The Hut Group inks DTC deals with Elemis, By Terry, St Tropez and more

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jun 22, 2020

The Hut Group, the beauty giant that’s big and getting bigger at speed, said on Monday that its THG Ingenuity operation has signed £100 million worth of partnerships with global beauty brands and brand owners.

The firm's technology services division announced deals with L’Occitane’s Elemis, PZ Cussons Beauty, Burt’s Bees, Nuxe, By Terry and Revolution Beauty, as part of its wider beauty portfolio of clients, those deals being collectively worth £100 million+ for the company that itself saw turnover topping £1 billion last year. 

It means THG Ingenuity “will accelerate each brand’s transition towards a direct-to-consumer (DTC) model to meet the growing online consumer demand”.

For Elemis, over the next year, THG will launch the brand through localised DTC offerings in 15 territories in Europe and Asia. It will use its 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”.

It will also facilitate PZ Cussons Beauty’s “shift to DTC e-commerce at pace, with the launch of three of their consumer brands, St Tropez, Sanctuary Spa and Fudge professional, in under six weeks”.

For American natural skincare brand Burt’s Bees, THG will “initiate the European site rollout”, which started with the UK site launch in May. The company said its offering here includes trading and 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”.

Meanwhile Nuxe is about to launch its global DTC online business with THG Ingenuity in the US, complemented by a joint business plan for the latter’s own reseller sites Skinstore and Lookfantastic. The next phase of the partnership will see further sites rolled out across America and Asia Pacific. 

The deal with British brand Revolution Beauty means initially delivering a DTC online business for the US and Australia this year. THG will “complement” the existing e-commerce offering and help Revolution to enter new markets. 

And for France-based By Terry, the company is partnering with it 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”.

The company said that as well as accessing THG Ingenuity’s full range of e-commerce solutions, the brands will “have access to, and full ownership of, an exhaustive pool of data, led by [the] data analytics division”.

THG founder and CEO 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.”