L’Oréal USA Acquires Carol’s Daughter

[theworldismine13]

L’Oréal USA Acquires Carol’s Daughter
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2014/10/carols-daughter-loreal-burden-owning-black-business/

Beauty brand Carol’s Daughter will be acquired by L’Oréal SA ’s U.S. subsidiary, the companies announced this week, about a month after Carol’s Daughter’s retail arm exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

L’Oréal USA said the acquisition of Carol’s Daughter, a brand founded in 1993 that specializes in hair and skin products for women of color, will allow it to build a “new dedicated multi-cultural beauty division as part of our Consumer Products business.”

The beauty conglomerate didn’t disclose a price for its acquisition, which still requires regulatory approvals, but said that Carol’s Daughter pulled in $27 million in revenue during the last 12 months. It sells its products in more than 2,000 retail stores around the country and through an online-sales operation.

Carol’s Daughter will join L’Oréal USA’s lineup of makeup and beauty brands, which includes Maybelline, Kiehl ’s, Essie, Urban Decay, Clarisonic and NYX.

Earlier this year, Lisa Price, the founder, chief executive and daughter of Carol, placed the lagging retail arm of her Carol’s Daughter brand into Chapter 11 bankruptcy to wind-down five of its seven store locations and shore up its balance sheet.

Although the Carol’s Daughter parent company didn’t file for bankruptcy, it agreed to contribute $150,000 to pay attorneys, taxes and other fees as well as to forgive $6.9 million owed by the retail arm to the Carol’s Daughter manufacturing affiliate. Unsecured creditors received between 5% and 10% of the $900,000 they were owed.

Two locations remain open, both in New York City: the company’s flagship store and salon in Harlem, and its profitable location in Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn.

Of the acquisition by L’Oréal, Ms. Price said in a statement, “I have worked hard for the past 21 years nurturing my brand and am thrilled that we will have a new home with L’Oréal USA…I could not be more proud to begin this next chapter of the Carol’s Daughter brand with them. I know that my mother (Carol) is smiling as well.”

Ms. Price first began making cosmetics out of her kitchen in 1993, and began operating Carol’s Daughter stores a decade later with the backing of celebrities like Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Jay Z.

The beauty line’s followers also include Oprah Winfrey, who featured the company on her former talk show.

 

[NZA]

i guess the takeaway is at what point does a successful bootstrapped business need to hire an actual business administrator to run the business operations to prevent situations like this?

 

[The Real]

i guess the takeaway is at what point does a successful bootstrapped business need to hire an actual business administrator to run the business operations to prevent situations like this?

Nah, it's Black domination at work. Black-owned brands should allow themselves to be acquired by a variety of larger, White-owned corporations. It will distribute Black power.

 

[theworldismine13]

Carol’s Daughter, L’Oreal and the Burden of Owning a Black Business
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2014/10/carols-daughter-loreal-burden-owning-black-business/

When David Karp, a lanky 28 year-old White high-school drop out sold his website, Tumblr, to Yahoo! to the tune of $1.1 billion he was lauded. He reaffirmed the stereotype of the techy white boy persona of hoodies, coding geek drop out turned billionaire tech start-up founder. Sent angel investors dashing to find the next hoodie wearing tech geek that can replicate a similar success story. All this even though at the time of sale Tumblr was not a profitable company. Fast forward to October 2014 with Lisa Price, founder of Carol’s Daughter sells her company to L’Oreal. A company Price has grown out of her kitchen into one of the biggest brands in the natural hair community. Maybe it’s because no dollar amount was announced. We don’t know how many millions L’Oreal shelled out for the Carol’s Daughter brand. But the almost immediate tone has been that of negativity with no benefit given to the business acumen of Price’s decision to sell the company.
Granted these are not equally parallel situations with Karp’s selling of Tumblr and Price’s selling of Carol’s Daughter. But it’s worth noting that Karp’s company was not turning a profit and there were numerous articles cynically forecasting how Tumblr could possibly survive. The Tumblr platform also has a stronghold in the same community as Carol’s Daughter, young women of color. Yet there was much admiration for Karp amongst my peers when the sell to Yahoo! happened in 2012. Maybe the price tag of $1.1 billion is what we admired the most. But the dissidence towards Price as being a sell out to the Black community for being a shrewd business woman is very much so a disservice to us understanding our own consumer power.

There’s a burden as a Black owned business that is not placed on the shoulder of any other race. This burden to always maintain that a level of Blackness by being Black owned, only showcasing black and brown faces, not letting anyone into the secret of who actually sits on the board or are the top shareholders of the company (read: white people and typically older white men). The idea that a Black owned company needs to cater or market itself exclusively to the Black community while in the next breath we complain about the price of their products, eschews any business logic. Black or African-Americans make up approximately 13.2% of the United States population. You can watch any given episode of Shark Tank for a quick overview on how producing and therefore pricing products work. If you can produce a higher volume, that is meeting a consistent demand then you can lower the price of your product. So why would any business owner not be willing to diversify their consumer base and expand their reach?

The effectiveness or ingredients of Carol’s Daughter products are nary a concern of mine as that has nothing to do with striking a business deal with L’Oreal. But just to quail some concerns of the quality of any given hair care company, it is nearly impossible for a company to keep the exact same ingredients in something from when they were whipping shea butter up in their KitchenAid to meeting the monthly demand of keeping their products stocked at Macy’s, Target and other national retailers. You want cheaper and more accessible products, then the ingredients are going to change to allow for shelf life and mass production. It’s a fact of life that is not worth arguing over. Compromise is a necessary part of business. But the real point of this all is that it’s rather disheartening to see us slander our own with undue burden as we applaud those who do nothing to benefit our community but utilize us to capitalize for their own gain. We can carry our pride for Carol’s Daughter coming from the hands of our own by understanding that we are worthy of being noticed by larger corporations. By understanding that having the backing of a company like L’Oreal allows for more access. From being able to get their products into countries with restrictive tariff and import laws like a South Africa to research and innovation in ones industry.

There were not enough details released with the announcement of the sale for us to make any assumption about the motivations behind the deal. But if we are to fault Carol’s Daughter for “selling-out” because they are not exclusively Black owned, how are we managing our own onus to the Black community? Especially as Black woman in America are one of the top buying demographics in the country. We’ve wielded power with the shifting of how the beauty industry speaks to us, but our own divisiveness often stops us from seeing the power in it’s fullness. It stops us for allowing any benefit to be given to business owners like Lisa Price as they look to ensure that their brand reach, voice and legacy reaches far and wide.

 

[Blackking]

Mixed feelings of course

 

[88m3]

Mixed feelings of course

you must be bi-racial.

 

[theworldismine13]

you must be bi-racial.

 

[Blackking]

^Proud of the lady... but its no longer black owned and controlled... and thats mainly black peoples fault.


And I did not like this c00nish sounding statement....
"We can carry our pride for Carol’s Daughter coming from the hands of our own by understanding that we are worthy of being noticed by larger corporations. "


Worthy.... did they really say fukkin worthy, when these other companies were originally built on black cosmetic companies models?????

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Nah, it's Black domination at work. Black-owned brands should allow themselves to be acquired by a variety of larger, White-owned corporations. It will distribute Black power.

No it won't. They'll just keep the name, change the quality, and effectively phase out the brand once it starts to not meet their sales targets.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Carol’s Daughter, L’Oreal and the Burden of Owning a Black Business
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2014/10/carols-daughter-loreal-burden-owning-black-business/

*yawn*

I'm still not entirely impressed that this paragon of a black business is essentially black hair care and cosmetics.

The bar is too low for us.

Salute to the woman, but...meh.

Theres so many industries out here...and we're still spinning our wheels

 

[Blackking]

http://bossip.com/125751/loreal-we-dont-want-black-women-selling-our-cosmetics/

http://madamenoire.com/137638/does-beyonces-loreal-campaign-offend-you/

Plus I think they used slave labor in India to make products..

Plus the founders supported Hitler's mission to murk all Jews.


So there's some good and bad history here

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

*yawn*

I'm still not entirely impressed that this paragon of a black business is essentially black hair care and cosmetics.

The bar is too low for us.

Salute to the woman, but...meh.

Theres so many industries out here...and we're still spinning our wheels

we can't all start our own Raytheon...

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

we can't all start our own Raytheon...