The technology services division of Manchester-headquartered The Hut Group has announced major partnership agreements with six global beauty brands in a deal worth more than £100m.
THG Ingenuity has signed agreements with Elemis, PZ Cussons Beauty, Burt’s Bees, Nuxe, By Terry and Revolution Beauty. Through the partnerships, THG Ingenuity says it will “accelerate each brand’s transition towards a direct-to-consumer model to meet the growing online consumer demand”.
Crucially, each brand will have access to, “and full ownership of”, a pool of data led by THG Ingenuity’s data analytics division.
THG CEO and founder Matthew Moulding said: “The consumer shift to online continues at pace and a resilient, world class, DTC operation has become a necessity for brands to generate sustainable long-term growth.
“Through THG Ingenuity’s proprietary technology, brands can leverage our end-to-end capabilities to launch, market and fulfil their product offering at pace and accelerate their international expansion.
“The latest partnership agreements with some of the leading international beauty brands are a testament to the strength of THG Ingenuity’s proven technology services.”
THG Ingenuity offers its partners “a long pipeline of innovation innovative tools to capture and convert the attention of existing and new customers”.
It recently filed a patent for its Foundation Finder Technology, which allows consumers to colour-match from home using THG’s own colour card, machine learning and computer vision technology.
Here is some more on what the partnership will mean for the six beauty brands in question:
- Elemis – THG will launch Elemis through localised DTC offerings across 15 territories in Europe and Asia over the next 12 months. Elemis will “leverage THG’s localisation expertise and global distribution centres in the UK, Poland, Australia and Singapore for greater fulfilment efficiencies and to offer shorter delivery times and more relevant shopping experiences to their customers.”
- PZ Cussons Beauty – The partnership will see THG Ingenuity “facilitate its shift to DTC eCommerce at pace, with the launch of three of their consumer brands, St Tropez, Sanctuary Spa and Fudge professional, in under six weeks.”
- Burt’s Bees – THG will initiate the European site roll-out for Burt’s Bees, the natural skincare brand, which commenced with the UK site launch in May 2020. THG’s offering includes its trading & performance marketing analytics to optimise performance which has led to a fast start with website performance trading at +146% revenue vs the initial target of 60% organic growth;
- Nuxe – The brand is about to launch its global DTC online business with THG Ingenuity in the USA, complemented by a JBP for THG Ingenuity’s own reseller sites Skinstore and Lookfantastic. The next phase of the partnership will see further sites rolled out across America and Asia Pacific.
- Revolution Beauty – Initially delivering a DTC online business for the US and Australia in 2020, THG will “complement the British beauty brand’s existing eCommerce offering and enable it to enter new markets.”
- By Terry – THG Ingenuity is partnering with the French firm on a new brand launch across all end-to-end services. This will include brand development and strategy, content and packaging, DTC and managed services in trade and performance marketing.
