Chinatown’s once-high-flying haircare brand Vegamour, now reportedly hitting hard times, is in private equity hands for a planned turnaround.
The company, known for its hair-growth products, has been acquired by Westport-based investment firm Windsong Global’s beauty platform, Belle Brands. Financials weren’t disclosed, but an anonymous source told The Business of Fashion that Vegamour was in foreclosure.
Founded in 2016 by beauty executive Daniel Hodgdon, Vegamour expanded at full throttle by filling a market white space for hormone-free hair wellness products marketed to women. The brand staked its claim in the increasingly crowded beauty space with bestselling products like its debut “clean” eyelash and eyebrow serums.
Topping the Business Journal’s list of L.A.’s fastest growing private companies in 2022, the brand saw its revenue balloon 1,900% from 2019 to 2021.
On the heels of that explosive growth, Vegamour’s future seemed bright. After years of bootstrapping, the company scored $80 million in funding from private equity firm General Atlantic in 2022. A year later, Hodgdon told the Business Journal he expected to bring home $140 million in revenue, up from $100 million in 2021.
Loss of operational rigor
A period of rapid capital-backed scaling followed in what Teresa Lo, global president of Belle Brands, tapped as a loss of operational rigor in an interview with The Business of Fashion. The balloon seemed to have popped in 2023, when Revio Labs data shows Vegamour’s headcount began to fall, and Hodgdon left the chief executive role. The company rotated through three chief executives in as many years.
“Any time brands raise a lot of funding, they grow very quickly. There can be a little bit of bloat in that, and they may not be working as efficiently as they did when they were smaller,” Lo said. “We cut the costs where there is truly fat, and then we can reinvest back into the areas that will actually grow and scale the business forward.”
Belle Brands, which previously acquired JVN and Pipette through Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, specializes in companies with strong fundamentals that need trimming. The platform will step in to stabilize Vegamour’s business, fine-tune its formulas and product array, and improve brand awareness, Lo said. Belle Brands also plans to strengthen the predominantly direct-to-consumer brand’s relationship with Sephora.
