The acquisition of Mielle Organics by Procter & Gamble in January 2023 completed a pattern that had been building for nearly a decade. L'Oreal acquired Carol's Daughter in 2014. Unilever acquired Sundial Brands -- parent of SheaMoisture -- in 2017. P&G acquired Walker & Company (Bevel) in 2018. Compass Diversified acquired The Honey Pot Company in 2023. In each case, a major multinational paid significant money for a Black-founded brand that had been built for and by Black consumers.
The obvious question is why it took so long. The market these brands serve -- Black consumers, who spend approximately $9 billion annually on beauty products -- did not emerge suddenly in 2014. Black women have been buying hair care, skincare, and personal care products for as long as those products have existed. What changed was not the market. What changed was who was paying attention.
The natural hair movement shifted the calculus. When Black women began rejecting chemical relaxers at scale in the early 2010s -- a cultural shift that took place largely on YouTube and later on Instagram -- it created demand for a category of products that the legacy hair care brands had not developed. The brands that filled that gap were almost exclusively Black-founded: Mielle, SheaMoisture, Camille Rose, The Mane Choice, Curls. They grew because they understood the consumer. The conglomerates, which had the resources and distribution to serve the market, had not built the products.
“The brands they bought, they should have built. They didn't because they weren't paying attention.”
By the time the acquisitions began, the math was straightforward: the Black-founded brands had proven product-market fit, established community trust, and built distribution relationships that would have taken the acquirers a decade to replicate internally. Buying was faster and more reliable than building. The premium valuations reflected not just the brands' current revenue but the cost of the alternative.
What the acquisition wave does not resolve is the underlying question: why did the largest beauty companies in the world, sitting next to a $9 billion consumer market, consistently choose not to build for it? The brands they are now paying to acquire are proof that the demand was always there. The fact that it took an acquisition wave to get their attention is the real business story.
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