P&G acquires Walker & Company Brands, a direct-to-consumer marketer of Bevel and Form Beauty personal-care products, to better serve consumers of color around the world and to secure founder Tristan Walker’s cultural cachet.

WHO: Walker & Company Brands was founded in 2013 by former Foursquare and Twitter executive Tristan Walker and consists of two brands—the men’s shaving brand Bevel, and Form, a women’s hair-care business. Walker has spent the last five years developing products and services tailored to people of color.

WHY: The merger will grow P&G’s multicultural business and accelerate growth for Walker & Company’s existing brands, as well as fuel the development of additional products designed for the specific needs of people of color.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “When I started Walker & Company Brands, I set out to build a company that would meet the health and beauty needs of people of color on a global scale,” said Tristan Walker, CEO of Walker & Company Brands. “Having access to P&G’s outstanding technology, capabilities and expertise helps us to further realize that vision, giving us the power to scale and bring new products to people of color, while staying true to our mission and continuing to nurture the loyal community we’ve worked hard to build.”

“We have tremendous respect for the work Tristan Walker has accomplished and we are excited to welcome Walker & Company to the P&G family,” said Alex Keith, CEO of P&G Beauty. “The combination of Walker & Company’s deep consumer understanding, authentic connection to its community and unique, highly customized products and P&G’s highly-skilled and experienced people, resources, technical capabilities and global scale will allow us to further improve the lives of the world’s multicultural consumers.”

DETAILS:

• P&G acquires Walker & Company Brands.
• Terms of the transaction were not disclosed; however, a person familiar with the details told Recode that investors recouped the majority, but not all, of the nearly $40 million they invested in Walker & Company. That means Procter & Gamble paid somewhere between $20 million and $40 million for the start-up.
• Walker & Company Brands products are sold mainly direct-to-consumer; however, Bevel is now in a majority of Target stores nationwide and on Amazon, while Form Beauty is also sold through some Sephora stores and online.
• Walker & Company had raised more than $33.3 million in funding, most recently in a Series B three years ago. Investors include Institutional Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Upfront Ventures, Daher Capital, Collaborative Fund, Google Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and Melo7 Tech Partners.
• Walker & Company Brands will operate as a separate and wholly owned subsidiary of P&G led by CEO and founder Tristan Walker.
• Walker and his current team of 15 employees will relocate business operations from Silicon Valley to Atlanta.