Il Makiage Parent Company, Oddity, Closes $130 Million Secondary Round
Oddity, the parent company of beauty brand Il Makiage, has closed a secondary funding round of $130 million, the company said.
The round, which values the company at $1.5 billion, per a statement, was led by Thomas Tull, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity Management and First Light Capital Group.
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The company’s only previous investor was L Catterton, which acquired a 35.8 percent stake in the business for $29 million, WWD reported in 2017.
“Until recently, we had one sole investor,” said Oran Holtzman, chief executive officer of Il Makiage and Oddity. “We decided that it is important for us to begin building relationships with the largest late-stage investors as the business has scaled significantly,” adding that “the current shareholders sold less than 10 percent.”
Holtzman explained that since relaunching Il Makiage on its website in 2018, the brand has grown 100 percent every year since. “We went from $25 million in 2018 to $268 million in revenue with very strong profitability [in 2021],” he said. “We are still 100 percent d-to-c and 95 percent of our revenues are generated from ilmakiage.com.”
The company’s largest team is its tech team, which Holtzman credits as its secret to unlocking the brand’s potential. “Our tech team is still the largest team in the company with over 80 engineers and data scientists,” he said.
Holtzman runs “the business as a tech company. We are complete outsiders in this industry — no one on my team came from Lauder, L’Oréal or legacy beauty companies. We are all ex-consultants, bankers and tech people,” he continued. “We have physical beauty products, but obviously very strong tech products, and this is our main differentiator.”
Last year, Il Makiage acquired Voyage81, a hyperspectral imaging software company, for over $40 million.
The companies’ specific capabilities around data and customer acquisition have garnered it over 25 million unique users, Holtzman said. “We have what it takes, our strategy is to launch a new stand-alone digital brand every 18 months. It doesn’t make sense for us to use our tech products only for Il Makiage.”
That is where his sights are set: February marks the launch of SpoiledChild, Oddity’s second brand, which will launch with skin care, hair care and supplements, according to Holtzman.
More is yet to come, he said. “The third brand, which I cannot say, is more related to telemedicine and the intersection between wellness and health,” he said.
Incubating brands is Holtzman’s first priority, but he’s not opposed to acquiring preexisting ones in the future. “We love to build and we love to create, and this is part of the DNA and culture of the company. We are not ruling out acquiring brands, especially small brands that we can help them scale rapidly, or offline brands. But as of now, all the energy and focus is toward building brands internally from scratch,” he said.
Folding in other brands is where he sees the most opportunity for Oddity. For Il Makiage itself, other geographies are on his radar. “We have massive runway. Seventy-five percent of our revenue is in the U.S., so more countries for Il Makiage,” he said, “and in terms of Oddity, definitely more brands.”
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