L Catterton Stays Busy, High Noon Stays Hot 🔥

Welcome back to This Week in CPG, folks. Hope everyone had a restful weekend and a productive Monday. We have lots to cover today so let’s dive right in:

• L Catterton makes early-stage bets 💰

• Perfect Day raises a whopping $90M 🥛

• Rael expands into supplements 🆕

• High Noon continues to dominate 🍸

• Ryl Tea launches at Target 🎯

L Catterton Stays Busy 💰

L Catterton is off to a hot start in 2024. The consumer-focused investment firm has made two very different early-stage bets, one in China and the other in New York City.

First, L Catterton led a Series A+ round for Hi!Papa, a fast-growing personal care brand that’s focused on school-age children in China. Founded in 2019 by Jiangsheng Xuyu, Hi!Papa markets a wide variety of masstige skincare, sun care, and personal care products.

Hi!Papa is capitalizing on a growing trend of young mothers transferring their personal care routines along to their children. The category is expected to be worth around $7.3B by 2026, and the masstige segment in which Hi!Papa operates is expected to grow by 38% year-over-year.

Per Scott Chen, a Managing Partner in the RMB fund at L Catterton, “Having made more than 30 investments in the global personal care space, we have seen demand for products which specially meet children's skincare needs arise in other markets as they mature, and are not surprised that this arc is now unfolding in China too.”

Second, L Catterton invested in WTHN — pronounced “within” — which is a modern acupuncture clinic with one location in Brooklyn and another in Flatiron. WTHN also markets a number of wellness devices and supplements that are inspired by Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Additional investors include Halogen Ventures along with angel investors like Annie Evans of Dream Ventures and Kelley Arena of Golden Hour Ventures.

Per McKinsey, U.S. consumers spend $450B on wellness products and services annually, and L Catterton is clearly bullish on acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine being the next big wellness trend to go mainstream.

A quick glance at Google Trends supports this thesis. Search volume for terms like “acupuncture needles” and “facial acupuncture near me” are up 300% and 350%, respectively.

L Catterton is well-suited to help WTHN scale across the U.S. Over the years L Catterton has been a key partner to wellness-oriented retailers like CorePower Yoga, Equinox, and Pure Barre.

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Deals 💰

Mergers & Acquisitions 

• Peninsula Capital has acquired a 30% stake in Italian skincare brand VeraLab. The company was founded by Cristina Fogazzi, a popular beauty influencer who goes by Estetista Cinica (Cynical Aesthetician). VeraLab launched in 2016 and expected to finish 2023 with net sales of €70M. WWD

Fundraising

• Perfect Day, a Berkeley-based startup that uses fermentation to produce animal-free dairy and protein products, raised around $90M from existing investors. The founders of the company, Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi, are “stepping away” from their leadership roles as investors (understandably) seek returns. Thus far the company has raised an eye-popping $840M. AgFunder

• Mexican singer Luis Miguel invested in Casa Don Ramón, a premium tequila and mezcal brand that launched in 1996. The Spirits Business

What’s New 🤩

Apparel, Cosmetics, and Wellness

• After a fruitful 27-year partnership, Nike and Tiger Woods are officially splitting up. Tiger’s best days as a golfer are no doubt behind, but he’s still a legend and a bankable name, so it’ll be interesting to see which apparel firm signs him. There are lots of options, from billion dollar brands to 9-figure ones like Castore. ESPN

• Popular beauty brand Glossier is launching a new eye cream called full orbit. Per the company, an eye cream was one of the most requested products from customers. The packaging is (unsurprisingly) fantastic. Instagram

• Bridge Mentorship, a 6-month accelerator program from Beauty Independent and True Beauty Ventures, announced its first cohort of 2024. Three brands are participating: Pillowtalk Derm, Prakti, and Sofie Pavitt Face. Brands that previously participated in the accelerator program include Youthforia and Squigs Beauty. Beauty Independent

• Rael, a women’s wellness brand that’s best known for its period care and skincare products, is launching a new line of supplements on January 10th. WWD

• Prince Tennis and Sporty & Rich will be dropping their collaboration on January 10th. Prince has been knocking their collabs out of the park recently. Instagram

Food, Beverage, and Alcohol

• Oatly, the world’s largest oat beverage company, launched two new products: Unsweetened Oatmilk and Super Basic Oatmilk. The former is self-explanatory, while the latter is a much simpler oat milk that only contains four ingredients. GlobeNewswire

• Country singer Chris Stapleton has partnered with Buffalo Trace master distiller Harlen Wheatley — an epic name for a distiller — on a new spirits brand called Traveller Whiskey. Great-looking bottle, the map is a nice touch. Buffalo Trace

• Abraham Lule designed a beautiful wine label for the Beneduce Vineyards x Razza collaboration. The Dieline

• Darigold, one of the largest dairy producers in the U.S., launched a new line of dairy creamers called Belle Creamers. PR Newswire

• Non-alcoholic retailer Boisson is expanded its wholesale distribution by partnering with KeHe and LibDib, two industry leaders in on-premise and off-premise beverage distribution. Business Wire

Data 🖥️

• High Noon, the RTD cocktail brand that E. & J. Gallo launched in 2019, has surpassed Tito’s Handmade Vodka to become the largest spirits brand by volume in the U.S. High Noon sold an estimated 21.4M cases in 2023, up 30.5% year-over-year. The Spirits Business

Distribution News 🚚

• Ryl Tea launched four SKUs at select Target stores.

• VEGAMOUR, a vegan haircare brand, launched at Sephora in Canada.

• Non-alcoholic aperitif brand Ghia launched at 800 more Target stores. They’re now available in 1,300 Target stores nationwide.

• INBLOOM, the supplement brand founded by Kate Hudson, launched nationwide at Whole Foods Market.