In just a quarter of a century, Maesa has grown from one of many private label companies serving the personal care space to the rapid-fire incubator behind some of the hottest new brands in beauty.

Flower Beauty, launched in 2013 with Drew Barrymore, was Maesa’s first incubated brand. Today, Maesa’s stable of exclusive brands includes Kristin Ess, Hey Humans, Frenshe, Hairitage, TPH and others.

“We are officially the number one beauty incubator in mass, which is really exciting. It is a big milestone for us, especially coming in our 25th year,” Piyush Jain, Maesa's CEO, told Happi during an interview at the company’s New York headquarters.

Maesa was founded in 1997 in Paris and opened its US subsidiary in 2007. The company launched Flower Beauty in 2013. Today, Maesa has offices Los Angeles, London, Vienna, Dubai, Dongguan (China) and Hong Kong. 

Rapid success can create a new dynamic. Like many fast-growing companies, Maesa is now in place where it must operate at scale yet remain nimble enough to keep ahead of the competition.

As CEO, Jain can leverage his experience and skillset that has been honed at some of the biggest brands and companies in consumer products. 

Jain’s career includes 20 years at Unilever, where he worked across beauty, hair and personal care categories. In his most recent role at Unilever, he served as global brand vice president for beauty and personal care. At Unilever, Jain founded and incubated Love Beauty & Planet, and also led iconic brands like Dove, Lux, Suave, TreSemmé and Axe. After leaving Unilever, he was CEO of Hand in Hand, a personal care company backed by Bain Capital Double Impact—the PE firm’s impact investing unit.

Bain Capital acquired a majority interest in Maesa in 2019.

After joining Maesa in September 2022, Jain set out to decipher what made this private label-turned-incubator successful. He’s coined it “Maesa magic.”

“I truly find that this place is magical. And the elements that make it magical are the brands we've created and the people that we have in this company,” he told Happi. “Each brand has been crafted with a lot of finesse and a lot of craftsmanship.”

Jain also lauded Maesa’s winning record in the competitive beauty category.

“There are many brands that launch, and very few make it. But our hit rate is incredible. We have more than one in two brands that succeed and become viable,” he said.

Part of that success comes from the company’s nearly end-to-end operation. Everything from idea creation to packaging design to visual identify to content creation is handled in house.

“We consistently hear that the brands we create are unique and disruptive. We are not creating brands which replicate something that's out there. Osh likes to say it as ‘we don't look behind us, we look ahead of us,” said Jain, referring to Maesa’s new Chief Brand Officer Oshiya Savur, who was hired in March.

Savur’s career includes senior omnichannel and brand management roles at founder-led and enterprise companies such as Unilever, Revlon and Elizabeth Arden. Prior to Maesa, Savur was part of Charlotte Tilbury, North America, where she achieved top-ranking sales in prestige beauty and drove growth through strategic earned media and influencer marketing campaigns.

Company Talent

Savur is just one of several new hires at Maesa under Jain’s tenure.

The company has filled executive roles with new personnel who bring broad experience from both beauty and other fast-moving consumer categories. 

Sharon White, on board since February, is chief people officer; she has worked with leading organizations, including WarnerMedia/HBO, Scripps Networks/Food Network, Tommy Hilfiger, Christian Dior Couture and Ralph Lauren.

Carlos Lagravere was hired in February as chief operating officer. In his role as global COO, Lagravere is responsible for driving operational excellence, transformation, improving efficiencies. He has 25 years of executive end-to-end supply chain experience within the CPG industry from organizations such as P&G, Ecolab and Proximo Spirits. Over 20 years at P&G, Lagravere led the beauty care supply chain for the LATAM region, which included responsibility for planning, sourcing, manufacturing operations and logistics.

Most recently, in May, Erin Keating joined as chief customer officer reporting directly to Jain. Prior to joining Maesa, she led the Target team for Unilever across beauty, personal care, home care, nutrition and ice cream. 

“Equally, we have talent in house,” asserted Jain. In fact, many key c-suite executives have been with Maesa for many years, including Chief Growth Officer Scott Kestenbaum, CFO Zaheer Ferguson and General Counsel Yara Martinez.

NPD Strategy

The existing team at Maesa has had great success building brands that are sold in the mass market category. But for Jain, its NPD  strategy is not dictated by the price point.

“One of my biggest learnings from my prior life is you can't treat anything as mass beauty. You don't think of a consumer as a value consumer….When he or she is buying that product, that is their access to beauty. Therefore, we need to figure out the best way to deliver the most outstanding quality for that consumer in that moment,” he said.

In fact, Jain insists that when consumers are strapped for cash, they make hard choices.

“They really want to get the best and therefore the product delivery and the brand delivery becomes even more important,” he said.

“If you look at the brands we've created, those brands could sell anywhere,” he insisted. 

One of the company’s newest brands is Koze Place, a home fragrance brand that rolled out exclusively in Dollar General earlier this year.

Home fragrance is a natural fit for Maesa; fragrance has been a core strength of the company since its beginning.

“When we started 25 years ago, fragrance was at the core of what Maesa was all about. We really understand that space. We understand how to deliver consumers differentiated fragrance solutions in every single product category.”

The company is also leveraging that expertise in mass market fine fragrance, a lackluster category within an otherwise healthy beauty marketplace.

Mix:Bar was its first entry into the space. This year, Maesa introduced a second scent brand called Fine’ry. The line of luxury-inspired perfumes is exclusively at Target.

Future Growth

Another project undertaken by Jain has been to formalize a strategy around Maesa’s values, which he defined as: creativity, curiosity, discipline, game changing and collaboration.

“We have identified these values and are integrating them into the company ethos.  They were always there in many ways but we hadn't articulated them explicitly,” he said.

A big part of the company’s future success will come down to its ability to meet new expectations.

“As an incubator, we didn't really need to worry about discipline,” said Jain. “But now that we are the size and scale we are, we really are ensuring that we live the process with discipline.”

While Jain would not divulge revenue data to Happi, he noted that Maesa’s retail sales doubled during the past three years.

“And I absolutely see no reason why we would slow down. That's the trajectory we are on,” he asserted. “We want to be the fastest-growing beauty company out there. We are successful more often than not, and I think that's what we want to maintain.”