Berlin-headquartered Invincible Brands has sold a majority stake to capital D, a newly-formed pan-European private equity manager investing in mid-market leading companies which disrupt legacy business models.  

Founded in November 2015, Invincible Brands has accomplished exceptional growth.  The company sells its products from Germany into continental European markets, employs 80 staff and serves a customer base of 500,000 millennials. 

Invincible Brands is a pioneer in social media influencer-led marketing to millennials who are now the largest addressable consumer group in the world.  It creates innovative, high quality and natural health, beauty and fitness products from the ground up, using proprietary product development methods and a marketing platform that reaches more than 100 million women and men across the world on social media every month. 

Invincible Brands’ influencer marketing campaigns are mainly delivered through social media such as Snapchat.  This approach, both analytical and tailored to select influencers, combined with the company’s market intelligence, has yielded a consistently high return on marketing spend.  By targeting customers’ preferences on social media and aligning marketing programmes with short new product development cycles, Invincible Brands has achieved a 100% success rate on more than 40 product launches to date.  
 
Bjoern Keune, co-founder and CEO of Invincible Brands, said: “We are delighted to have secured this significant investment from capital D.  The team has deep sector knowledge in ecommerce, SEO, retail and food distribution and we look forward to working with them to build our position in our existing markets and extend our reach globally.”

Stephan Lobmeyr, co-founder of capital D, said: “Our focus is on business models with direct evidence of commercial traction and transformative impact in their markets.  The Invincible Brands’ management team has achieved spectacular, tangible results in a short time, capitalising on the tribal buying tendencies of millennials.  We look forward to supporting their next phase of growth.”

Jean-Marc Jabre, co-founder of capital D who jointly led this transaction, added: “The timing for this investment is apposite.  This January sees the emergence of the first native 21st century adults and the current financial reporting season shines an unforgiving light on many legacy consumer business models.  Effective social marketing is now a fundamental part of the arsenal of any consumer-focused brand as the impact of traditional advertising on millennials wanes.”

Steven Schapera, co-founder of BECCA Cosmetics, which was acquired by Estée Lauder in 2016, brings a wealth of experience and is excited to join the board as director. 

Advisors on the deal include Re_Set (digital due diligence), Acris (buy-side M&A), Goodwin Procter (buy-side legal), KPMG (buy-side financial), CatCap (sell-side M&A) and Neef Legal (sell-side legal).