Revolution Beauty powers ahead in UK, US also on target to be its largest market

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 27, 2021

Newly-listed Revolution Beauty issued a treading update on Monday and the multi-brand, multi-channel beauty retailer said it saw revenue rising 35% in the six months to August 31.

The company, whose shares successfully listed on the junior AIM market (where Boohoo and ASOS are also listed) in July, reported £78 million in revenue in its first half. And it said it “remains confident in achieving full-year market expectations and has a number of exciting new initiatives and developments that are expected to continue to underpin strong revenue growth throughout H2”. 

These include rapid expansion of brands and categories, alongside new countries and territories. New digital and retail distribution, along with country expansions are planned for H2 and it said on Monday that its colour cosmetics brand Makeup Revolution will enter over 350 of the largest Boots stores in early 2022 in prominent in-store locations.

It’s also growing strongly in the US with sales there up 90%+ and the US on course to become its biggest country by revenue globally in 2021. In Q1, the group launched into 1,800 Target stores throughout the US with the Makeup Revolution brand. It’s “already a top performing brand in the Target make-up category, and the board expects this to continue and build into an influential multi-brand and multi-category relationship with Target”.

It has also “continued to see strong sales growth through beauty chain Ulta, as the US market shows fast 'consumer bounce-back’ in its stores”.

Its direct-to-consumer growth is also looking good via its THG ingenuity partnership. It formed a partnership with THG Ingenuity in late 2020 to enable it to accelerate its DTC localisation plans. It launched its site in the US in January 2021 and in Australia/New Zealand in March 2021 and “is seeing strong results, with triple-digit percentage increases in sales”.

The company added that its category expansion is going well with Revolution Skin seeing revenues up 34%+ “from an already strong 2020”. And the H1 expansion of its Revolution Haircare Plex brand launch went well with it now stocked in over 250 Boots stores and over 300 Superdrug stores, “showing promising 203% growth year-on-year”. It’s now “confidently accelerating International expansion in both our digital and retail channels”.

Adam Minto, CEO and Joint Founder, said: “It's been just over two months since we listed Revolution Beauty on the London Stock Exchange and we're pleased to have continued the strong momentum through the first half. We have executed against our digital-first strategy set out at IPO, adding over 200,000 DTC customers to our platform, while more than doubling international online sales in the US, Australia and New Zealand. Meanwhile our retail expansion has continued strongly.”