High-profile exits like Rhode and Medik8 proved that the right brand still commands a premium, but the broader M&A market remains bifurcated. Significant pent-up demand from stalled 2025 processes, combined with improving balance sheets and renewed strategic urgency, points to increased deal volume in 2026 to come. Public strategic buyers, who historically averaged 24 acquisitions annually, represented just 16% of deal volume in 2025, and the pressure to close that gap is real. The brands that clear the bar will be those with genuine defensibility, not just a great story. This session unpacks the latest deal data, maps where buyer conviction is concentrating, and gets honest about what it will actually take to transact this year.

The megamerger still makes headlines, but the deals defining this era are smaller, scrappier, and far more interesting. From Rhode to Touchland to Not Your Mother's, a new generation of founder-built brands has reshaped what acquirers are willing to pay for and why. This session brings together dealmakers who have lived through multiple deal cycles for an unscripted conversation about what changed, what it means, and what comes next.

Focus or diversify. Build or buy. Move fast or build infrastructure first. The neo-strategics assembling beauty's next generation of platforms are making consequential choices with limited margin for error. This session gets into the operational and strategic reality of building a beauty platform from scratch, what it takes to survive the dangerous middle ground between indie and conglomerate, and what the path to the top actually looks like.