Over the past year, the Full Beauty brand has quietly been building a plus-size fashion empire.
In early 2023, the 120-year-old company owns 12 plus-size and inclusive-size brands, including Swimsuits for All and Romans, which it has acquired over the decades. Ta. But in the past 12 months, the company has added three DTC and digitally native plus-size brands to its portfolio, including Cuup, the former Walmart-owned Eloquii, and most recently Dia & Co. This acquisition demonstrates FullBeauty's continued growth. This reflects how non-plus-size brands, such as Old Navy and Walmart, are giving way to more specialized retailers.
FullBeauty CMO Bob Bass said the company planned to pursue acquisitions as a way to attract younger customers, but cramming three acquisitions into one year was unintentional.
“It might have been better to stagger them a little more,” Bass said. “But it's like buying a house. You have to be ready to buy it as soon as it comes on the market.”
Bass said the rest of FullBeauty's portfolio caters to older customers. Often, when brands feel their customers are getting older, they will rebrand to target new audiences, Bass says. However, FullBeauty's management felt that doing so would alienate existing customers. Instead, the acquisition of Eloquii, Cuup, Dia & Co. is aimed at keeping FullBeauty's remaining brands intact and attracting what CEO Jim Fogarty has dubbed the “TikTok generation.” Walmart acquired Eloquii in 2018 for more than $100 million, although the size of the deal was not disclosed.
The main focus of FullBeauty's strategy is what Bass calls a “digital mall.” His FullBeauty's older brands such as Roamans, Woman Within, and Jessica London have separate online stores, but each has several tabs at the top that link to other brands. Eloquii and Cuup have similar setups, and Dia & Co.'s online store will be added to a shared digital storefront later this month.
“As we look to grow and scale, we plan to significantly increase the number of brands we offer on our digital mall,” Fogerty said of the new additions.
This consolidation also extended to the acquisition of Dia itself. After acquiring plus-size retailer 11 Honoré last year, Dia just last week integrated 11 Honoré's digital store into a section of its Dia & Co. website.
Lydia Gilbert, co-founder of Dia & Co., said she believes FullBeauty's acquisition was the right move. “Combining the strength of the Dia & Co. brand and our products for a comprehensive sector, including scale, with FullBeauty’s traditional experience, successful track record and strong business foundation will enable further growth for the brand. “It will be,” she said.
Customers can freely move between brands with their shopping cart and check out items from three brands at once. Bass said the idea, first introduced by Gap, is one that brands sometimes resent.
“Sometimes brands worry that they're making it easier for people to leave their sites,” Bass says. “But a really good conversion rate is he's 5%, so at best he'll have 95% of people leaving without buying anything. That way, even after they've left, he'll have 5% They are more likely to continue searching for what they want from the brand.”
Here in the digital mall, having multiple brands within the same space is an advantage, Basu says. While FullBeauty allows each brand to maintain its creative and design identity, having multiple brands offering products in the same general category means customers have an entire store's worth of additional options. means.
“People may think they have $100 to spend. If they spend $30 on one brand, they only have $70 to spend on other brands,” Bass said. “But when I worked here and as an analyst at Forrester, I learned that people end up spending more money on both brands combined than if they shopped at either brand alone. I have seen it.”
FullBeauty is profitable with approximately $1 billion in annual revenue and 5 million active customers. Although there are no specific brand targets at this time, FullBeauty aims to make more acquisitions in the future to build a modern digital mall. The plus sector is full of up-and-coming brands that could meet this requirement, such as Universal Standard and Loud Bodies. FullBeauty has been owned by Apax Partners since 2015.
Bass said FullBeauty is well-positioned to continue growing its share of the $81 billion plus-size market with more than a century of experience and connections in the field. This is especially true given the highly publicized failure of several non-plus brands to enter the market. Most notable was Old Navy, which ran a media campaign around its Bodequality initiative in 2021, but canceled the project a year later. Walmart also sold off a major plus-size investment last year when it sold Eloquii to FullBeauty.
“The old Navy's approach was disastrous,” Bass said. “This is not a category where you just take straight-size clothing and scale it up. We have decades of expertise in serving this customer and are in the best position to do it. there is.”
