Sky Marketing Acquires CBD Beauty And Wellness Brand Prima

Sky Marketing Corp. has acquired CBD beauty and wellness brand Prima from The Hedgehog Co. for an undisclosed price. 

The deal gives hemp consumer packaged goods holding company Sky Marketing a presence in the CBD skincare and body care categories in which its current properties, Hometown Hero, maker of cannabis edibles, inhalables and topicals, and Orca, a line of THC and CBD performance and recovery products, aren’t authorities. Sky Marketing founder Lukas Gilkey and VP of marketing Lewis Hamer introduced Hometown Hero in 2015.

“Prima fills an important void in our portfolio by offering the highest quality skincare and body care we’ve ever seen in the CBD industry,” says Olivia Le Meur, COO of Sky Marketing. “We’re so excited to reignite the brand and grow the Prima community.”

For Prima, the sale to Sky Marketing ends a tumultuous period that began in late 2022, when it was on track to acquire hemp wellness product producer Prospect Farms and create Uplifter Brands, a holding company for clean and conscious brands—a transaction that ultimately fell apart. Prospect Farms later shuttered, and Prima was picked up by turnaround specialist The Hedgehog Co. 

Christopher Gavigan, co-founder of The Honest Co., launched Prima in 2019, the year after the United States government legalized the hemp trade at the federal level and set off a massive green rush of CBD brands, with Laurel Angelica Myers, former senior director of purpose and impact at The Honest Co., and Jessica Assaf, who has a long history in clean beauty and cannabis with stops at S.W. Basics, Raw is Everything and Cannabis Fem. Believers in Prima’s management and the CBD trend, investors such as Greycroft, H Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Defy Partners poured $12.5 million in funding into the brand over two rounds. 

Although she’s now director of communications at OSEA Malibu, Assaf continues to be tied to Prima and will serve as an advisor to Sky Marketing on the brand. The company’s primary focus will be building Prima in direct-to-consumer distribution. However, it’s planning to increase the brand’s retail reach in the near future. Prima’s retail network has been winnowed down to just Beauty Heroes, the store and beauty subscription offering. It was previously carried by Standard Dose, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Goop, The Vitamin Shoppe, Erewhon and Sephora. Prima’s co-founders helped craft a standard for CBD products at Sephora. 

Formulated to fit Sephora’s clean and sustainable beauty guidelines, Prima’s current product lineup includes Beyond Body Oil, Night Magic Intensive Facial Oil, Unwind Bath Gem, Skin Therapy Ultra-Rich Body Butter, R+R Cream and R+R Stick. Prices range from $15 to $68. In the past, its assortment featured the supplements Sleep Tight and Chill Out Chews that Assaf hopes will reemerge soon. 

While the CBD green rush has concluded, Assaf believes Prima should stay committed to the cannabinoid. “The world doesn’t need another clean skincare and body care brand, especially one that didn’t stay true to its core,” she says. “For us, our products always had to have CBD in them as a point of difference, and that’s why people love them.”

Still, Assaf acknowledges there are many lessons from the implosion of the CBD boom that should guide Prima moving forward. “CBD is not an industry. CBD is an ingredient, and if you want to build a lasting brand, you can use CBD, but that’s not the anchor. That’s not the reason why consumers are buying the product…There was a lot of over hype, but then there were a lot of bad players,” she says. “There were a lot of products that weren’t bioavailable. So, people started to get skeptical and think CBD was a placebo.”

Jeannie Jarnot, founder of Beauty Heroes, where Prima’s top sellers are Beyond Body Oil, Sleep Tight and R+R Cream, has always approached CBD as it does any other botanical ingredient by concentrating on its role in formulas rather than as a trend. She says, “We never led with CBD in our educational content and instead positioned it alongside other anti-inflammatory botanicals that work synergistically in formulas.” 

Jarnot recently met with Sky Marketing and is encouraged by its plan for Prima. “We’ve supported the brand consistently over the years and would love to see it experience a renaissance,” says Jarnot. “The original vision had strong merit and truly served its customers well.”