As a boutique investment bank, Ohana & Co. has had a hand in some of the most pivotal deals in beauty’s M&A history. Its track record includes the sale of Tarte to KOSÉ Corporation, Hourglass to Unilever, Diptyque to Manzanita Capital, Violet Grey to Farfetch, and ReVive Skincare to S'Young, to name a few. This year marked the bank’s 30th anniversary of its founding in Paris. With only 10 of those years including its presence in the US, the firm still sees an untapped opportunity in the American market for its dealmaking expertise.
The enterprise is led by the sibling powerhouse of investment banking: Managing Partners Ariel Ohana and Karine Ohana, and Senior Advisor Laurent Ohana. Ariel, who is now based in Los Angeles, founded the bank in Paris, in 1994 at just 23 years old, a few days shy of graduating from HEC Paris Business School. Prior to joining the company, Karine, based in Paris, had created the luxury goods division at French bank Société Générale. Based in New York, Laurent joined the firm when it opened its first US office, after investing in tech. With a team in Paris, New York, and LA, the firm is active in luxury, fashion, beauty, and digital M&A.
Building a Beauty Reputation
Luxury goods built the reputational ground for the bank to thrive. To date, it is the only firm to have closed transactions with all five of the major luxury strategics: LVMH, Richemont, Kering, Chanel, and Hermès. Their first beauty transaction took place in 2002 with the sale of French artisanal makeup brand T. LeClerc. That transaction set the ball rolling in beauty.
In 2005, Ohana & Co. facilitated the sale of Diptyque to Manzanita, one of the very first landmarks of beauty M&A activity and a testament to the bank’s eye for a beauty empire in the making. “After earning a reputation with successful indie brands, we earned a reputation with large strategics that we are able to identify the great brands while they were still at an early stage. A lot of strategists came to see us and said ‘We want to know what's next. Can we hire you?'”Ariel Ohana tells BeautyMatter.
Advising Large Global Strategics
Aside from the quintet of luxury strategics, Ohana & Co. quickly became a well-known name to corporates in the beauty space. The first to put their trust in the company was LVMH, following successful deals in the luxury space. Then, after meeting with Amorepacific’s CEO, Kyung-Bae Suh, the company went on to represent the South Korean conglomerate in the acquisition of Annick Goutal in August 2011 and their investment in Milk Makeup in December 2019.
In 2014, P&G decided to sell its entire beauty portfolio, and came knocking on the door. “It was a complete surprise,” Ohana recalls. “We had not approached them, and they came saying they were going to give the mass portfolio to another bank [Goldman] but wanted to give their luxury brand, Rochas, to us.” After a competitive process, Ohana negotiated the sale to Inter Parfums. “After that, our buyside advisory practice grew: from P&G and Coty in the US, Clarins and LVMH in Europe, KOSÉ Corp in Japan, S’Young in China, and Amorepacific in Korea, we have represented many of the top beauty strategics across the globe,” he adds. Strategics now represent about 30% of the firm’s business, with indie brands and their shareholders constituting the majority. As new deals and business relationships continued to flow in, Ohana & Co. soon looked to expand its geographical horizons.
US Expansion
The company first set its sights on the US following its closing of Tarte’s $145 million acquisition by KOSÉ Corporation in April 2014.“At the time it was one of the biggest beauty deals of the year, so it got us a lot of press. I felt it was the right time for us to have boots on the ground in the US because, at that point, we had done several deals that were cross-border deals involving US counterparties,” Ohana recalls.
“As an entrepreneur, I wanted to know: can we crack the biggest market in our industry?” he adds. “At that point, we already had a fairly strong track record but limited brand awareness in the US compared to our local competitors.” The biggest question was how the market would react to Ohana & Co.’s way of doing business. There was only one way to find out: at the end of 2014, the firm opened its first office in New York City, followed by another in Los Angeles in 2019.
In the next few years, Ohana & Co. is hoping to expand its US enterprises and boost brand awareness stateside even further. While anyone in the beauty industry will have heard of the bank’s deals and transactions, not all know about the team behind the scenes making them happen. “When I meet someone for the first time in 50% of cases, they actually have not heard of us. It’s pretty exciting to feel that there's still brand discovery to be done, especially on the founders’ side,” he adds.
A Distinctive Mindset
Given the bank’s growing client roster, what is Ohana & Co.’s magical ingredient that keeps companies coming back? Its founder highlights three main pillars responsible for the family-owned company’s success: industry expertise, a personal connection, and international reach. “With 22 years, we have been in the beauty space longer than most our clients, whether they are founders, PEs, or even corporate executives. Before they become our clients, we often discuss things not directly relating to M&A such as market entry strategy in the US or China and facilitate introductions,” Ohana explains.
Building a personal connection not solely focused on the business outcome but rather personal goals and ambitions is also important. “We deal with people differently. We have a less corporate way of interacting with people, and I think they appreciate that,” he says. “We are also focused on building relationships. In concrete terms, this means we love following entrepreneurs from early on—we don’t set a size threshold; if we think a founder is building something great, we will invest the time, even if there is no transaction on the horizon. Karine met Carisa [Janes, founder of Hourglass] when she was doing less than $10 million in revenues. But she had a clear vision of what she wanted to build and how to get there. She had a great sense of aesthetics and was saying no to many opportunities, and in many cases that's how you build a brand,” he says.
Several years later, Ohana & Co. ended up being the bank she called when considering a transaction, with Hourglass being acquired by Unilever in August 2017, another landmark deal in beauty. “We had the same experience with Romano Ricci, the founder of Juliette Has A Gun; when we first met him, his sales were under $5 million,” Ohana recalls. He went on to orchestrate the company’s leveraged buyout with Cathay Capital and Weinberg Capital Partners last year.
Ohana & Co.’s international reach doesn’t just encompass US and European companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and L’Oréal but also leading institutions in Asia. In November 2024, Ohana & Co. advised on the sale of RéVive to S’Young Group. They had previously worked with the Chinese conglomerate in 2021, leading to four transactions including their acquisition of Evidens de Beauté.
Navigating M&A Cycles
The beauty M&A space has been gaining more and more traction in recent years but has also had its fair share of booms and recessions. “Obviously it’s been a tougher environment in 2024. There's been a slowdown in beauty consumption in the US, plus the usual inflation concerns. That, in turn, led strategics to be a little bit more cautious. Having been in the space for 30 years, we've been through cycles, so I remain very bullish on the consumer environment. Building brands is the number one value creator and there are brands being created so we will have an upcycle,” Ohana notes.
As an early entrant to the arena, Ohana believes that one of the drivers for M&A will continue to be structural shifts in how the consumer buys, which then leads to shifts in distribution channels. The move to mass and masstige with retailers like Amazon and Target, the European pharmacy channel (counting recent transactions like Filorga, Korres, and Nuxe), and hybrid distribution are all on Ohana’s radar.
Tenacity On and Off the Court
Reflecting on three decades in business, Ohana prides Ohana & Co. on winning the trust of every client and creating a global brand in the process, but it was no simple feat. “Building a brand in financial services is not necessarily easy. It feels incredible to still be here and thriving 30 years later,” Ohana states.
Time and experience prove to be valuable teachers, but inspiration can also strike outside of the M&A bubble. As an aspiring tennis player in his personal life, Ohana draws parallels between the sport and navigating the daily challenges of being an entrepreneur. “Tenacity is definitely a common denominator. The one coaching advice I'll always remember: the only point that matters is the point you're about to play. You have to learn from every mistake, but you need to be ready for the next thing that's coming,” he states. That ability to pivot whenever and however needed while staying fiercely present in the current moment, has proved to be an invaluable strategy. Over the course of 30 years, Ohana & Co. has demonstrated an innate ability to spotlight and nurture the brand talents of tomorrow while maneuvering the ups and downs of the economic market—doing it in the boutique investment bank’s unique style of negotiations that put the entrepeneur first. Given the vast amount of ambitious dreamers and potential of opportunities in the beauty industry, that message is sure to gain them a growing community in the US and beyond.
