Sell a Personal Care Products business

Owner-operator personal care products businesses trade at 3x–5.5x SDE for typical $500K–$3M SDE ranges. At $3M+ EBITDA scale the same operators sell at 7x–14x EBITDA. Multiples in this category are ebitda-based and data-sourced from Pitchbook CPG Report Q4 2024 + Consumer Growth Report 2025. Where you land in the range is driven by growth trajectory, revenue mix, customer concentration, and management-team depth beyond the owner.

L'Oreal, Unilever Prestige, Estee Lauder, Coty, and PE platforms (L Catterton, TPG Growth) drive personal-care brand acquisition. Active buyer archetypes in consumer products include CPG strategic, Consumer PE, Aggregator / brand roll-up. Which of these bids for your business depends on scale — sub-$1M SDE is typically individual or search-fund territory, $1-3M SDE opens up PE platforms and strategics, and $3M+ EBITDA gets full LMM buyer attention.

Personal-care brands with clean-and-sustainable positioning, Sephora / Ulta / Amazon Prestige placement, and multi-channel wholesale relationships trade at meaningful premium. Beyond the industry-specific factor, the universal drivers in consumer products are omnichannel revenue mix (amazon + dtc + retail); gross margin >45%; cac / ltv ratio evidence of unit-economic durability.

Personal-care is highly influencer-marketing dependent with rising creator-acquisition costs; buyers scrutinize your CAC trajectory and organic-brand awareness. Buyers in this category also standardly scrutinize marketplace platform concentration (amazon-only businesses discounted) and return rates and quality issues. Addressing these in advance in a well-prepared CIM materially reduces retrade risk during diligence.

Typical transaction range for personal care products is $1.5M–$60M in annual revenue. Below that, buyer pool narrows to individual and small-search-fund. Above that, PE platforms and strategics dominate. NAICS code 325620 — buyers screen by NAICS in most deal sources.

From the day you engage a broker to close, expect 6–12 months for a well-prepared business in consumer products. The prep work — financial cleanup, addbacks documentation, key-employee retention agreements, real estate lease sorting — is where 3-6 months of the timeline hides. Starting that early is what separates a full-multiple exit from a discounted one.