Dear Beauty Bytes readers, this is a big one.

Brussels made some pretty big regulatory changes and now the EU cosmetics rulebook reads pretty differently than it did six weeks ago.

The first wave of bans already hit the shelves.

Here's what's in this edition:

It's been a very productive sprint on our end.

The big one is a fully redesigned home dashboard, the first end-to-end refresh in over a year, with cleaner insights into your raw materials, formulas, and modules at a glance.

Pair that with the new Recent Activity feed (now living on both the dashboard and the nav bar), and the "wait, where did I just edit that?" tab spiral is officially over. Anything you touch shows up there, so jumping back and forth between a formula and its raw materials takes one click instead of five.

On the compliance side, we've shipped the long-requested QS Ingredient auto-balancer in both Raw Materials and Regi formulas. Mark an ingredient as QS and the percentage rebalances when you hit ‘save’ so the composition lands at exactly 100%. No more manual math!🤓

We've also added a FEMA-GRAS status field to all raw materials (compliance logic tied to it is coming next), Prop 65 as a Logic dropdown option in Reporting, and an upgrade to the Raw Material Extractor so you can delete unwanted ingredients out of extraction results before they hit the RM record.

Some minor changes:

Brussels has been busy. Omnibus Act VIII and Omnibus Ingredient II are reshaping the EU cosmetics rulebook, and some of these changes have hit shelves as of May 1.

I put together a full breakdown: what's changing across Annexes II, III, and VI, a few easy-to-miss reminders, and a look ahead at what's coming next.

Full PDF attached below.

If you'd rather not manually cross-check every product in your portfolio against these new limits, click below to book a demo of our software that does it for you in seconds.

If you have any questions about these recent changes, feel free to email us at [email protected]!

The headline number this week is $360M.

So much cash without any dilution attached to it.

General Catalyst wrote that check to Musely, a telemedicine skincare platform that has raised, by my count, roughly $40M of equity in its entire life.

The structure (a "Customer Value" facility, which is a polite way of saying "growth capital secured against future customer payback") is slightly bewildering to me, especially after this spring's private credit wobble (I wrote about this in the last edition of Beauty Bytes here.

9x of the lifetime equity raised, no new board seat, and no priced round.

Clean unit economics and a working acquisition engine are evidently the Holy Grail now.

To me, it just seems as though capital is getting very picky about WHERE it sits (predictable cashflows, low obsolescence risk) but it is not actually scarce.

Musely apparently checks all those boxes and capitalized

Anyway, let's dive in.

General Catalyst provided Musely with more than $360M of non-dilutive capital, giving the telemedicine skincare platform a major customer-acquisition war chest without the dilution of a traditional equity raise.

Founded in 2019, Musely has raised only about $40M of equity to date, has served more than 1.2 million patients, and has reportedly been growing revenue by roughly 50% annually. Learn more.

Stride Consumer Partners has led Crown Affair’s Series C round, marking its first investment in prestige haircare, with existing backer True Beauty Ventures also participating; terms were not disclosed.

The raise follows Crown Affair’s all-door Sephora expansion. Learn more.

Fundamental Brands, a Delray Beach, Fla.-based beauty and personal care holding company, agreed to buy Great American Beauty and its licensing subsidiary Palm Beach Beauté. Learn more.

Main Post Partners completed its sale of DeMert Brands, parent company of haircare brand Not Your Mother's, to Henkel. Beauty Bytes Flashback.

Estée Lauder Companies (NYSE: EL) has made a minority investment in 111SKIN, the luxury clinical skincare brand founded by plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Yannis Alexandrides; terms were not disclosed.

Dr. Alexandrides will remain actively involved and continue to lead the business, which has built its position around medically rooted skincare anchored by its NAC Y2 technology. Learn more.

Avista Healthcare Partners launched an OTC and skincare acquisition platform called Birchwell Consumer Health.

Its first deal is for Bag Balm, a Lyndonville, Vt.-based therapeutic skincare brand. Learn more.

Turpaz Industries (TASE: TRPZ) has acquired U.S. flavor and fragrance company Phoenix Flavors & Fragrances for $95M, plus up to $5M in earnout.

Phoenix generated $36.8M of revenue and $6.9M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025, and Turpaz expects roughly $2M of synergies from the integration. Learn more.

Biologique Recherche is exploring a potential sale as investment banks begin pitching a process, with the French professional skincare brand said to generate roughly €150M ($175M) in annual sales at about 30% EBITDA margins and to be worth around €400M to €500M, according to BeautyMatter.

The spa-led clinical skincare brand is reportedly drawing interest from strategics including Clarins, L’Oréal, Unilever, Estée Lauder, Beiersdorf, and Galderma.

Adwoa Beauty, a textured haircare brand founded by Julian Addo, is moving into liquidation after a U.S. bankruptcy judge converted its Chapter 11 case to Chapter 7 on May 1, following a motion from creditor Aurous Financial Services.

The brand had filed for Chapter 11 in October 2025; Chapter 7 means its assets will now be sold to repay creditors rather than reorganized. Learn more.

Maesa has sold Anomaly, a haircare brand, to Reliance Retail; terms were not disclosed.

The deal includes Anomaly’s trademarks, brand assets, and digital properties, and comes after the brand exited U.S. retail at the end of 2025 to focus on international growth, particularly in India. Learn more.

True Beauty Ventures announced the launch of the third fund, following a $41M fund I closed in 2021 and a $75M fund II closed in 2024. Learn more.