Rihanna – The Billion Dollar Beauty Babe
Rihanna’s popular Savage x Fenty reached another major milestone by raising its $115 million Series B funding round, taking its valuation to 1 billion dollars.
The private equity firm L Catterton invested in the brand for its upcoming retail expansion and to develop the line into athletic wear.
Rihanna’s has various successful brands under her Fenty company’s umbrella, with her lingerie brand Savage X Fenty sitting prominently at the centre of international popular culture and business. The woman’s underwear sector in the US is worth $13.1 billion and has encouraged partner LVMH to focus on her successful and diverse business model.
According to a company statement, the lingerie brand posted more than 200% revenue growth last year and “increased its active VIP member base by more than 150%”.
CultureBanx reports Savage x Fenty can become the leaders in the global lingerie market leader by 2025. The same year that women’s activewear is predicted to reach a $216.9 billion value.
Rihanna’s has always championed inclusion and diversity and has proven numerous times that it leads to tremendous success.
Following the completion of the fundraising round where L Catterton took a stake in Savage X Fenty, LVMH and Rihanna reaffirmed their ambition to concentrate on the growth and the long-term development of the Fenty ecosystem, focusing on cosmetics, skincare, and lingerie,
“The brand strikes a unique balance between affordability, fashion, and comfort, stands deeply for inclusivity and diversity, and has differentiated itself by building an extraordinary level of affinity and unmatched customer loyalty. The opportunities ahead for Savage X Fenty are enormous and we look forward to leveraging our extensive experience in scaling digitally-native consumer brands and partnering with Rihanna, Christiane, Natalie, and the entire Savage X Fenty team to help the company realize its full potential.” – Jon Owsley, Co-Managing Partner of L Catterton’s Growth Fund, said in a press release.
All leading women’s athletic wear brands like Athleta and Lululemon will have an eye on Rihanna and the deal as she continues to make her mark in the market they once dominated. Look at how she disrupted the beauty sector in 2018, with her prosperous Fenty beauty line generating $558 million in its first full year in operation.
Companies like LVMH are always looking for new ways to get a bigger slice of the $445 billion beauty industry’s pie. The industry is expanding at 3% a year. Forbes estimates that Rihanna’s stake is worth an estimated $375 million. Fenty Skin has shaken up the skincare industry and made sales of $30 million in less than four months on its e-store, according to WWD.
Savage x Fenty has raised $185 million to date, and before the new funding, Forbes estimated Rihanna’s stake to be worth around $80 million. A figure that has dramatically increased now. Investors such as Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners, Avenir Growth Capital, TriplePoint Ventures, and new investors Sunley House Capital, part of Advent International, all participated in this round. The company also clarified that Goldman Sachs only acted as an exclusive placement agent for the Series B financing.
Two years after Rihanna launched her high-end Fenty fashion brand with LVMH, it’s now being put on “hold” to focus on expanding the lingerie brand. The coronavirus crisis hit the fashion industry hard, making it near impossible to create eight ready-to-wear collections a year while operating remotely. The global fashion industry saw a 93% drop in profit in 2020. Rihanna made history as the first woman to create an original brand at LVMH and the first woman of colour at the top of an LVMH Maison. The e-commerce site for Fenty fashions will close by February or early March 2021.
