For over six years, American tennis player Serena Williams was eager to introduce a beauty brand that would be an extension of her personality. In 2021, The Good Glamm Group collaborated with her and today, they jointly introduced Wyn Beauty by Serena Williams in the US.
Throughout this collaboration, the toughest part for Good Glamm Group’s group founder and CEO Darpan Sanghvi was to keep this association under wraps and away from the prying eyes of the media for three years. “If I wanted Good Glamm Group to be a global beauty company, it could not be by our indigenous brands to the Indian diaspora and other parts of the world. I needed to create global brands that will appeal to local consumers in the US and Europe, and not just focus on the Indian diaspora,” he reasoned.
The other challenge Sanghvi faced was convincing Williams to come on board as a collaborator, which took him a whole year. “Throughout my career, I was always searching for makeup that looked good after hours on the court, mixing products myself and creating my own formulas while travelling the world. As I evolved and remained active both on and off the court, I needed products I could apply at 7 am before a full day of meetings, spending time with my kids, making time for the things I love and still look good at the end of the day,” said Williams, the winner of 23 major Grand Slam women's singles titles, the most in the Open Era, and the second-most of all time.
Built on this premise, the brand currently has 91 shades across 10 products in the face, lip and eye categories and is priced between $20 to $30, placing it in the premium segment.
Visibly excited about this announcement, Sanghvi told Outlook Start-Up that Wyn Beauty by Serena Williams would be distributed and sold across 685 stores of Ulta Beauty. Sanghvi said that being present in close to 50% of the leading retailer’s outlets will help the company tremendously in customer acquisition; it will gain from the visibility as visitors can feel and try it in person.
Sanghvi is an old hand at building celebrity-led beauty brands. Within a year of starting his journey with the Good Glamm Group in 2017, he worked with fashion designer Manish Malhotra to introduce his Haute-Couture makeup range under the company’s personal care beauty brand, MyGlamm.
Williams’ brand identity will help in creating the requisite pull factor for Wyn Beauty by Serena Williams. The Good Glamm Group has come up with a marketing plan entailing large window displays featuring the tennis player, as well as large gondolas in premium areas of the stores to capitalise on footfalls. While Serena's brand persona combined with the attractiveness of the product packaging will attract customers, the company will leverage its well-entrenched CRM growth hacks to convert them into mini brand ambassadors on social media and generate referrals and word-of-mouth publicity.
The Good Glamm Group’s healthcare brand Sirona and baby care brand Mom’s Co are already present in the Middle East and North Africa and the company wants to push the envelope for its international business. According to sources, it has pumped Rs 250 crore for its global activities in the past three years.
As it strengthens its presence and credibility in the overseas market, the company will gradually introduce its Indian brands to those markets to augment its product offerings. However, it will boil down to having the right retailer for the right brand at the right price point. “The overall contribution from our international business will be 25% to 35% of our overall revenues by the end of 2025,” Sanghvi said. Incidentally, this is also when the company aims to go for its IPO listing.
The beauty products and content unicorn was in the news for reportedly raising Rs 245 crore (about $30 million) through a rights issue at a flat valuation of $1.2 billion from existing investors, including Warburg Pincus in March, with plans to raise another $35–40 million at the same valuation. However, Outlook Start-Up has learned that the actual fundraise through internal sources was around $40 million. The company was in the process of raising external capital flow for an additional $30 million, which will bring its total funding to $70 million, and will pick up the threads of that conversation post the US debut.
The company’s revenues in FY2021 stood at Rs 49 crore, which shot up to Rs 210 crore in FY 2022 and Rs 640 crore in FY 2023. Sanghvi accepted that the company can’t continue achieving the 250% CAGR it achieved between these years and is likely to grow at 35% to 40% this year.
“Our target for FY24 is to cut down our losses and become CM2 profitable and become EBITDA positive in FY25,” he said. CM2 is a metric that indicates that the revenue generated covers the cost of generating that revenue. “While our FY24 revenues will be healthy, it won’t be anywhere close to the crazy growth that we had earlier experienced.”
To achieve profitability before going public in 2025, The Good Glamm Group slashed its marketing spending by 40%. It also downsized its workforce over the past year, letting go of around 120 out of its 1,000 employees.
