Dive Brief:
- Waldencast, the parent company of Milk Makeup and Obagi, has formed a new creative council geared to identifying and acting on industry trends in order to continue to meet the needs of its customers.
- The council, which will meet three times a year, will be led by Mazdack Rassi, co-founder and chief brand officer at Milk Makeup. Rassi has also been appointed global brand director at Waldencast, according to a company press release
- Other members of the council include Mona Kattan, founder of Kayali Fragrances and co-founder and global president of Huda Beauty; Geoff Cook, partner at Base Design; Jyothi Rao, senior adviser at Boston Consulting Group; Piers North, Of The North’s creative director; Brooke Wall, founder and chairperson of The Wall Group; and Roger Schmid, fragrance expert executive.
Dive Insight:
Waldencast said the council will help it “stay ahead of the curve by ideating on long-term macro and micro-trends” within the space it operates.
“We have no doubt that participating in the creative council and discourse around current and future trends may be beneficial to their brands in the same way we expect it will benefit Waldencast,” Waldencast co-founder Hind Sebti said in an email.
Waldencast Ventures was founded in 2019 by beauty industry veterans Sebti and Michel Brousset to incubate and develop emerging brands.
“Creativity is at the heart of our DNA, and we’re thrilled to bring together this best-in-class collective of pioneers and free thinkers to help operationalize our endeavors, while staying true to our purpose and upholding our brand-driven approach as we continue our next phase of growth,” Brousset said in a statement.
Milk Makeup and Obagi in November 2021 entered into an agreement to merge with special purpose acquisition company Waldencast Acquisition Corp., in a deal valued at $1.2 billion. In July 2022, the transaction was completed and the company began trading on the Nasdaq.
In recent months, Waldencast has received a number of Nasdaq delinquency notices as a result of not filing its annual report for the year ended December 2022 as well as its interim financial statements for the period ended June 30, 2023. Waldencast on Jan. 16 filed its fiscal year 2022 results, but has yet to file its 2023 results.
Waldencast has been working to build out its leadership team. In late January the company announced Manuel Manfredi will join the company as chief financial officer in April following the departure of CFO and chief operating officer Philippe Gautier. In September last year, the company also named a number of executives at Obagi, including Jordan Meyer as president, Linda Esposito as CFO and Justin Giouzepis as chief marketing officer.
