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.
For sponsors, brand owners and corporate parents
Three ways to work with us.
Sell us a brand
We acquire controlling stakes in beauty brands with $2m to $25m in sales: founder succession, a sponsor at the end of its hold period, a line a corporate parent is ready to let go, a balance sheet under pressure where the brand is sound and the financing is not. The name stays, the formula stays, and 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.
Invest alongside us
Where a brand needs more equity than we deploy on our own, we co-invest with a sponsor and hold the operating seat. The sponsor underwrites the capital; we underwrite the plan. Distribution, channels and the cost base come from a platform that runs them every day, and the operating plan is agreed before signing, so the first hundred days are execution rather than discovery.
Have us run a brand you keep
For a fund or a corporate that owns a beauty brand under-served in the United States, we take on its commercial operation on the platform: retail distribution, Amazon and TikTok Shop, media, supply and regulatory. Ownership stays where it is, and the brand gets an operator inside a retail network of more than 10,000 doors. Where both sides want it, the arrangement can lead to a purchase, discussed at the start rather than negotiated at the end.
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. We do not have to hire anyone to find out whether a brand can sell here. We sell here every day, and we do the work ourselves.
What we look for
Where we are the right buyer.
US prestige beauty retail sales reached $36bn in 2025, up 4%, and mass beauty $72.7bn, up 5%; fragrance and skincare grew in both.2 Within that market, this is where we are the right buyer. If a brand sits outside it, 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 carve-out of a line that deserves its own operator. A 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. Alongside a sponsor where the cheque is larger than ours. An operating mandate where the owner keeps the brand. |
| Horizon | Five years, and longer where the brand is compounding. The return comes from what a brand produces while we hold it, not from a resale we are counting on. |
What we do in year one
Six functions, already staffed.
Not a value-creation plan. This is what we did yesterday, for somebody else's brand.
Retail distribution
Pharmacies, beauty chains, clubs and pure-play e-retail: buying relationships across more than 10,000 doors, built one buyer at a time since 2013.
Assortment and catalog
Which SKUs, in which doors, at which price: what decides whether a launch survives its second season on shelf.
Amazon and TikTok Shop
Run as channels with owners and budgets, not bolted onto wholesale. Early-access partners on both.
Advertising and creative
Media built for the category and measured against sell-through, the number a retailer reorders on.
Supply and fulfilment
Warehousing, third-party logistics, landed cost, and the working capital underneath all three.
Regulatory
MoCRA registration and listings in the United States; CPNP and the product information file in Europe.
The process
An introduction, then a view.
Founders tell us the process is worse than the price. Here is ours, start to finish, 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
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.
Confirmatory diligence
We already sell in this category, these channels and these doors, so diligence checks what we expect to find rather than discovering it. That is why 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.
Twenty-five years in beauty, most of them spent opening the Americas for other people's brands. Now he buys them. At LVMH he worked across Europe, Mexico and the United States, and set up Kenzo's travel retail and Latin America subsidiary in Miami. When 3i and Investindustrial needed the Americas built and turned around at Perfume Holding, he was the operator they brought in, and he ran it from New York, making Ferrari the number one imported fragrance brand in Brazil and Benetton a staple across Latin America. He founded Amerikas in 2013 and has taken it onto the Inc. 5000 eight times, launching Bioderma, Uriage and SVR in the United States and rebuilding Embryolisse and Nuxe there. In 2024 he bought Skyn Iceland out of a distressed process in New York and has run it since, which is the deal Ukalipto exists to repeat.
Five years in M&A, then twelve on the operating side of beauty: sell-side and buy-side mandates, fundraisings and restructurings, then Chief Operating Officer at Dr. Brandt Skincare and at Kat Burki, finishing as President. He has run every function a beauty business has: finance, supply and manufacturing, marketing, and sales across wholesale, specialty retail, direct-to-consumer, Amazon and the marketplaces. At Ukalipto he originates and structures the acquisitions and owns integration, the operating plan and 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
1 Inc. 5000: company profile, inc.com/profile/amerikas, and the company's announcement of 12 August 2026, amerikas.com. Financial Times, Americas' Fastest Growing Companies: the company's announcement of 30 March 2023, amerikas.com.
2 Circana, US prestige and mass beauty retail 2025, 10 February 2026, circana.com.