Q2 2025 will be remembered as the quarter beauty dealmaking defied gravity. In early April, the outlook was bleak: reciprocal tariff announcements sent shockwaves through global markets, chilling investor sentiment and prompting beauty acquirers to retreat to the sidelines. Strategics, already subdued for the past 18 months, appeared content to wait out macro uncertainty. By May, however, the story began to change, and beauty dealmakers lit up as one headline-grabbing transaction after the next began to dominate the news and the chitchat among industry leaders. Moreover, many of those headline-grabbing deals were led by strategics who had, until recently, been conspicuously absent from the M&A landscape. L’Oréal’s double play for Medik8 and Color Wow, Unilever’s acquisition of Dr. Squatch, Church & Dwight’s stunning buyout of Touchland, and e.l.f. Beauty’s blockbuster purchase of Rhode signaled a renewed strategic appetite for scale and brands led by innovation and omnichannel fluency. Add in TSG’s investment in DUDE Wipes and Wonderskin’s remarkable $50 million Series A, and Q2 became a study in whiplash. To be sure, the quarter wasn’t without a few bumps in the road—five brand failures underscored the unforgiving nature of today’s beauty business environment—but against a backdrop of volatility and caution, beauty M&A surged back to life with unexpected velocity.According to Shaun Westfall, Managing Director at investment bank North Point, “What these recent deals have in common is that all have strong brand equity, are scaled, high-growth, and very profitable—a very compelling profile for buyers.
