L Catterton Partners with Naomi Watts, Oatside Lands Funding 🥛

Welcome back to This Week in CPG, folks. We have a lot of fun stuff to cover so let’s dive in:

• Naked Rivals raises $3M 🍋

• Trive Capital closes Fund V 💰

• Lemme launches soft chews 👀

• McConnell’s x See’s Candies 🍦

• L’Occitane Group continues growth story 📈

Shout-out to Crafted for making it so easy for brands to source great UGC.

Deals 💰

Mergers & Acquisitions 

• L Catterton and Naomi Watts have joined forces to acquire Stripes Beauty, the menopausal wellness brand that Watts launched with Amyris in 2022. About a year after launching, Amyris filed for bankruptcy protection, so Watts acquired Stripes Beauty with a group of investors for $500K. Now Watts has a reliable, deep-pocketed partner in L Catterton to scale Stripes Beauty into a global menopausal wellness player. A win-win. PR Newswire

Fundraising

• Oatside, a Singapore-based oat milk brand, secured around $35M in Series B funding. The vertically integrated brand was founded by Benedict Lim in 2020. Their previous investors include Temasek and GGV Capital. Oatside has been growing fast and is now the oat milk brand across a number of Southeast Asian markets. DealStreetAsia

• Trive Capital, a Dallas-based private equity firm with exposure to various consumer categories, raised $1.5B for its fifth fund. The firm now has north of $7B in assets under management. SEC

• Naked Rivals, an Australian purveyor of frozen lime & lemon juice cubes, secured $3M AUD from a number of angel investors. The company was founded 18 months ago to make it easier to add citrus to beverages without having to cut & squeeze. Kinda clever. Business News Australia

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What’s New 🤩

Apparel, Cosmetics, and Wellness

• Lemme, the supplements brand co-founded by Kourtney Kardashian Barker, launched an interesting new product — Lemme Curb Soft Chews. Could easily see soft chews eclipsing gummies as the preferred method for delivering active ingredients. Instagram

• The 7 Virtues, a clean fragrance brand that secured funding from Unilever Ventures and True Beauty Ventures late last year, has named James Park as its new CEO. The brand also opened its first-ever store which is located in Halifax. Beauty Independent

• Dr. Naana Boakye, the dermatologist behind a number of celebrity skincare brand like Loved01 and KINLO, launched Dr. Naana Beauty. The new line focuses on overall skin health and features ingredients like cocoa extract and shea butter. Beauty Independent

• Pleasing, the beauty brand founded by Harry Styles, dropped a new nail polish collection and opened an impressive pop-up in Chicago. The pop-up will be open thru July 14th. Hypebae

Food, Beverage, and Alcohol

• McConnell’s Ice Creams collaborated with See’s Candies on a delicious-looking collection of ice creams. Four flavors are available: Vanilla with California Brittle, Coffee with Molasses Chips, Chocolate with Polar Bear Claws, and Banana Cream with Toffee-ettes. A lot of collabs seem superfluous lately but this one is a home run. PR Newswire

• Blackbird Foods expanded their range of plant-based chicken wings with two new flavors: Texas BBQ and Thai Chili. Their packaging is always great. Vegconomist

• Tepache brand De La Calle refreshed their packaging as they reposition themselves as a “Modern Mexican Soda” brand. This move makes a lot of sense — tepache might still be a little too esoteric for non-Hispanic consumers in the U.S., so reframing their offering as soda is clever. Also their products are fantastic so I hope De La Calle crushes it. Twitter

• OWYN, the plant-based protein shake brand that was acquired for $280M earlier this year, launched a new range of High Protein Complete Nutrition Shakes. Each serving contains 180 cals, 26g of protein, and 23 vitamins and minerals. Legit. Instagram

• Portland-based Nico’s Ice Creams collaborated with Big Nose Kate Whiskey on a Manhattan ice cream. Love the co-branded ice cream cup. Instagram

Data 🖥️

• L’Occitane Group delivered mostly impressive FY2024 results. Net sales jumped over 24% to €2.5B while Sol de Janeiro sales surged 167% year-over-year. Sol de Janeiro also posted triple-digit growth in all geographies. Profit dipped 13.9% year-over-year, however. L’Occitane Group

Distribution News 🚚

• Haircare brand Virtue Labs launched at 350 Ulta Beauty stores.

• MìLà went nationwide at Whole Foods Market.

• Kanpai Foods launched at HomeGoods.