ventures, Accel, Amazon, Ascent Capital and The L’Occitane Group since 2015 per financial information resource Tracxn. Wyn was expected to account for between 25% to 35% of its sales in 2025.
Last year, Darpan Sanghvi, founder of The Good Glamm Group, said, “A U.S.-based brand can easily enter multiple geographies, which, in turn, could open up distribution for my Indian offerings in new markets.”
When Wyn launched, The Good Glamm Group was facing profitability issues that only deepened. Unable to raise additional funding to increase cash flow, it sold some of its brands earlier this year and delayed salary payments to staff. By the summer, lenders had taken possession of the company’s assets. A message posted on The Good Glamm Group’s site announces that its remaining brands are in the process of being sold.
@beautifiedbyre Has anybody bought wyn beauty? If so do you like it? #wynbeauty #ulta
In a four-page letter on The Good Glamm Group’s closure posted on LinkedIn, Sanghvi wrote, “Over the past few months, we explored every possible path to keep the Good Glamm Group together as the way we had envisioned, a digital FMCG conglomerate with multiple brands under one umbrella. We explored refinancing, partial brand sales, strategic investments and more. We left no stone unturned. But when you operate in a complex structure with multiple stakeholders, and time as your enemy, sometimes it just does not come together.”
Wyn is among Williams’ many post-tennis retirement efforts. She established venture capital firm Serena Ventures in 2014 and multimedia production company Nine Two Six in 2023. Her most recent role as Ro’s spokeswoman follows her husband and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian investing in the company and obtaining a board membership.
While the business of celebrity beauty brands is the biggest it’s ever been—they surpassed $1 billion in sales for the first time in 2023 before hitting $1.2 billion last year, per market research firm NIQ—the category has been decelerating as top-performing brands mature and gen Z shoppers divert spend from makeup, where the majority of celebrity brands sit, to facial skincare and fragrance. Makeup sales across beauty have been generally soft. Market research firm Circana estimates the prestige makeup category grew by a modest 1% during the first half of the year to reach $5.2 billion with units sold remaining flat.
