Cult Beauty's Jessica DeLuca: "Companies are bought, not sold"
In Conversation with Cult Beauty's co-founder Jessica DeLuca, who recently sold her business to The Hut Group for £275 million. She shares her tips for entrepreneurial success.
After growing frustrated with the lack of information on beauty products available in-store, Jessica DeLuca, a former management consultant at IBM, launched Cult Beauty with co-founder Alexia Inge in 2008 from her flat’s basement. Today, the education-first beauty website sells more than 300 brands and boasts a customer base of 1.7 million.
In August, DeLuca sold the business to The Hut Group for £275 million. DeLuca, a former MT 35 Under 35 winner, sat down with Management Today to share the lessons she learned during her entrepreneurial journey.
On why it was time to sell
We had been looking at selling Cult Beauty before the pandemic because that was the appropriate timeframe to provide a return to our investors.