08.17.17
Yellow Wood Partners has acquired Freeman Beauty, from the equity firm Champlain Capital. Freeman is based in Los Angeles.
Yellow Wood Partners is a Boston-based private equity firm focused on investing in consumer brands and companies. In July, the firm completed the $1.425 billion sale of PDC Brands, a rapidly growing provider of beauty, personal care, and wellness brands.
Freeman's iconic brands include Feeling Beautiful, the #1 facial mask brand in the mass market. The company has a proven track record over the last several years of innovation across its brand portfolio. Freeman's brands are marketed in the food, drug, mass, and specialty beauty retail sectors, in addition to e-commerce channels.
Dana Schmaltz, Founding Partner of Yellow Wood Partners, said, "Freeman is a beauty industry pioneer that has created strong differentiated brand identity throughout its history. The company's brands are recognized as leaders in the mass facial mask and dry shampoo categories and enjoy broad distribution in mass and specialty oriented beauty and personal care channels. Yellow Wood's focus is to partner with great brands with strong consumer loyalty where we can help accelerate growth and assist with cost efficiencies. We have great confidence in the future potential of Freeman's brands and look forward to working with Jon Achenbaum and his team to fully expand into new and existing channels.”
Jon Achenbaum, CEO of Freeman, said, "We believe there is a substantial opportunity to grow distribution with all of our customers, and especially to expand outside of the U.S. and Canada into international markets including South America and Europe. The team at Yellow Wood fully understands our brands and customers, and together with their functional-area operating experience can help expand our products to new and existing categories and identify consumers around the world who will enjoy our products."