Beauty · M&A · Operators since 2013
We buy the brands we already know how to sell.
Ukalipto acquires and takes majority stakes in beauty brands with more market ahead of them than behind. We are operators before we are investors. The platform behind us has been opening markets for international beauty brands since 2013. The United States remains the focus, and the same model now runs beyond it.
The name, and the thesis
Built to compound, not to a timetable.
Ukalipto is derived from eucalyptus.
Eucalyptus grows faster than almost anything else with a trunk, and fastest where somebody tends it. It gives while it is standing, so nothing has to be cut down for it to be worth owning. And it regrows: from the stump, and from buds held beneath the bark.
We buy brands in order to own them, and the return has to come from what they produce while we hold them, not from a resale we are counting on.
What that means in the first year
A brand does not change hands so much as change chapters. The name stays. The formula stays. The people who built it usually keep building it.
What changes is how many doors it can walk through, and how well it is sold behind each one. We tell founders that before the first meeting ends, because it is the question they are really asking.
What we do in year one
We are brand builders and operators before we are buyers.
None of the following is a value-creation plan. It is what we did yesterday, for somebody else's brand.
Retail distribution
Pharmacies, beauty chains, clubs and pure-play e-retail. Two and a half thousand accounts, opened one buyer at a time since 2013.
Assortment and catalog
Which SKUs, in which doors, at which price. The decisions that determine whether a launch survives its second season on shelf.
Amazon and TikTok Shop
Run as channels with owners and budgets, rather than bolted onto wholesale. We are beta partners on both.
Advertising and creative
Media built for the category and measured against sell-through, which is the only number a retailer reorders on.
Supply and fulfilment
Warehousing, third-party logistics, landed cost, and the working capital that sits underneath all three.
Regulatory
MoCRA registration and listings in the United States, CPNP and the product information file in Europe. The work that decides whether a range can go on sale at all.
The platform behind the capital
Amerikas.
Ukalipto invests alongside an operating business that sells beauty in the United States every day, and is extending the same model into other markets. That business is the diligence, and it is the value creation.
What we look for
Where we are the right buyer.
If your brand sits outside this, say so anyway. We would rather read the note than have you guess.
| Category | Dermo-cosmetic and skincare, fragrance, and adjacent beauty. We know these shelves. |
|---|---|
| Geography | Headquartered in the United States or Europe. |
| Revenue | $2m to $25m in sales. |
| Situation | Founder succession. A brand under-served by its current US arrangement. A corporate carve-out of a line that deserves its own operator. A fund or sponsor at the end of its hold period. A balance sheet under pressure, where the brand is sound and the financing is not. |
| Structure | Controlling equity. |
| Horizon | Five years, and longer where the brand is compounding. |
The process
An introduction, then a view.
Founders tell us the process is worse than the price. This one is ours, and we hold to it.
An introduction
A conversation, under a non-disclosure agreement if you prefer. No teaser, no process letter, no bank required.
A view, in two weeks
We come back with what we think the brand can do, and what we would pay for it. Most of those two weeks is you deciding what to send us. Once it is in hand, the work takes hours.
Diligence without theatre
We already understand the category, the channels and the shelf, so diligence is confirmatory and it is short.
Close, then day one
The operating plan is agreed before signing, so the first hundred days are execution rather than discovery.
Who you will be dealing with
Two people, not a committee.
José has spent twenty-five years in beauty, most of it opening the Americas for other people's brands. At LVMH he worked across France, Mexico and the United States, including the launch of Kenzo's travel-retail and Latin America subsidiary in Miami. He was then the operator 3i and Investindustrial brought in to establish, turn around and lead Perfume Holding in the Americas, which he ran from New York. He founded Amerikas in 2013 and built it into a multi-channel distribution business that has made the Inc. 5000 eight times.
Five years in M&A, then twelve on the operating side of beauty. He worked sell-side and buy-side mandates, fundraisings and restructurings across a range of sectors before crossing over as Chief Operating Officer at Dr. Brandt Skincare and then at Kat Burki, finishing as President. He has run every function a beauty business has: finance, supply and manufacturing, marketing, and sales across every channel, from wholesale and specialty retail to direct-to-consumer, Amazon and the marketplaces. He has also hired and led the teams that ran them. At Ukalipto he originates and structures the acquisitions and owns what follows: integration, the operating plan, the first hundred days. As Chief Operating Officer of Amerikas he also runs the channels those brands land in.
Start a conversation
If you are thinking about it, a short note is enough.
Every conversation is confidential, and most of them go nowhere. That is exactly why it costs nothing to have one early.
Start a confidential conversationpartners@ukalipto.com · 7300 Biscayne Blvd, Suite 200, Miami, FL 33138