PRIVATE EQUITY FIRM BUYS BEAUTYCOUNTER

The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, has bought a majority stake in cosmetics retailer Beautycounter, the companies have announced.
Beautycounter has branded itself as a leader in “clean” cosmetics, excluding more than 1,800 potentially harmful ingredients from its products.
The company was founded after CEO Gregg Renfrew saw “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s movie about the environmental crisis.
“I was able to get toxic chemicals out of my life when it came to household cleaning products but not when it came to skincare products,” she said in comments quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
Carlyle’s investment will be used to market the brand more widely and aggressively and strengthen its digital sales capacity.
The sale places a value on Counter Brands, Beautycounter’s parent company, at $1 billion.
The company was last valued at $400 million in 2018, according to the WSJ.
Beautycounter distributes its goods primarily through about 65,000 independent sellers who tout the products on social media and place orders through the company’s website.  
Beautycounter also operates a few physical storefronts and sells through some partner retailers.
TREND FORECAST: Again, we continue to note these mergers and acquisitions to illustrate both the concentration of wealth and the power of the few to control business sectors.
When America was the Land of Opportunity, there were not hedge funds or private equity groups monopolizing the economy. Indeed, while these groups were created after World War II, they did not begin to gain the buying and owning power they have now until the mid-1970s and they accelerated in the 1980s… as they helped fuel the 1987 stock market crash.