e.l.f. booked a $17.7 million charge because rhode is beating its targets. Then it took that charge back out of adjusted profit.

e.l.f. Beauty’s net sales rose 51 percent to $520.8 million in the three months to 30 September. On the earnings call, CFO Mandy Fields put growth excluding rhode at about 35 percent and said shipments for rhode’s European launch helped lift quarterly sales. e.l.f. Beauty The company now expects full-year sales to grow 22 to 24 percent, up from 18 to 20 percent. Excluding rhode, it raised its forecast to 9 to 11 percent from 6 to 7 percent. Reported net profit was $30 million. The quarter included a $17.7 million expense after e.l.f. raised its estimate of what it will owe rhode’s former owners. The acquisition agreement provides for additional payments if rhode meets certain sales targets, and the brand is exceeding them.

The midpoint of e.l.f.’s full-year forecast is 23 percent with rhode and 10 percent without it. That 13-percentage-point gap is our calculation from the two forecasts. e.l.f. also raised its outlook for the rest of the business. Gross margin rose 1.6 percentage points to 71 percent. Tariff refunds lowered reported cost of sales and accounted for about 0.3 percentage points of that improvement. In August, we wrote that roughly a third of e.l.f.’s 36 percent quarterly sales growth came from the business it had bought. This quarter shows how rhode’s performance can also raise the price e.l.f. pays for it. Earn-out expenses totalled $33.8 million over six months, and e.l.f. made its first payment after the quarter closed. Rhode’s sales lift e.l.f.’s revenue, and beating the sales targets increases what e.l.f. expects to pay the sellers. That extra cost reduces reported profit. In adjusted profit, e.l.f. excludes the earn-out expense.

Leah Kirpalani opened the San Diego clean beauty retailer Shop Good in 2017. She has now [put her own brand, Beiin, into Credo](https://www.beautyindependent.com/shop-good-founder-beiin-credo-body-care-priced-replenishment/). It went into all 15 Credo shops and the retailer's website last month. It sells a wash, a lotion and an oil, from 28 to 42 dollars. The wash is 16.9 fluid ounces for 28 dollars, which is 1.66 dollars an ounce. The lotion is 2.01. Kirpalani says she wanted something priced for replenishment rather than for a special occasion. The brand is funded by friends and family.

Prestige body care dollar sales grew 16 percent in the first half of this year, according to Circana. Prestige skincare grew 9 percent. Body is the faster category, and the one where price per ounce is easiest to see. Beauty Independent puts some prestige body washes and lotions at 4 to nearly 10 dollars an ounce, without saying where that figure comes from. Against the bottom of that range, Beiin's wash is about two fifths of the price. Her answer comes from nine years of watching which bottles customers came back for. She is pricing well below the prestige rate per ounce and relying on repeat purchase for the margin. That is harder than it sounds. A 28 dollar bottle across 15 shops has to be repurchased to pay for anything. She has no institutional backing to fund that wait, and expects to raise within about a year. The whole model turns on how often that 28 dollar bottle comes back to the till.

Fareva, the French contract manufacturer, and Chromavis, the Italian make-up maker, say they are [working together](https://www.premiumbeautynews.com/en/fareva-in-france-and-chromavis-in,28457) on high-end skincare. Chromavis brings textures and formats, Fareva brings skincare formulation. Fareva bought a majority stake in Chromavis in July 2013. The announcement itself places the work inside the Fareva group, so this is a parent and its subsidiary. The named technologies are gel-trap, solid-to-serum and thermo-gel systems, carrying eco-collagen, plumping tripeptides and fermented plant sugars. No money, site, capacity or customer is named, and nobody is quoted.

Read it as an internal decision made public. A maker of colour cosmetics is being pointed at skincare, and the ingredients it leads with are the ones in every brief this year. Colour cosmetics is the slower half of a contract manufacturer's order book. A plant set up for pressed powder does not fill itself with serum work. Moving a design team across a group is far cheaper than building a site. On 14 August we wrote that the durable asset in contract manufacturing sits with the factory that owns the formula, not the brand that rents it. This is the same point from the owner's side. Fareva can move formulation and texture design between categories without asking a customer. There is no investment to announce because none appears to have been made. The release is a sales document aimed at brands writing skincare briefs. No named brand has launched on one of those three texture systems yet.

Researchers at the University of Alberta [tested nine artificial eyelash products](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44454-026-00072-y) bought on Amazon. All were made of plastic fibers small enough to count as microplastics. Most were polyester, and the plastic did not always match the label. The researchers also found metals that no label declared. The fibers of one strip lash held 111.89 micrograms of antimony per gram, more than 22 times the limit Health Canada sets for antimony as an impurity in cosmetics. In a sand test, cluster lashes shed up to half their fibers within a day.

Our read: false lashes are sold like accessories, but they sit on the eyelid for a day to a few weeks. Few studies have checked what the fibers are made of. The study measured the fibers, not what reaches the eye. Eyelash extensions are already a leading cause of visits to eye clinics, the authors note, and the glue usually gets the blame. They say the antimony fits its use as a catalyst in making polyester. On 25 September we wrote that the EU's ban on added microplastics gives leave-on cosmetics until 2029. We assume neither that ban nor EU cosmetics law, which bans antimony as an ingredient, reaches false lashes. Both cover substances and mixtures, and EU guidance treats false lashes as articles. Health Canada's limit is the authors' benchmark, not proof of a breach. Nine products from one marketplace is a small sample. Brands that sell lashes under their own name can still ask suppliers for polymer and metal tests now.

Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Huggies and Kleenex, [completed its purchase of Kenvue](https://cosmeticsbusiness.com/kimberly-clark-completes-48-7-billion-acquisition-of-kenvue) on 2 November. Kenvue, the former consumer-health arm of Johnson & Johnson, owns Neutrogena, Aveeno and OGX. The deal was valued at about $48.7 billion when it was agreed a year ago. The combined company is run as four regional divisions, from North America to a group of markets that includes Brazil, India and Japan. None is a beauty division.

Our read: Neutrogena is now a small part of a household-goods company, and outsiders will find it harder to follow. In Kenvue's last quarter as an independent company, to September, its skin health and beauty business sold $1.04 billion. That was flat, and down 0.5% without currency effects. Kenvue blamed lost distribution and the timing of promotions in the US, and talks with retailers in Europe. On 7 August we wrote that Neutrogena and Aveeno would be managed for cost savings rather than growth. The last quarter shows why, because beauty was the only Kenvue business that did not grow. On our arithmetic, it is about an eighth of the combined company's sales. Most of the promised $2.1 billion a year in savings and extra profit is cost cuts. Yesterday we reported that Unilever will stop reporting beauty as a division of its own. Kimberly-Clark is organized by region from its first day and has not yet published results that way. Unless it chooses to publish beauty sales separately, investors and rival brands will have to judge Neutrogena from retail tracking data.

Half of American beauty shoppers plan to use AI tools this holiday season, [Accenture's survey found](https://chaindrugreview.com/beauty-shoppers-splurge-on-small-luxuries-while-seeking-value-accenture-holiday-survey-finds/), to find products, compare them and look for deals. That is double the share in 2024. Fewer of those asked are ready to hand over the purchase. Only 19% would let an AI agent make the buying decision, and 7% would let one buy on its own. Accenture asked 4,048 Americans in August and early September, and the beauty findings come from 1,393 of them who planned to buy beauty. They expect to spend $885 each on it this holiday, 16% more than last year. Of those spending more, 53% said higher prices were one reason.

Our read: AI is becoming where beauty shopping starts, but few shoppers will yet let it finish the purchase. Beauty shoppers expect to split their holiday purchases almost evenly between online and stores. Even those already using generative AI expect 45% of their purchases to happen in a shop. On 31 October we reported that Maybelline had put a make-up try-on inside ChatGPT that sends shoppers to retailers to buy. Accenture's figures fit that model. AI helps the shopper choose, and the purchase still happens at a retailer, so the product an AI tool recommends has to be easy to find there. That could change. Nearly three in ten of those asked say they would trust an AI shopping agent more than themselves. The survey measures plans, not sales.

Laneige, the Amorepacific brand best known for its Lip Sleeping Mask, has started [mixing the mask to order](https://www.modernretail.co/marketing/k-beauty-brand-laneige-bets-on-experiential-retail-with-a-mix-and-match-lip-mask-station/) at its shop at the Grove, a Los Angeles mall. Shoppers pick from 45 flavor combinations, Laneige told Modern Retail, and a machine makes the mask on the spot. It costs $32, against $24 for the standard mask on Laneige's American website. Laneige first ran the idea at its Seoul flagship this summer. Allison Pollack, its vice president of marketing, said demand there, including from American tourists, persuaded it to bring the concept over.

Our read: Laneige is using its own shop to give people a reason to walk in. They can watch a version of its best-seller being made. Pollack said shoppers who try a product are more likely to buy it later. The custom mask is not exclusive to the shop. Since 16 July Laneige has sold a $28 version on Amazon, where buyers pick two scents online. The Grove adds more choice, the mixing in front of the buyer, and staff who can sell the rest of the range. On 29 October we wrote that Amorepacific had stopped paying for its own shops abroad and was relying on other retailers. The Grove shop does not fit that read, but it is not new. Laneige signed a long-term contract there after pop-ups in 2023 and 2024. The earlier read still holds for most of the business. One mall shop is small beside what Laneige sells through Sephora and Amazon.

Anvisa, Brazil's health regulator, banned sales of hair-styling pomades on 9 February 2023 after reports of temporary blindness. Researchers at the University of São Paulo say more than 700 cases were reported around that year's Carnival, after rain. After brands returned to shops from April 2023, the authors say, they [tested 10 of the products for eye irritation](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yrtph.2026.106281) without using animals. In a test on cells, four of the eight products that could be tested fell into the most serious class of eye hazard. A second test, on the membrane of hens' eggs, rated three products as severe irritants. One product carried no warning about contact with the eyes. The study was published on 23 October.

Our read: pomade is sold for the hair, but the harm is to the eyes, and that is where brands need to test it. A separate study, posted on 29 October and not yet peer reviewed, looked at Brazil's reports of side effects from cosmetics since 2007. Of 686 reports about pomades, 584, or 85%, involved the eyes, against 4.3% for other cosmetics. The authors call this a warning signal, not a measure of risk. The São Paulo products were bought in 2023, so pomades sold today may differ. The abstract, the only part we read, does not name an ingredient as the cause. Styling products are often worn in heat, sweat and rain. A brand can test the finished product for eye irritation without animals, as these researchers did, and print a clear warning.