Make better decisions on the indie beauty market

Indie beauty is consolidating. The big groups still want founder brands, but they're buying carefully.

We've found a lot of interesting signals. For example, in March 2026, Henkel agreed to buy Olaplex, the hair care brand, for about $1.4B in cash, with its main investor Advent selling its whole stake. Then in April, Estée Lauder took a minority stake in 111Skin, a luxury skincare brand founded by a plastic surgeon. Big groups are still paying for strong brands, but they're also testing some with smaller stakes before buying.

In this section, we look at who is buying indie brands now, what they're paying for, and what this means for founders deciding whether to sell or keep growing on their own.

Launching a beauty brand has never been easier. Making money from one has rarely been harder.

We compare six kinds of indie brands, from skincare and makeup to haircare, fragrance and beauty devices. Their buyers include shoppers, retailers like Sephora and Ulta, and the big groups looking for their next acquisition. Then we rank what hurts most, like rising ad costs, retailers' demands on margins and stock, and copycat products that arrive within months.

This shows which problems founders and investors should solve first, and which ones every brand has to live with.

Sales through retailers, a brand's own website, subscriptions, Amazon, salons and, in the end, the sale of the brand itself: indie beauty companies make money in several ways.

We compare where the margin goes. Selling on a brand's own site keeps more of each sale, but every new customer costs money in ads. Retailers bring reach, but take a big share and can ask for exclusives or take back unsold stock. Amazon brings volume and price pressure. And for many founders, the real payday is selling the brand, which only works if growth and margins look good at the right moment.

You'll see which models still make money when ad prices rise, and which ones only work if a buyer shows up.

Indie beauty keeps growing for reasons that go beyond trends, so we go through each one.

Some are easy to see: shoppers who want new brands, retailers that give them shelf space, and contract manufacturers that let a founder launch without a factory. Others feed each other. A hit product wins retail space, which brings new customers, which brings the data to launch the next product. And each big acquisition shows investors there's a way out, so they fund the next wave.

Before building or investing, you should know what makes shoppers come back for a second product, and what makes a brand profitable before it gets big.

Rare Beauty and Glossier are the indie names everyone knows, but they're only a small part of this market.

Many of the interesting brands grow without much noise. Some sell one product in salons or pharmacies. Others build a fragrance line around a cult scent, make cleaner nail polish, or sell skincare devices people use at home.

They're hard to spot because a brand can look huge online and sell very little, or sell a lot in stores with almost no buzz. Most are private, so their real sales and margins stay hidden.

Below, you'll find the market grids and ecosystem maps we've built to show which brands sell where, and where newer founders are getting in.

Huda Beauty, Glow Recipe, Merit… a few indie brands have grown big while staying independent. Their paths are very different.

Huda Beauty grew from a makeup blog into a global brand, and its founder bought back the stake held by its investor to regain full ownership. Glow Recipe built its skincare line around fruit ingredients and grew through one big beauty retailer. Merit sells a small range of simple makeup and grew by keeping it that way. None of these paths is a formula, and each brand still has to keep its customers coming back.

We'll look at how these founders kept control of their brands, and what that teaches anyone deciding when, or whether, to sell.