Yellow Wood Partners completes acquisition of Suave North American beauty and personal care brands from Unilever

Yellow Wood Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, on Tuesday announced it completed the acquisition of Suave in North America from Englewood Cliffs-based Unilever.

With the completion of the transaction, Yellow Wood will be creating a newly formed, stand-alone business to support the Suave brand under the leadership of newly appointed CEO Daniel Alter, a 20-year Unilever veteran with global strategy and operations expertise.

The company will be headquartered in New Jersey.

“The widely known Suave brand has a long heritage and strong consumer loyalty, selling over 250 million units annually, and is present in 1 out of every 2 homes in America. Our firm’s extensive experience working with multinational branded consumer packaged goods companies, such as Unilever, Bayer and Reckitt, will enable us to successfully transition Suave to an independent company within the Yellow Wood portfolio and accelerate its growth,” Dana Schmaltz, partner of Yellow Wood Partners, said.

“We are excited about Suave’s ability to benefit from the growing consumer demand for value-based brands. There is great opportunity to do more with Suave’s leading brand awareness and consumer loyalty and, to lead that effort, we are pleased to welcome Daniel Alter as CEO. His and Yellow Wood’s deep branded CPG experiences will help Suave execute on new growth levers to build the business and identify new personal care brand acquisitions,” Tad Yanagi, partner of Yellow Wood Partners, said.

Alter brings 20 years of global strategy, brand development and general management experience to Suave from his tenure in international operating roles across beauty and  personal care with Unilever.

In addition to Suave, Yellow Wood’s diverse portfolio of consumer brands includes leading global footcare brand Dr. Scholl’s and Scholl International; Beacon Wellness Brands; beauty brands Real Techniques and EcoTools; self-tanning brands Isle of Paradise, Tanologist and TanLuxe; and skincare brands Byoma and Freeman Beauty.

Houlihan Lokey acted as financial adviser to Yellow Wood on the transaction. Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP provided legal counsel to Yellow Wood.