How celebrity brands finally reach the point of sale

livemint.com:

You can start a business, but can you keep it going, even scale up? Nay seems to be the answer for several movie actors and sports personalities who launched their own brands and ended up selling stakes to bigger giants. It’s a trend that’s likely to continue, said industry experts who cited recent deals to note that, often, such personalities may have limited entrepreneurial skills and time to run a full-fledged business.

“It’s a valuation game at the end of the day. It will be a ‘build valuation and cash-out strategy’ and most celebrity brands will go this way in the future," said Vivek Mehta, partner at executive search & talent advisory firm ABC Consultants, adding that running a successful business requires full-time professional expertise, bandwidth and dedication.

For example, in September 2023, Reliance Retail Ventures bought a 51% stake in Alia Bhatt's kid and maternity-wear brand Ed-a-mama (founded 2020). In January 2022, Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail scooped up a 51% stake in designer and actress Masaba Gupta's House of Masaba Lifestyle, an entity that houses apparel, non-apparel, beauty and personal care and accessories business and was founded in 2014.

And in July 2016, online fashion house Myntra bought a majority stake in Hrithik Roshan's clothing and shoes brand HRX, which was launched in late 2013. While some celebrity-backed brands have picked up pace in recent times, beauty and apparel platforms alike have been struggling with rising cost of acquiring customers in a market inundated with new-age brands.