Why Attend
The No.1 Meeting Place For Beauty Business Partnering
M&A activity is at an all-time high within the beauty industry, with L’Oréal acquiring ModiFace in March 2018, Procter & Gamble securing First Aid Beauty for around $250 million, and most recently, L’Occitane acquiring L’Catterton backed luxury skin care brand ELEMIS. With an increasing number of private equity houses investing in beauty, 2019 is on track to be a record breaking year.
Enter the 5th in the Global series of the Beauty & Money Summit! Having connected over 500 industry leaders in 2018, through over 2000 one-on-one meetings, we are incredibly excited to bring this exclusive one-day event back to Los Angeles.
Building upon our global success, this year we not only connect 250 strategic buyers, financial buyers, retailers and independent beauty brands, but also take a deep-dive into the key areas critical for business growth in 2019 and beyond.
Sample of attendees from 2018 LA Summit
See what we got up to in 2018
The Beauty Spotlight
OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS
12 independent beauty brands, hand-picked by the prestigious Selection Committee, introduce themselves and their products on the main stage, in a quick-fire round of presentations.
Submissions will be accepted from both Mass and Prestige independent beauty brands in Colour Cosmetics, Skincare, Haircare, Fragrance, Bath & Body and Beauty Devices. They should be early to mid-stage brands that are actively seeking financial investment, acquisition, distribution, and/or marketing.
These can range from brands that have just started generating revenue all the way up to larger entities that have revenues of over $80 million.
Final submission date: 15th February 2019
Results announced: 5th March 2019
Submissions are now closed – check out who our 12 finalists are here!
Podcast with 2017 Spotlight Finalist - David Thurston, Co-Founder, Pulp Riot
Pulp Riot were one of 12 finalists in the 2017 Beauty & Money NY Brand Spotlight and went on to be sold to Beauty giant L'Oreal in a deal represented by Triangle Capital. In this podcast David speaks to Richard Kestenbaum, co-founder of Triangle Capital on his experiences growing his brand and going on to sell to L'Oreal.
2019 Selection Committee
Alicia Sontag
Benedict Auld
Benedict H. Auld is the founder and CEO of Lapidarius, a strategy consultancy in New York City. Ben has helped brands in health, wellness and beauty grow and change over the entirety of his career.
Benjamin Lee
Carla Ruiz
Carol Hamilton
David Olsen
Gillian Gorman Round
Rich Gersten
Rich has spent the last 30 years investing and building great consumer brands at top private equity firms including Tengram Capital Partners, L Catterton, and North Castle Partners. Rich spent the last 9 years dedicated specifically to investing in the beauty industry, where he developed an extensive network of relationships that sourced many emerging growth brands with very limited access to institutional capital. Realizing the significant opportunity to address this underserved area of the market in beauty, Rich founded True Beauty Ventures.
Rich received a BS in Economics from Union College (N.Y.) and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Robin Tsai
Sonya Brown
Based in Palo Alto, Sonya is a General Partner at NVP and co-heads the Growth Equity practice where she focuses on investing across a wide range of sectors including consumer, retail, internet, and business services.
Prior to joining NVP, Sonya was at Summit Partners, a private equity firm with over $11 billion under management, where she worked for nine years in the Boston office and was responsible for leading the firm's Consumer and Internet Industry Group in North America. Sonya was engaged in all aspects of the deal process including deal sourcing, due diligence, deal negotiations and board representation. Her most recent and past board directorships and investments include Aramsco, Airborne Health, Central Security Group, Physicians Formula Holdings (NASDAQ: FACE), Snap Fitness and Sparta Systems.
Victoria Garcia
Victoria is a Brand Building Executive with in-depth global experience in the fashion and beauty industries. She focuses on leveraging her strong business planning, merchandising, digital and financial expertise, with an emphasis on inventory optimization. Victoria holds a unique balance between analytics and creative that she is able to drive in her strategic problem solving and decision making. She enjoys cultivating teams and aligning operations to propel companies forward.
Richard Kestenbaum
Richard is a co-founder and Partner of Triangle Capital and has been an investment banker for over 35 years. Richard has a great deal of experience advising clients in merchandising businesses, particularly in the Retail & Consumer sector. Richard is an often-quoted expert on the retail and merchandising industries. He is a Contributor to Forbes.com where he writes a regular blog about trends in retail and consumer product businesses. He also appears regularly in print and other media as well as industry panels and speaking programs.
Before co-founding Triangle, Richard was a Managing Director at a boutique investment banking firm called Financo, Inc. While at Financo, Richard was responsible for a majority of the firm’s apparel industry transactions. Prior to joining Financo, Richard was a Partner and First Vice President at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At Drexel, Richard was responsible for a group of 14 professionals doing middle-market mergers and acquisitions around the world.
Richard is the co-author of three books on finance and computer programming. He is formerly an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Business at the graduate program of the Stern School of Business at York University.
Richard received a BS in Accounting from New York University and an MBA with a concentration in Finance from Harvard University. Richard is married and lives in New York.
Click here to read Richard’s blog and follow him on Forbes.com.
Bentley Eidsmo
John Bailey
Jodi Katz
Jodi’s career has spanned the quickly evolving communications marketplace. She started her career agency-side at BBDO, followed by jobs with magazine publishers, digital start ups and beauty brands. Prior to launching Base Beauty, Jodi was the Creative Director of the global prestige French brand L’Occitane en Provence. She graduated from
Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania with a degree in Government in Law and lives with her family in New Jersey. Her hobbies include fitness, Rent the Runway and watching reality TV on Bravo (her current favorite show is Below Deck).
Julia French
Michael Sampson
Michael Sampson is a brand expert with a career spent leading in large multi-nationals, start-ups and scaling organizations. Currently he is the CEO of Kate Somerville Skincare LLC, an innovator in prestige beauty building a global footprint focusing on channel diversification, product development, digital strategy and consumer engagement. Born in the UK and having lived in Brussels, Belgium, St. Paul, MN, Boston, Philadelphia, New York and now Los Angeles, Michaels movement has been a result of success in numerous functions, categories and channels. Michael started his career and developed with over a decade at L’Oréal holding multiple senior positions. He then led multi brand creation and development as portfolio President at incubator Hatchbeauty LLC, and ran vertical integration as well as new business acquisition thereafter.
Michael serves on the board of a startup tech company in the professional beauty industry called DirectTips LLC focusing on communication and mobile banking. He is also a Business and Strategy Advisor / Mentor for TrendSeeder Corp, an education ecosystem focusing on fashion, beauty, health & wellness innovators
Ilya Seglin
Speakers
Paula Pontes
Alex Fogelson
Alex completed his B.S.M at Tulane University in 2011, going on to complete an MFin. Alex went on to work in varied positions at Coach, The Estee Lauder Companies, Li & Fung Beauty, CHAPFIX+, and the Fung Group, and in 2015 he co—founded Taste Beauty along with two others, with over 30 years of experience in the beauty industry.
Taste was founded with a hungry spirit and a passion to drive innovation through the most unique products, highest quality, unprecedented customer service and rapid speed to market.
Alicia Sontag
Ranked one of Beauty's 50 Most Powerful Women by WWD (2015), and two-time honor of Fortune Most Powerful Women conference (2015/2016), Alicia is a Co-Founder and Partner at Prelude Growth Partners. Prelude Growth Partners is a New York City based growth equity firm focused on providing capital and value-added operatingsupport to high potential, fast-growing consumer brands. Prelude seeks to make investments of $3million to $15 million in each company, across branded consumer categories including personalcare/beauty, food & beverage, baby, pet, health & wellness and other consumer categories.
Alicia Yoon
Bee Shapiro
Bee Shapiro is a New York Times beauty contributor, a position she has held since 2009, the author of the newly published collection Skin Deep, and the founder of Ellis Brooklyn, a luxurious, sustainable, chemical-free line of skincare and perfume.
Dr Heather Rogers
Heather D. Rogers is a board certified dermatologist and fellowship trained dermatologic surgeon, specialising in prevention and treatment of sun damaged skin including pre-skin cancers, skin cancers, moles and photo damage. However, in 2014, Dr Rogers founded Doctor Rogers Skin Solutions, which was the beginning of premium scientifically-proven, clean and allergen-free products.
Katie Rosen Kitchens
Co-founder of FabFitFun, Katie Rosen Kitchens has led its evolution as a female-focused media brand, from writing about great lifestyle products to getting them into people’s hands. Since launching the FabFitFun lifestyle box 2013, Rosen Kitchens has shifted her energy toward curating fresh and exciting brands for FabFitFun members and overseeing all brand partnerships and product development.
Building on this to place the brand at the intersection of content, community and commerce, Rosen Kitchens has spearheaded FabFitFun’s evolution into one of most-loved membership services that spans beauty, fashion fitness, home, tech and more. As editor in chief, Rosen Kitchens continues to oversee all of FabFitFun’s content including it’s quarterly lifestyle magazine, video, online and social posts, and spearheads FabFitFun’s charity initiatives.
After earning English and Sociology degrees from George Washington University, Rosen Kitchens joined the fashion, beauty, and nightlife guide Scheckys.com as its L.A. editor. She has written for an eclectic variety of magazines, newspapers and websites including the Los Angeles Times, Art and Living, Women’s Life, Dining Out, Pasadena Mag, LA Splash, and Venice News. In-between blogs and articles, Rosen Kitchens has worked in TV production on several shows including It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Jackass, and has also had a few of her own plays produced.
On any given day Rosen Kitchens is testing out protein bars, experimenting with exfoliators, swinging kettlebells, seeking out sex secrets, hailing high/low styles, interviewing fit-lebrities, examining fast & slow food, investigating mood boosters, working out at work, cycling, and more, all to find the best in beauty, fashion, fitness, nutrition and wellness for her FabFitFun subscribers.
When Rosen Kitchens is not at FabFitFun, she can be found hiking, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with her husband Daniel and their daughters, Summer and Sienna.
Katie Welch
Meri Baregamian
Emmanuel Rey
French-born and one of nine siblings, Emmanuel Rey obtained a degree in engineering in agronomics, and in 2017 founded YUNI Beauty, and at the end of 2018, in a competitive group with Ouai hair care and Youth the people, YUNI received the Rising Brand of the Year Award from the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Danica Calderhead
Frédéric Benqué
Mr. Frédéric Benqué serves as Managing Partner and General Partner at NextWorld Evergreen. He Co-Founded TextMe, Inc. in 2011 and serves as its Director. Mr. Benqué is a seasoned investor with solid financial and operational background. He has over 15 years of experience in various finance and investment roles. His expertise gained him the prestigious rising star in Finance by Financial News in 2006, and facilitated the creation of Credo, an all-clean beauty retailer.
Jennifer Yen
From Power Rangers to saving complexions with her skin care company purlisse beauty to momtrepreneur with her inspiration of the power of 8 Superfoods.
Jennifer Yen started her career as TV villainess on Power Rangers which wrecked her skin from the heavy makeup and bright lights inspiring her to create purlisse beauty: www.purlisse.com.
After becoming a mother and feeling completely depleted Yen quickly recovered through a Superfood lifestyle, used by generations of women in her family.
The power of Superfoods led Yen to start her second company, YENSA (meaning Color + Face in Chinese) the Superfood Cosmetic and the first Cosmetics meets Superfood Science brand, connecting Superfood Science, Complexion Cosmetics and Superfoods.
Each product is infused with 8 Superfoods (8 representing good luck, prosperity and infinite possibilities in Chinese culture).
Since launching on October 8, 2018 ,YENSA has received over 240,000 positive reviews with top features in CEW, PopSugar, WWD, Coveteur, Byrdie, Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood Life, Bustle, New Beauty and more. Cardi B and Jeffree Starr are among the influencer/celebrities to use the product + many more.
YENSA supports women organizations and recently partnered with Dress For Success #YourHourHerPower campaign featuring 8 SuperWomen: Michelle Phan, Jana Kramer, Aja White, Farnaz Charmatz, Sara Boyd, Deddeh Howard, Jesse Draper, Jennifer Yen who have shared their journeys in this campaign to help motivate and inspire women. Watch the full video here
Lori Haram
Lori Haram is the Senior Vice President, Business Affairs and Operations for the Cluster of Brands that are led by Executive Group President, John Demsey. In this role, Lori is responsible to drive strategic projects across the more than 20 brands in the Cluster, as well as support specific initiatives within certain brands, notably Too Faced where she is the primary point of contact between the brand and the larger ELC organization. Lori is also the Chief of Staff to John Demsey.
Previously, Lori led New Business Development for ELC. In that role, Lori completed 8 acquisitions, including Smashbox, Le Labo, BECCA and Too Faced, and 2 minority investments. In 2016, Lori was named as one of the most influential women in mid-market M&A by themiddlemarket.com.
Lori has more than 30 years’ experience in global finance and strategic planning. Following the completion of her business school education, she joined The Estee Lauder Companies as a Financial Analyst in the International division. Lori went on to hold various leadership positions within ELC including Vice President, Finance for Estée Lauder, USA and Canada; Vice President, Global Finance and Strategic Planning for M.A.C Cosmetics, and Senior Vice President, Global New Business Development. In these roles, she worked closely with the Brand Presidents and Senior Management to develop and execute strategic and financial priorities for the business.
Over the course of her career, Lori worked outside of ELC for approximately 5 years. From 1996-1998, she held the position of Vice President, Finance for EMI Group, Angel Records Division, and from 2007-2009 she was first a consultant to, and subsequently the General Manager of the then-independent beauty brand Carol’s Daughter.
Lori developed and delivers a Career Readiness program to 12th grade students under the auspices of the non-profit organization PENCIL and is also the Treasurer of the Lords Valley Country Club. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration, Management, from SUNY-Binghamton and a Master of Business Administration, Finance and Accounting, from Columbia University. She and her husband Khaled live in Manhattan, and their son Ian lives close by.
Michelle Connelly
Michelle Connelly joined Credo in 2017 with nearly a decade of experience in the industry, successfully driving beauty brands at retail through strategically planning their marketing initiatives, visual merchandising and inventory planning. Prior to being recruited to lead the Credo merchant team, Michelle’s career in beauty began after successful stints at both Sephora and Macy’s.
Credo is the leading clean beauty retailer based in San Francisco, CA boasting the largest, safest and cleanest beauty assortment in the U.S. Credo has 8 locations across the nation with more on the horizon and carries the most beautiful, effective and clean beauty brands available today.
Carla Ruiz
Heather Connelly
Rich Gersten
Rich has spent the last 30 years investing and building great consumer brands at top private equity firms including Tengram Capital Partners, L Catterton, and North Castle Partners. Rich spent the last 9 years dedicated specifically to investing in the beauty industry, where he developed an extensive network of relationships that sourced many emerging growth brands with very limited access to institutional capital. Realizing the significant opportunity to address this underserved area of the market in beauty, Rich founded True Beauty Ventures.
Rich received a BS in Economics from Union College (N.Y.) and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Sarah Foley
Sarah is a senior finance professional with 20 years of private equity and financial advisory experience. Most recently, Ms. Foley served as CFO of a New York City-based food company for over two years. Ms. Foley has served as a member of multiple private company boards of directors. She is also an active angel investor and member of New York Angels.
Shelby Wild
Founder Shelby Wild is aiming to revolutionize the beauty industry with her naturally-derived haircare company Playa. Shelby founded Playa in 2017, hoping to simplify her own haircare routine with easy-to-use, toxin-free products. With millennial-chic packaging and transparent ingredients, Playa was quickly in demand from retail and beauty giants Sephora, Net-A-Porter, and Revolve.
Sonya Brown
Based in Palo Alto, Sonya is a General Partner at NVP and co-heads the Growth Equity practice where she focuses on investing across a wide range of sectors including consumer, retail, internet, and business services.
Prior to joining NVP, Sonya was at Summit Partners, a private equity firm with over $11 billion under management, where she worked for nine years in the Boston office and was responsible for leading the firm's Consumer and Internet Industry Group in North America. Sonya was engaged in all aspects of the deal process including deal sourcing, due diligence, deal negotiations and board representation. Her most recent and past board directorships and investments include Aramsco, Airborne Health, Central Security Group, Physicians Formula Holdings (NASDAQ: FACE), Snap Fitness and Sparta Systems.
Tina Bou-Saba
As a partner and advisor, Tina is open-minded, inclusive, trustworthy, and enthusiastic. Extremely hands-on in her work, she listens intensely and celebrates collaboration. Tina has sharp instincts for commercial opportunities, honed through her experience in strategy at Victoria’s Secret and in equity research analyzing public retailers. From exploring international expansion opportunities for a major retailer to crafting marketing strategy for a consumer start-up, she is an independent thinker who loves digging into hard problems.
Victoria Garcia
Victoria is a Brand Building Executive with in-depth global experience in the fashion and beauty industries. She focuses on leveraging her strong business planning, merchandising, digital and financial expertise, with an emphasis on inventory optimization. Victoria holds a unique balance between analytics and creative that she is able to drive in her strategic problem solving and decision making. She enjoys cultivating teams and aligning operations to propel companies forward.
Allison Elliott
Allison is the Store Director at VIOLET GREY, a content and commerce company born out of Hollywood beauty culture. As the brick and mortar retail authority at the company, Allison oversees all facets of VIOLET GREY’s Melrose Place flagship store including developing strategies to expand store traffic and optimize revenue, motivating and mentoring store staff, and ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction through best in class service. Since Allison joined VIOLET GREY in June 2018, the flagship store has experienced 50+% YOY revenue growth.
Prior to joining VIOLET GREY, Allison was the West Coast District Manager at Space NK and the West Coast Boutiques Regional Manager at Nars where she oversaw a multitude of stores, store openings and department store concessions.
Allison works concurrently as a professional make-up artist. She has trained under Francois Nars and Lena Koro and currently assists Monika Blunder. She has worked as a leading backstage makeup artist during New York Fashion Week and provided celebrities with red carpet makeup for The Emmy’s, The Golden Globes and The Critics’ Choice Awards to name but a few.
Liz Scott
Liz is the President at EC Scott Group where she oversees Company Strategy, Finance, Trade Marketing, Sales & Education, Communications, and the development of the Beauty and Wellness categories.
Liz attended Wharton with a concentration in retail & marketing. From her time at Saks Fifth Avenue, she brings respect for traditional retail, and from Gilt Group, a passionate entrepreneurial mentality, which fuels her motivation to bring brands and retailers success within the changing beauty landscape.
EC Scott Group, founded in 2004, is the premier Sales, Service, and Training company for prestige beauty companies in the specialty retail channel in North America. EC Scott Group’s services include everything from behind the scenes (i.e. warehousing, pick & pack, retailer headquarter management, collections), to the support in-store that makes independent retail partners successful (i.e. in-store education & training, event planning & execution, sell-through support).
Amanda Mueller
Devon Bergman
Eric Cohen
Andrew Beddoe
Hatel Bhakta
Hatel Bhakta is a serial entrepreneur, avid investor, and Co-Founder of Creative Intellects, a performance based digital agency focused on driving top-line revenue and reducing customer-acquisition costs. Her clients include, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Harley Davidson, Liverpool Jeans Company, Celebrity Pink, Bella Dahl, AllState, and many more. Hatel’s core leadership breathes new life into her client’s brands by elevating both a digital and offline footprint.
She has a keen ability to combine her technical and creative skills in digital marketing strategies, which allows for her to lend her expertise for consumer and retail brands. Hatel is known for her ability to effectively identify brand positioning, increase brand awareness, and implement lead generation strategies. She has a proven track record to leverage marketing initiatives for credible brands that are unique to the market. Her agency and partners have collectively instituted strategies for brands to elevate such reach through lead-generation and affiliate marketing.
As a visionary she is able to bridge the gap for brands to take them to the next level. In addition, Hatel is also a faculty member at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, where she develops and teaches curriculum in Social Media, Beauty, and Apparel for specialized degrees.
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Based on your objectives, we can create bespoke packages designed specifically for you. Opportunities predominantly lie in 3 main categories: Thought Leadership, Branding, and Networking.
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The Agenda
What you can expect at the Beauty & Money Summit, LA 2019:
- 150+ industry leaders including influential directors and C-level executives from the top independent mid-market beauty brands, large multi-national strategic buyers, financial investors active in beauty, and trend-setting retailers.
- Make 2019 the year for growth with a full agenda diving deep into how brands can sustain future growth and build strategies to overcome business plateaus.
- Opportunities to connect using our private one-to-one meeting scheduler application. This is your chance to find your next business opportunity, retail partnership, or source of capital.
- Enter your brand for the Beauty Spotlight - 12 beauty brands,
who are actively seeking investment, acquisition or partnerships, will be hand picked to showcase their brand on the main stage.
Download Agenda
Venue
SLS Hotel Beverly Hills, 465 La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90048, USA
Special room rate: $359 + tax (single occupancy)
Book by 6th April 2019 and always quote Kisaco Research Beauty & Money Summit LA 2019 to benefit from this rate.
Book your group rate for Kisaco Research Beauty and Money Summit here.
Conference Packages
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Applicable for Primary Market, Service Provider and Industry Rates Only. Not available for Academic or ‘Start-Up’ rates
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If you would like to register a team of 3 or more, please email [email protected] for your discount coupon code before registering. PLEASE NOTE: Discounts cannot be combined with Early Bird Pricing or any other discount or offer. If you have any questions about your registration, please call us on +44 (0)20 3696 2920
About Kisaco Research
Kisaco Research produces, designs and hosts B2B industry conferences, exhibitions and communities – focused on a specialized selection of topic areas.
Meet industry peers that will help build a career-changing network for life.
Learn from the mistakes of your peers as much as their successes—ambitious industry stalwarts who are happy to share not just what has made them successful so far but also their plans for future proofing their companies.
Note down the inspired insight that will form the foundation for future strategies and roadmaps, both at our events and through our online communities.
Invest both in your company growth and your own personal development by signing up to one of our events and get started.
