Topicals founder steps down as CEO, brand appoints Fenty Beauty exec to take over
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Fenty Beauty’s Sukiana Chancy will spearhead Topicals’ expansion into the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
Topicals founder Olamide Olowe has stepped down from her post as CEO five years after starting the uber-trendy skincare brand.
Speaking to the Business of Fashion, Olowe said she will continue to be involved in the company’s day-to-day operations and will focus on using her platform as a founder to promote the brand. Taking over the chief executive position is Sukiana Chancy, Fenty Beauty’s global general manager of its skincare, hair, and fragrance departments.
“I wanted to partner with someone who has worked their way up through marketing, built a global brand, and managed a profit-and-loss sheet much larger than ours,” Olowe told Business of Fashion on Wednesday (Sep. 2).
Olowe also shared with the publication and in her own social media announcement that Chancy will be responsible for leading the brand’s expansion into the Middle East, as well as more of Africa and Europe. Currently, Topicals is sold in the US, Canada, the UK, and Beauty Hut in Nigeria.
Chancy told the outlet, “My role is creating more infrastructure to help amplify [the message] and bring it to as many eyeballs and faces as possible.”
Since the brand’s launch, it has raised over $22 million in funding from investors, earlier this year pivoting from traditional funding strategies and instead going for celebrity and influencer capital.
“Investors are pulling back their belief in Black-owned … businesses. We are really proud that other people who have capital in the culture want [our kind of business] to grow,” Olowe told the Business of Fashion in January. “[The] ability to grow is stifled because they [Black-owned brands] are seen as brands that are only for black people.”
Olowe said the decision to work with “people who control culture” was aligned with the brand’s marketing strategy, a major contributor to its status as Gen Z’s #1 skincare brand at Sephora. WNBA star Angel Reese, the Nigerian global artist Rema, and more have come on as investors in Topicals. Rema also took on a role as a creative partner to the company’s efforts to reach younger and male consumers.