Church & Dwight Buys Touchland, Danone Bets on Kate Farms 🥛

Welcome back to This Week in CPG, folks. Here’s what we’re covering this morning:

• L’Oreal circles Medik8 🧪

• L Catterton backs Farmley 🥜

• Beyond Meat secures debt 🍔

• Fruit Riot x Warheads collab 🍇

• BUILT refresh leads to sales surge 📈

Today we finally get to help announce the inaugural Talent Commerce Summit - the first annual celebrity brand conference for the best minds in talent commerce in partnership with Shopify. This is a one-day summit dedicated to gathering 250 brands, investors, talent managers, creatives, and athletes together to debate, discuss, and share ideas on where the industry stands, its challenges, and what can propel it forward. Tickets are free. Apply here!

Church & Dwight Buys Touchland 👀

Touchland, an innovative player in the hand sanitizer category, is being acquired by Church & Dwight for up to $880M. The deal includes $700M in cash & restricted stock along with a potential earnout of $180M.

Andrea Lisbona, a native of Barcelona, launched Touchland in 2014 in a bid to disrupt the hand sanitizer category by making it a more pleasurable, daily use product.

Lisbona accomplished this by adding premium fragrances and hydrating active ingredients to your average hand sanitizer formula. The company also pioneered a sleek vessel (seen above) that disperses hand sanitizer less messily, making daily use more convenient for consumers.

The goal, per Andrea Lisbona, was to become the Apple or Dyson of the hand sanitizer category, and they nailed the landing.

Touchland was growing steadily for its first six years in business — the brand secured distribution at prestige retailers like Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, and Ulta Beauty — but the pandemic of 2020 led to rocket ship growth. The brand posted 1,500% growth due to the pandemic and after launching at Sephora in 2021, the brand continued to deliver triple-digit revenue growth in subsequent years.

Touchland's TTM net sales through March 31, 2025 were approximately $130M, while EBITDA for the same period was an impressive $55M.

For Church & Dwight, this is their largest acquisition since purchasing Hero Cosmetics for $630M in 2022.

Touchland and Hero Cosmetics share a few common traits that made both brands desirable to Church & Dwight. They’re both fast-growing brands who created then dominated their respective categories, and they’re also asset light, wide margin businesses that were immediately accretive to cash earnings.

More on the transaction here.

Deals 💰

Mergers & Acquisitions 

• French dairy giant Danone is acquiring a majority stake in Kate Farms for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2011 by Michelle & Richard Laver, Kate Farms sells a variety of specalized nutrition shake products to retailers and hospitals. The company offers shakes for everyday nutrition, medical nutrition, and specialized cases like renal support and glucose support. Food Dive

• Japanese snack maker Kameda Seika is selling better-for-you snack brand Mary’s Gone Crackers for an undisclosed sum. The buyer is Canadian food manufacturer Dare Foods. Kameda Seika acquired Mary’s Gone Crackers in 2012 in order to expand its presence in the U.S. snack category. The once-thriving brand posted net sales of $36.3M along with an enormous net loss of $22.2M in 2023. Under the right stewardship, Mary’s Gone Crackers has the brand equity to return to profitable growth. Just Food

• Smart Organic, a Bulgarian manufacturer of organic snacks, has purchased UK-based vegan chocolate brand LoveRaw out of administration. LoveRaw launched in 2013 and retails at 13,000 stores across 25 countries. Revenue is said to be in the range of £3M. Vegconomist

• According to WWD, L’Oreal is reportedly interested in acquiring UK-based prestige skincare brand Medik8. Medik8 was founded in 2013 by Elliot Isaacs and focuses on developing clinical skincare applications with vitamins A & C. Global revenue is expected to hit $115M this year. Cosmetics Business

Fundraising

• Farmley, a fast-growing better-for-you snack brand from India, secured $42M in Series C funding. The round was led by L Catterton while existing investors like DSG Consumer Partners and others also participated. Farmley offers a wide variety of healthy snack products via its omnichannel distribution network. The company’s revenue has grown 55% annually over the past two years and they expect $41M in FY2025 sales. Entrepreneur

• Ailing plant-based meat producer Beyond Meat grabbed a $100M debt facility from an affiliate of Ahimsa Foundation. With consumer demand and volumes collapsing for Beyond Meat, it’s a miracle they managed to close this financing. Vegconomist

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What’s New 🤩

Apparel, Cosmetics, and Wellness

• Beauty entrepreneur Dr. Lamees Hamdan launched a longevity skincare brand called Timebeam Beauty. The brand is powered by NAD+ and is bringing four SKUs to market. Two of the SKUs are ingestible wellness products while the other two are topical skincare products. Prior to launching Timebeam Beauty, Dr. Hamdan co-founded Ouai which was acquired by P&G in 2021. Byrdie

• Lemme is launching a new daily intimacy supplement called Lemme Play. The new product is formulated with a nitric oxide boosting complex, maca root, and horny goat weed to support sexual wellness. The accompanying campaign featuring Kourtney Kardashian and Julia Fox is terrific. PR Newswire

• Luxury publisher Assouline released The Library Collection, a new line of fragrances and objects for the home. The collection features a variety of products including bookends, bookstands, trinket boxes, a tray, a frame, a backgammon set, an hourglass, and a magnifying glass. Beautiful. Wallpaper*

• Bloom Nutrition expanded its popular Greens & Superfoods line with an exciting new flavor — Frosted Lemonade. The new flavor is a Walmart exclusive. Instagram

Food, Beverage, and Alcohol

• Less than a month after announcing its first-ever licensed flavor with OLIPOP, Fruit Riot is back with another licensed flavor from Warheads. The new SKU, Extreme Sour Watermelon Blast Grapes, is available exclusively at select Walmart stores. Fruit Riot is already posting insane growth and these licensing agreements ought to continue that trend 👇 Instagram

• Premium non-alc beverage brand TÖST unveiled its newest product, Sangria. It’s arguably the brand’s best-looking beverage since launch. Constellation Brands acquired a minority stake in TÖST in early 2023. LinkedIn

• Schaller & Weber partnered with Zab’s Hot Sauce to release a spicy meat stick. The new SKU is available online and at select retailers like Central Market, Harmons, Kroger, and a handful of other chains. Good-looking product. Instagram

• Fast-growing meat snacks maker Archer is opening a second manufacturing facility in Los Angeles. The 140,000-square-foot facility is located in Vernon and will neary double Archer’s production capacity. Food Business News

• Non-alc beverage brand HOPWTR announced two key foodservice partnerships with Hopdoddy and Puttshack. BevNET

Data 🖥️

• After revealing its award-winning brand refresh, BUILT sales have skyrocketed. In the six months after the new packaging was launched, dollar sales tripled, and sales velocity per point of distribution doubled compared to the same period during the prior year. Great work from Interact Brands 👇 LinkedIn

• Vital Farms posted its 20th consecutive quarter of net revenue & volume growth. In Q1, net revenue increased nearly 10% to $162.2M and the company remains on track to hit $1B in annual net revenue by 2027. Vital Farms

Distribution News 🚚

• Positive Beverage launched at Harvest Foods in Washington.

• BFY cookie brand Joydays launched nationwide at Whole Foods Market.

• Chocolove launched three SKUs at Publix.

• UK-based The Foraging Fox launched storewide at Sprouts Farmers Market.