Billie’s Georgina Gooley on the company’s post-acquisition growth

For 7-year-old body-care brand Billie, which was acquired for $310 million by personal care company Edgewell in 2021, the body-care surge couldn’t have come at a better time. Before the acquisition, Billie solely sold direct-to-consumer. But in 2022, it launched in Walmart before expanding to Amazon, Target, Ulta and Kroger last year. In February, Billie rolled out its biggest category expansion yet with new body wash, body lotion and deodorant products.

On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Cooley talks about Billie’s trajectory post-acquisition and the plans the brand has in store this year.

The excerpts below have been slightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

Growth post-acquisition
“It’s been a big change, but we wouldn’t have been able to have the growth that we’ve had without being part of this larger organization [Edgewell]. When we were acquired, we were just a DTC company, and we’d worked out a Walmart launch for the following year — that was work that we did on our own. But going from one retailer to over 30,000 stores the next year and doing an international launch [required have] a big organization behind us looking at their supply chain and their retailer relationships. They have an entire sales force dedicated to getting their brands onto shelves in various retailers. They’ve really helped propel us to become an omnichannel brand when we would have had to work our way to get to where we are today.”

Intentional category expansion
“From the very beginning, we wanted to be a body brand for womankind. We intentionally … didn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves as a shaving company. We wanted to be…. a go-to brand for women’s daily routines. So an expansion into body care felt like a very natural progression. Like all of Billie’s products, our new body care was centered around women deciding for themselves what their bodies needed and what their bodies wanted and then us delivering a high-quality experience at an accessible price point. That’s the crux of what we did in the shave [category]. … [Customers] were looking for a luxe experience and skin-care benefits, but [we had to figure out] how we could deliver that in a more accessible way at an accessible price point. When we think about our body washes and body lotions, not only do we want them to smell great and feel great on the skin, but we want to design them for different skin types. … We worked for probably two years trying to develop these formulas and products.”