The Center Receives $15 Million Growth Investment From Prelude Growth Partners

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — The Center, a beauty multi-brand platform today announced that it has received a $15 million minority investment from Prelude Growth Partners, a private equity firm focused on high potential, fast-growing consumer brands. The Center, founded in 2019 by beauty industry veteran Ben Bennett, focuses on building and growing beauty and wellness brands. The Center develops and supports the growth of leaders and up-and-comers in the space including their in-house brands Naturium, MAKE Beauty, and Phlur.

CEO and Founder of The Center Ben Bennett notes, “I was receiving a lot of phone calls from firms that wanted to be an investment partner to The Center, however, it was clear to me that an infusion of capital was really the secondary priority. We have had such explosive growth in the last 18 months, especially with Naturium, that we’ve become a sizable business, but we are still very much in start-up mode. I am so excited to have the support of Prelude Growth Partners and this investment will further fuel our continued expansion. In addition to providing capital to accelerate our growth, Neda and Alicia bring incredible value to our business with strong industry relationships, deep operational expertise, and genuine entrepreneurial enthusiasm to our partnership.”

“Ben is an outstanding brand architect and it’s remarkable to see how quickly he has transformed The Center into one of the most exciting multi-brand platforms in beauty,” said Neda Daneshzadeh, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Prelude Growth Partners. “The team’s commercial instinct paired with its product ideation and creativity has made Naturium one of the fastest growing brands in the highly attractive masstige skincare category. We look forward to working with Ben and the team to continue building upon The Center’s successful model while providing operational support for its growing brands.”

The partnership marks the first for The Center, with plans to continue building their platform and investing behind their brands. The Center specializes in emerging consumer goods brands, especially those designed to reach underserved audiences of consumers.

About The Center

The Center builds and grows compelling and highly-commercial brands in the beauty and wellness space bringing together an experienced and agile team of strategic and operational experts with a proven track record of creating market-leading consumer goods companies. A deep understanding of forecasting consumer trends underscore The Center’s ability to create, define, and market beauty brands. In addition, The Center’s management of testing, manufacturing, and distribution adds value throughout the product life-cycle. Within The Center’s vertical ecosystem, the centralized shared- services platform identifies trends and efficiencies to be shared across their entire portfolio of brands.

About Prelude Growth Partners

Prelude Growth Partners is a growth equity firm that supports brands made for the new modern consumer. By partnering with founders and CEOs, Prelude Growth Partners provides deep category experience, value-added operational support, and a broad network to power the high potential, fast-growing consumer brands of tomorrow. Prelude Growth Partners seeks to make investments of $10 million to $50 million in each company, across branded consumer categories including personal care, beauty, food & beverage, baby, pet, health & wellness and other consumer product, service and technology companies. Investments include: Banza, Sol de Janeiro, Summer Fridays, So Good So You, Westman Atelier, 8Greens, Bachans, dpHUE and Fly By Jing.