HatchBeauty Brands Becomes HatchCollective, Doubles Down On Its Owned Brand Business

HatchBeauty Brands, the brand incubator born 14 years ago, has become HatchCollective to break from past instability and reflect its embrace of data to inform product creation directed at gaps in retail beauty assortments.

Founded by Ben Bennett and Tracy Holland, who’ve gone on to start The Center and Goodwill Brands, respectively, HatchCollective is now fully in the hands of private equity firm Lion Capital, and its business is divided between owned, private-label and exclusive store brands that stretch its distribution from Nordstrom to Dollar Tree. In 2020, it acquired Duncan Cosmetics’ portfolio of four mass beauty brands—Lique, Tattoo Junkie, Remi Rose and BE Beauty Essentials—and, a year later, it purchased Trendalytics, a predictive data firm that analyzes 4 million stockkeeping units weekly, 20,000 social media profiles daily and 2.4 million search term metrics regularly.

“With the acquisition of Trendalytics, we’ve changed our product development process. We have always considered ourselves democratizers in the beauty space, where we take prestige formulas and bring them down to be at a price-conscious, but efficacious position in the market, but what wasn’t very well-developed at the old Hatch was a product development process backed by trends and data science,” says president and chief commercial officer Kristin Bibb, who joined HatchCollective with the Duncan Cosmetics transaction. “We are inspired by community and driven by insights.”

HatchCollective’s newest owned brand, Txtur, is an example of its insights-centered approach to establish brands that can potentially be perennial powerhouses. The company identified the textured haircare arena as fertile territory for further revenues and, diving deeper, recognized that bonding technology popularized by Olaplex in salons and prestige retail could have traction at the masstige level.

To prove its thesis, almost a year before Txtur’s launch in March, HatchCollective with assistance from Trendalytics conducted focus groups and assembled a group of some 200 community members to test samples and provide feedback on messaging and marketing. Now, Txtur has entered around 500 Target stores with four products priced from $14.99 to $15.99: Bond Repair Shampoo, Bond Repair Conditioner, Leave-In Conditioner and Overnight Bond Building Mask.

“We are inspired by community and driven by insights.”

“We hold the consumer as No. 1. Our community is the most important, and that’s what makes us different,” says Bibb. “I understand celebrity brand partnerships, but that’s not where we are focused because our end consumer knows there’s a price they pay for celebrity partnerships. We are building brands that stand on their own, and we are doing it in a thoughtful way through community, so that, by the time they get to shelf, there’s a grassroots feel.”

While Trendalytics remains a distinct unit inside HatchCollective, Bibb points out it’s more integrated than it’s ever been in day-to-day operations at the company. “Just as our major customers like Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Target and Macy’s are looking at trend forecasting, our team is doing the same, and our Trendalytics team goes along with us on sales calls,” she says. “We are able to present trends to our retail partners.”

Currently, owned and store exclusive brands are larger parts of HatchCollective’s business than private label, and they’re segments it’s paying particularly close attention to in order to fuel growth. Its store exclusive brands include Dollar General players Scent Happy, 5 Deep Breaths and Story. Still, Bibb suggests private label is a continually growing segment for the company. HatchCollective’s private-label clients include Costco’s Kirkland brand, Trader Joe’s, Disney and Dollar Shave Club.

Asked to elaborate on Trader Joe’s specifically, Bibb replies, “Their buying team does such an incredible job of making sure that every single SKU on their shelf has a purpose. Trader Joe’s is never going to have four different moisturizer creams for their consumer. They don’t need that. They need one really heavy-hitting cream. We are very excited about their product launches this year, both in the body and facial skincare space. They know their consumer. They know what’s going to work. Their formulas are incredible for the value that they provide, and their approval process for their end consumer is the most stacked of any customer.”

“The consumer is smart, and they are doing their own research. They want products that provide results, but they know they don’t have to break the bank to get them.”

HatchCollective’s owned brand roster has been expanding precipitously. At the moment, it has roughly 14 owned brands. In addition to the Duncan Cosmetics portfolio brands and Txtur, the owned brands are Orlando Pita Play, NatureWell, Paint & Petals, Tattoo Junkee, Found Active, Wilder Men’s, Rheia, Of A Kind and Motiv. Paint & Petals is a partnership with Bridgette Thornton, an artist who’s responsible for the art decorating the bath and body care brand’s packaging. It entered Costco at the end of last year, and retail expansion is on tap for this year.

Bibb singles out NatureWell as an especially strong performer of late. Available at Sam’s Club and Amazon, its Clinical Retinol Advanced Moisture Cream and Extra Virgin Coconut Oil Moisturizing Cream are hits. Bibb says, “We have sold millions of units of the Coconut Oil Moisturizing Cream, and you will see at retail in the next two months a transition in that SKU and a fine-tuning of the messaging.”

Also looking ahead, Bibb mentions HatchCollective is “working on quite a few new brands, probably more new brands than in the history of Hatch. We are really driving those new innovative brands.” Areas the company is exploring for future innovation are hair regeneration, the intersection of color cosmetics and skincare, and bath and body care. Bibb emphasizes, “The consumer is smart, and they are doing their own research. They want products that provide results, but they know they don’t have to break the bank to get them.”

As it reinforces its positioning, HatchCollective has been solidifying its team. When Bibb came on board, she says there were nine executives between vice president and president roles. Today, there are four leading executives on the management team, including her, COO Aaron Hoag, VP of finance Barry Sabido, and chief strategy and innovation officer Lauren Bitar. Overall, HatchCollective has approximately 50 employees and a remote model.

Bibb declined to divulge HatchCollective’s exact sales figures. She says, “We consider ourselves an upper mid-size business with significant growth.” Timed with last month’s news that Plant Apothecary was acquired by Goodwill Brands, a brand holding company and beauty concept accelerator, and Branded IP, licensing and brand holding outfit, Holland disclosed that she helped guide HatchBeauty Brands to reach $700 million in cumulative wholesale revenue and place products on the shelves at in excess of 45,000 retail doors during her decade-plus tenure at the incubator. In 2023, Bibb says, “We are expecting double-digit increases year-over-year for our total business portfolio.”