Walker & Company Brands, a company that makes health and beauty simpler for people of color, has been acquired by Procter & Gamble Company (P&G). Walker & Company Brands launched five years ago and has been developing products for multicultural consumers since then.
One of Walker & Company’s signature products is the Bevel, which is a grooming product designed for men with coarse or curly hair and reduces razor bumps and skin irritation. And Walker & Company also sells FORM Beauty, a hair care collection of products developed for women with textured hair.
Walker & Company Brands is going to operate as a separate and wholly-owned subsidiary of P&G. Walker & Company will also relocate to Atlanta, George from Palo Alto, California in the first half of 2019. And the company will continue to be headed by CEO and founder Tristan Walker. Here is a video featuring Walker talking about the company:
Prior to launching Walker & Company Brands, Walker was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz and was the head of business development at Foursquare. According to Crunchbase, Walker & Company raised over $33.3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Felicis Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Daher Capital, Collaborative Fund, Google Ventures, Johnson + Partners, Melo7 Tech Partners, and several others.
“When I started Walker & Company Brands, I set out to build a company that would meet the health and beauty needs of people of color on a global scale,” said Walker in a statement. “Having access to P&G’s outstanding technology, capabilities and expertise helps us to further realize that vision, giving us the power to scale and bring new products to people of color, while staying true to our mission and continuing to nurture the loyal community we’ve worked hard to build.”
This deal will accelerate growth for Walker & Company’s existing brands and fuel P&G’s multicultural business. And this will also lead to further development of additional products designed for the specific needs for people of color.
“We have tremendous respect for the work Tristan Walker has accomplished and we are excited to welcome Walker & Company to the P&G family,” added P&G Beauty CEO Alex Keith. “The combination of Walker & Company’s deep consumer understanding, authentic connection to its community and unique, highly customized products and P&G’s highly-skilled and experienced people, resources, technical capabilities and global scale will allow us to further improve the lives of the world’s multicultural consumers.”
P&G’s products are distributed across 70 countries worldwide. And some of the most popular brands under P&G include Always, Ariel, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Dawn, Downy, Febreze, Gain, Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Olay, Old Spice, Oral-B, Pampers, Pantene, Tide, Vicks, and Whisper. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.
