Clarins skincare heir is looking for her next big acquisition

The heirs to France’s Clarins skincare fortune went up against industry giant L’Oreal in a battle for popular Australian brand Aesop — and lost.

But the contest drew dealmakers’ attention to Famille C Participations SAS, the investment arm created by the Courtin family to invest the dividends from closely held Clarins. Now, the clan is looking to capitalise on that recognition in its hunt for new investments, with a goal to double the value of its holdings by 2030.

Famille C has enough cash and and credit capacity to do two more big acquisitions over the next couple of years, according to Prisca Courtin, granddaughter of Clarins’ founder.

“We’re hoping by 2026 we will be able to identify new brands that are complementary to what we have in beauty,” Courtin said in an interview earlier this month in her Paris office.

“We don’t do short-term investment. We prefer to position ourselves with strong brands and founders that speak to the next generations who have different needs than Boomers.”

Courtin, 37, is head of Famille C, which has spent the last six years building up a portfolio of cosmetics and technology companies, and most recently luxury hotels. She declined to give the size of the firm’s current holdings or its investment performance.

She launched Famille C in 2018, a decade after her family took Clarins private following nearly a quarter century of trading on the Paris stock market. The skincare and makeup company’s sales rose 9 per cent last year to €1.83 billion, with nearly 95 per cent of that coming from outside France.

Famille C has invested in four cosmetics brands including majority stakes in ILIA and Pai, which have annual revenues of about €150 million and €10 million, respectively.

The sector makes up about 70 per cent of its portfolio, a proportion the family plans to keep steady so that the labels can get support from Clarins in areas like research and development, human resources and navigating the industry’s complicated regulatory landscape. The descendants prefer to gain control of the companies in which they invest, Courtin said.

Famille C also has stakes in a dozen tech companies like Omi, which does 3D product modelling, sustainable dye maker PILI and factory microbial specialist Spore.Bio — all technologies that can be used in skincare. It recently made a €130 million investment in hotel group Evok Collection, co-founded by Pierre Bastid.

Luxury Hotels

Clarins traces its roots to 1954, when the late Jacques Courtin started a beauty institute in central Paris. He developed plant and herb-based oils and lotions that form the core of the company’s business. Clarins is now overseen by the second and third generations.

Christian, 73, led global expansion starting in the late 1970s, and Olivier, 69, is co-director general alongside his niece Virginie, 38. Prisca, her cousin, is chairwoman of the Clarins supervisory board in addition to leading Famille C.

Prisca graduated from Queen Mary University of London with a Master’s degree in entrepreneurial business and founded a manicure company before joining Clarins a little over a decade ago.

The move into luxury hotels wasn’t part of the original plan mapped out by the family, she said. The brief given to her was to invest in new brands, innovative technology that could help Clarins, and real estate.

The pure property play didn’t pan out, she said. Instead, Famille C’s move into hospitality grew out of a collaboration between Clarins and Evok on a spa at the Brach Hotel in Paris, a former postal sorting center renovated by Philippe Starck.

“They approached us to help finance a hotel in the Alps at Courchevel,” she said of Evok. “They wanted to acquire the real estate and needed capital.”

The family went ahead with the investment in Evok but the partners are still on the lookout for a site at the French Alpine ski resort.