DFN Ventures Invests In Crème Collective To Grow Outsourced Infrastructure For Beauty Brands

DFN Ventures has invested in Crème Collective, and its founder Jeremy Triefenbach has become CFO of the sales and marketing agency that’s worked with many of the beauty industry’s most-coveted and cutting-edge brands.

Terms of the deal, which is DFN Ventures’ first, weren’t disclosed. The firm was established at the beginning of this year by Triefenbach and his wife Katy, who sold outsourced finance and accounting firm to private equity firm Atlantix in January 2023, to back beauty, health and wellness-focused business service providers and brands.

“What intrigued me about Crème Collective was that it was a platform that had a holistic solution with a lot of different components of the business, including a robust sales offering, and [founder] Leilah [Mundt] is a fantastic operator. Lastly, it has an amazing client base,” says Triefenbach, a member of Crème Collective’s board as well as its CFO. “Stage 1 taught me that a lot of young organizations need a holistic platform, so I wanted to be sure, that, as we’re thinking about scale, there are a lot of different options for brands under one umbrella.”

Crème Collective hadn’t been seeking investment when Triefenbach connected with Mundt about six months ago to discuss the possibility. “I’ve been approached for years about investment from big beauty conglomerates or independent investors, and I just wasn’t interested, but this was the right thing at the right time,” says Crème Collective founder and CEO Leilah Mundt. “Jeremy’s experience is incredible, and he has the financial understanding of how to grow beauty brands. I didn’t have to train him on the beauty and wellness space because that’s where he came from.”

She describes Crème Collective’s business as “steady and growing,” and in particular its beauty advisor program sending advisors into stores has flourished as brands have shifted the fulcrum of their distribution from direct-to-consumer to retail. Crème Collective has 75 to 100 beauty advisors in its beauty advisor program, and the agency reaches a network of nearly 10,000 global retail outlets.

“We had a moment in which everything was paid marketing, and that has become expensive. We are really excited about our beauty advisory program. We have people all over the country, and that’s where there’s a lot of interest. I see the most growth there,” says Mundt. “We are talking to a lot of new brands. It’s so saturated out there that we are interested in high-quality work for brands that will stand the test of time.”

Crème Collective has around 30 people on its corporate team and a client roster of roughly 40 brands such as Tree Hut, Dr. Diamond’s Metacine, Snif, Sweed Beauty, Roz and Fekkai. Headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., the agency also creates content and handles fulfillment for brands. It has an in-house content and photo studio.

“We are interested in high-quality work for brands that will stand the test of time.”

Triefenbach’s thesis for investing in a sales and marketing agency is that nascent beauty brands’ infrastructure needs have been underserved. Additionally, he predicts beauty brands will increasingly pursue distribution beyond Sephora and Ulta Beauty, where shelves have been crowded with upstart brands, but the universe of points of sale outside the leading beauty specialty retailers, whether they’re in the professional, hospitality or gift sectors, is fragmented and can require guidance to navigate.

Mundt agrees that beauty brands should and will look beyond Sephora and Ulta. “Sephora is not right for everybody, and Ulta is not right for everybody, and they are certainly not right for every brand at launch,” she says. “In working with brands pre-launch and through their launch, they seem to all believe that’s where they need to be, and I don’t know if they have a full understanding of what that entails, and there’s not enough shelf space.”

Sensing that clean, independent beauty brands would become a force in the beauty industry, Mundt began Crème Collective 13 years ago to ready them for retail and act as their retail broker. May Lindstrom, Vapour and Kypris were early clients. Two years into Crème Collective’s operations, Mundt opened a creative arm of the agency and kept expanding it from there in response to demand from brands. Today, its client roster spans mass and prestige brands that share a desire for elevated content and informed sales strategies.

Mundt says, “It was important to me to create an ecosystem, where a brand could come to us and get high level support in messaging, branding and photography so that our sales team would have success in the field.”

Along with DFN Ventures, Triefenbach runs Stage 1 Fund, a venture capital offshoot of Stage 1 Financial, with general partner David Bartholomew. The firm has a portfolio of 11 brands. Among them are Crown Affair, Herbivore, Scotch Porter and Saie.

At DFN Ventures, Triefenbach has an extended investment horizon. Mentioning Crème Collective is profitable, he says, “This is not a turn and burn investment. We see growing Crème to a significant organization over the next decade.”