Rhode Wasn’t Just a Brand. It Was a Bet - And It Paid Off.
How Hailey Bieber’s $1B exit to e.l.f. is reshaping the playbook for consumer goods, beauty, and the business of being iconic.
What $1B Looks Like on Paper
On May 29, 2025, e.l.f. Beauty announced its largest acquisition to date: a $1 billion buyout of Rhode, Hailey Bieber’s viral skincare brand.
Here’s the deal structure:
$600 million in cash
$200 million in e.l.f. stock
$200 million in performance-based earnouts
Rhode, founded in 2022, was barely three years old - and had just surpassed $212M in trailing net sales with only a handful of SKUs.
Hailey reportedly owned 51% equity, giving her a projected $170–180M net payout after taxes - firmly placing her among the most successful celebrity founders to date.
The remaining 49%? Likely held by co-founder Lauren Ratner, CEO Melanie Bender, and a few early investors like One Luxury Group - a quiet but smart cap table that let Hailey retain control and maximise upside.
This deal marks a new era: one where early-stage, taste-driven brands with strong cultural momentum are now real exit contenders.
Beauty Is a Trojan Horse
What makes Rhode special isn’t just the Glazing Milk or the Peptide Lip Treatment. It’s this:
Rhode is what happens when aesthetic precision, cultural fluency, and genuine founder vision align.
e.l.f. didn’t just buy a skincare brand. They bought:
A culturally resonant brand identity
A Gen Z pipeline through Hailey’s halo
A front-row seat in the “attainable luxury” space
The truth is, it’s no longer enough to just sell a product. The success of Rhode -and any consumer brand moving forward- hinges on building a world around that product. A world people want to step into, be associated with, and be seen as part of.
It needs to feel cult-like yet inclusive. Aspirational, but still accessible. Aesthetic and sensorial yet grounded in substance. Luxury - not in price, but in feeling.
That’s the new frontier: not just selling a thing but inviting people to belong to something.
Key Takeaways for Operators, Builders, and Investors
1. The Product Is the Brand
Rhode didn’t scale by saturating shelves. It scaled by creating hero SKUs and letting community drive virality. Quality and restraint > clutter.
2. Influencer ≠ Passive Face
Hailey didn’t license her name - she owned equity, steered product, and stayed hands-on. This is celebrity founder 2.0: operator + icon.
3. Modern Cap Tables Are Leaner and Smarter
Hailey’s 51% equity at exit is rare. It speaks to negotiating leverage, clear vision, and early conviction. More founders should aim for this, especially women.
4. Women Drive the Economy, Period
Women control ~85% of consumer spend yet receive only ~2% of VC dollars. Rhode’s exit should wake up allocators. Female-led consumer businesses aren’t “niche.” They’re future infrastructure.
5. Exit Speed Is Accelerating
Rhode proves you don’t need a 10-year roadmap. If the product’s tight, the brand hits, and the growth curve’s steep - exits come faster than ever.
Taste: The Ultimate Growth Strategy
Rhode lived in the space between product, perception, and presence.
Here’s what it did right:
Aesthetic dominance: Every element (packaging, campaign, colour palette) was taste-forward and instantly recognisable.
Niche internet fluency: The brand understood memes, moods, and moments. It felt native to TikTok without ever being cringe.
Founder as muse: Hailey wasn’t just a celebrity attachment; she embodied the brand’s ethos. Think: less “poster girl,” more core thesis.
A new kind of status: In an era of “quiet luxury,” Rhode became the millennial pink of Gen Z — understated, cool, and camera-ready.
What This Means for the Future
VCs: Pay attention to small, beautifully-run, founder-led brands. They don’t need to blitzscale to be billion-dollar businesses.
Corporate buyers: Don’t wait for a brand to hit $500M in revenue. If it’s owning culture, it’s worth the bet.
Female founders: Keep your equity. Build slowly. Think in story and scale.
TikTokers with taste: This is your moment.
Final Word
The Rhode x e.l.f. deal isn’t just a win for Hailey Bieber, it’s a case study in what happens when cultural capital and business acumen finally get to play on the same field.
It’s not just a beauty brand success story. It’s the new gold standard for what brand-building looks like now.
This was the exact type of breakdown I was looking for on Rhode - absolutely love this!
love this breakdown