Feelunique, Europe’s leading online beauty retailer, have acquired The Beautyst

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Feelunique, Europe’s leading online beauty retailer, have acquired The Beautyst, a leading French online beauty community and marketplace. The Beautyst has one of the most established online beauty communities in France and will significantly enhance Feelunique’s reach in Europe’s third largest market for online beauty.

As well as bringing together ultra-trendy beauty brands through its online marketplace, The Beautyst is the leading blog in France with rich editorial content for those passionate about beauty. The Beautyst has more than 1,300 bloggers and over 600,000 followers across its social media channels – a complementary fit to Feelunique, which is at the forefront of the digital beauty revolution.

Feelunique was founded in 2005 and offers the biggest choice of beauty products in Europe, with 450 brands and more than 20,000 products across makeup, beauty, perfume, accessories and electricals.

Joel Palix, CEO of Feelunique (and former president of the Clarins group), said: “Feelunique’s unrivalled portfolio of beauty products and The Beautyst’s large and dedicated online beauty community is a powerful combination. The acquisition of The Beautyst further accelerates our vision of becoming the leading player in online beauty in France, which is a strategically important market to us given its currently low online penetration. This acquisition will also strengthen our position amongst Millennials, a key audience for us.”

Feelunique raised £20m from London based Private Equity firm Palamon Capital Partners in April 2016 and are already one of France’s leading online beauty retailers, having launched a French website in November 2015 and acquired a physical bricks and mortar presence in April 2016. The combination of the two sites will create a platform through which to communicate with the combined customer base.

Feelunique carries major brands including Chanel, Dior, L’Oréal, Lancôme and Estée Lauder – it is the only online beauty “pure player” to have built up such an extensive portfolio of premium brands across all beauty categories and their dedicated editorial platform offers our customers insider knowledge on beauty including industry interviews, video tutorials and recommended products.

I am told 93% of Feelunique’s sales are online, with only 7% from its physical store presence in France and the Channel Islands. In total they sell more than 15,000 products daily. Alone, the French market for cosmetics is expected to grow to $24.2bn (£19.4bn) by 2020, so clearly this presents a huge opportunity for digital disruption.

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