Harry’s and Coterie owner Mammoth Brands has ambitions to be the next CPG giant

Mammoth Brands desires to tackle conventional client packaged items corporations, armed with a portfolio of disruptors in the private and child care classes which have gained over customers and retailers alike.

For the final decade, upstarts like these owned by Mammoth have challenged the relevance and longstanding dominance of legacy giants like Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Kimberly-Clark. The development has additionally performed out throughout packaged meals and beverage corporations, like Poppi and Olipop taking over Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Customers’ loyalty now not attracts on simply model recognition. Newcomers can provide consumers one thing totally different: higher costs, greater high quality or fewer elements that scare them.

“A variety of these corporations name these smaller manufacturers ‘ankle biters’ — tells you precisely what you want to find out about how they view the menace,” mentioned Nik Modi, co-head of worldwide client and retailer analysis for RBC Capital Markets. “However I believe that they are taking it much more critically. I believe it is gotten to a tipping level.”

With manufacturers like Harry’s razors, Lume Deodorant and Coterie diapers, Mammoth is reshaping the client items panorama, and it has formidable plans.

“We’re attempting to construct a number one fashionable [consumer packaged goods] firm, like if Procter & Gamble and Unilever have been getting constructed at present,” Mammoth co-founder and co-CEO Andy Katz-Mayfield informed CNBC.

In 2024, Mammoth noticed income of $835 million and virtually $100 million in adjusted earnings earlier than curiosity, taxes, depreciation and amortization, in accordance to a press release from the firm. Whereas legacy client giants nonetheless dwarf the firm with their tens of billions of {dollars} in annual income, Mammoth mentioned it has seen a larger than 20% income compound annual progress charge over the prior 5 years by way of 2024.

Quickly, a wider swath of buyers may wager on the firm’s imaginative and prescient. Mammoth is weighing an preliminary public providing as quickly as the second half of this yr, in accordance to a Bloomberg report.

“At present, our personal firm, we become profitable, which is nice, and we have now alternative to proceed to spend money on the manufacturers in our portfolio,” mentioned Mammoth’s different co-founder and co-CEO Jeff Raider. “We’ll proceed to consider the proper capital construction for the enterprise over time to allow us to obtain that long-term consequence.”

In the meantime, Mammoth appears centered on difficult present CPG giants.

The early seeds of Mammoth started in 2013, when Katz-Mayfield and Raider based Harry’s. Katz-Mayfield got here up with the concept for the startup primarily based on his frustration with the established order of shopping for $20 substitute razor blades.

“I referred to as up Jeff,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned. “We determined to construct a males’s grooming model that was a very prime quality product at nice worth, a greater total expertise, on-line led, and I actually do suppose that is actually at the core of every part that guides Mammoth Brands.”

Katz-Mayfield and Raider had beforehand labored collectively at Charlesbank Capital Companions and Bain & Firm. Earlier than founding Harry’s, Raider co-founded Warby Parker.

Like the glasses startup, Harry’s started on-line, turning into one other disruptor throughout the period of direct-to-consumer manufacturers. By 2016, it had gained sufficient prospects to land on Goal cabinets.

Harry’s DTC origins allowed it to tweak its razors and win over prospects who have been beforehand loyal to the conventional grooming giants.

Its DTC working mannequin additionally helped underscore who the firm views as its core buyer: the shopper. However conventional CPG corporations usually view retailers as their buyer, not the individual that finally buys and makes use of their merchandise.

That perspective influences these corporations’ innovation methods, in accordance to Katz-Mayfield. For instance, a CPG firm may make a number of small tweaks to create a brand new SKU, or inventory protecting unit, to change an underperforming product SKU, permitting that model to maintain onto its present shelf house and placate its retail buyer, in accordance to Katz-Mayfield.

“It is not that a few of these manufacturers aren’t nice and a few of these merchandise aren’t nice, however … the innovation was pushed by a technique which is, the solely means we will develop is to enhance costs, and so on,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned. “The one means we will justify value will increase is to add bells and whistles that customers do not truly need.”

Harry’s made its means to extra retailers after Goal. The model caught to its DTC roots although, insisting on launching new merchandise on-line first to get suggestions from loyal prospects.

In 2018, Harry’s launched Flamingo, a girls’s shaving and physique care model with the similar ethos.

Then the legacy giants got here knocking.

In 2019, Schick owner Edgewell Private Care introduced it was shopping for Harry’s for $1.37 billion. Three years earlier, Unilever had purchased Greenback Shave Membership, one other razor disruptor, for $1 billion. (In 2023, Unilever bought the razor model to a personal fairness agency.)

Edgewell provided Harry’s the probability to use its experience in the direct-to-consumer enterprise mannequin and apply it to the firm’s manufacturers, in accordance to Raider. However the Federal Commerce Fee sued to block the deal on antitrust grounds, which led Edgewell to stroll away from the acquisition.

Nonetheless, Katz-Mayfield and Raider held onto their imaginative and prescient of serving to different manufacturers obtain success.

“The limitations to beginning a model are decrease than they’ve ever been,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned. “Our perspective is that basically scaling and sustaining these manufacturers continues to be actually onerous.”

Harry’s created an incubator lab, launching cat care model Cat Particular person and haircare model Headquarters. It has since bought Cat Particular person to Weruva and wound down Headquarters, instructing the Harry’s crew the worth of staying extra centered on what it considers core private care classes.

Harry’s Labs additionally invested in the seed spherical of Hims, however has since bought its minority stake.

“Investing shouldn’t be actually a part of the technique,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned. “We did that at the time as we have been testing and studying how we’re going to construct the platform. It was a terrific consequence for us, as a result of [Hims] had quite a lot of success and the funding was value so much.”

In 2021, the firm purchased Lume Deodorant, which sells sticks, tubes and spray that may be used throughout the physique. The model is extensively credited with establishing the whole-body deodorant phase. Inside two years of the deal, Lume’s gross sales had greater than doubled, in accordance to Mammoth.

The Lume acquisition helped Mammoth study extra about promoting on Amazon, the place the model had extra expertise than Harry’s and Flamingo did, in accordance to Katz-Mayfield.

Constructing off of the Lume acquisition, Harry’s launched Mando deodorants in late 2022, advertising and marketing the similar idea to males.

In April 2025, Harry’s Labs formally rebranded as Mammoth Brands. And its next acquisition additional demonstrated its want to be the next huge CPG firm.

In late 2025, Mammoth purchased Coterie, a high-end diaper model based in 2019 with superstar buyers like Karlie Kloss and Ashley Graham.

The deal was reportedly valued at over $1 billion and concerned a mixture of money and inventory. Mammoth mentioned in October that Coterie surpassed $200 million in internet income over the earlier 12 months, an almost 60% leap from the prior-year interval.

Coterie’s premium diapers can value as a lot as $1 per unit, a steep value for some dad and mom. However the model has discovered many customers are prepared to pay extra for the product, which guarantees excessive absorbency with out added perfume, latex, rubber, parabens, pesticides or chlorine bleaching. Coterie has been “very worthwhile” over the final three years, in accordance to the model’s CEO Jess Jacobs.

“Seventy-four p.c of fogeys are prepared to pay extra for better-for-you merchandise,” she informed CNBC. “Dad and mom are in search of higher and deserve higher, and they’re questioning the established order, similar to we’re as a model and as an organization.”

Forty-three p.c of the model’s new prospects come from phrase of mouth alone, in accordance to Coterie.

Beneath Mammoth, Coterie now has the benefits of being part of an even bigger firm; it may possibly study from e-commerce methods for Amazon that presently work for Mammoth’s manufacturers. As Coterie broadens its retail publicity past higher-end grocers like Complete Meals and Erewhon, Mammoth can introduce it to extra retailers. And diapers are sophisticated to manufacture, so Mammoth may also help help that course of as Coterie continues to create innovate on its diapers.

For instance, Coterie is presently in talks to add extra retail companions. And Mammoth sees greater potential for the model, too.

“Coterie is a model that may actually lengthen throughout child care,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned. “It is not only a diaper model.”

However Coterie’s success has caught the consideration of legacy gamers, who’re keen to adapt a few of the upstart’s playbook.

For many years, a handful of corporations have dominated the family items and household and private care classes. Their portfolios are chock-full of iconic manufacturers used on daily basis by Individuals, and their histories usually stretch again greater than a century.

In 1837, cleaning soap maker James Gamble and candlemaker William Procter grew to become enterprise companions, creating the firm that also carries their names at present.

Initially based as a paper mill firm in 1872, Kimberly-Clark now owns a bunch of manufacturers like Kleenex, Huggies and Cottonelle. It went public practically a century in the past.

In 1930, a merger between a Dutch margarine producer and a British cleaning soap maker gave beginning to Unilever.

Whereas these large corporations competed with one another, it was practically inconceivable for a newcomer to achieve a foothold of their well-established classes. For a nascent firm, launching a brand new product was dear and tough, as legacy manufacturers held onto their shelf house with a demise grip and retailers have been reluctant to take an opportunity.

However over the final decade, these client giants have confronted a brand new menace from upstarts.

“We’re actually seeing competitors in CPG has essentially intensified, and it is coming in all places,” mentioned Sally Lyons Wyatt, chief advisor for Circana’s client items and foodservice insights division. “Small producers are gaining share. Digital and social platforms are decreasing the barrier for entry for lots of those smaller manufacturers.”

The rise of e-commerce meant launching a brand new client packaged good was not the daunting job it used to be. A profitable direct-to-consumer enterprise usually leads retailers to come knocking on the newcomers’ doorways.

“The massive retailers have additionally made the case that they need these culturally related manufacturers of their shops to herald customers,” RBC Capital Markets’ Modi mentioned.

And social media has additionally reworked how customers take into consideration what merchandise to purchase.

“Cultural relevance is now equal to or outmoded model fairness,” Modi mentioned. “If you concentrate on it, most of the huge manufacturers should not dropping share to different huge manufacturers. They’re dropping share to the smaller disruptive manufacturers.”

Look no additional than diapers, a $5.43 billion market in the U.S., in accordance to Euromonitor Worldwide information.

In Procter & Gamble’s fiscal second quarter, which led to December, its U.S. diaper quantity shrank 2%. Its Pampers had fallen to second place in U.S. diaper gross sales, trailing Kimberly-Clark’s Huggies for the first time since 2021, in accordance to Euromonitor information.

“I do not need to gloss over the proven fact that we have now work to do to get better share,” P&G CFO Andre Schulten informed analysts on the firm’s earnings convention name in January.

Whereas Coterie is rising quick, it stays a a lot smaller diaper model than Huggies and Pampers. Nonetheless, it seems to be like P&G has taken word of its success.

P&G had challenged Coterie’s declare that its diapers have been up to 4 instances extra absorbent than main manufacturers. A yr in the past, the Higher Enterprise Bureau’s Nationwide Applications’ Nationwide Promoting Division really helpful that Coterie cease utilizing the declare, which the diaper model adopted.

In March, P&G launched Pampers Amore, a line of premium diapers that it touts as “microbiome suitable” and “hypoallergenic.” Most tellingly, the line’s personal packaging instantly pits it towards Coterie; it claims that its liner retains infants 3 times drier than Coterie.

“The truth is, they’re chasing one thing that’s already gone,” Coterie’s Jacobs mentioned. “We carved out that premium class, we have grown it. It is rising 20% since 2020 and 10% yr over yr. They usually’re late. So it is a query of, can they transfer quicker? Can they be extra nimble, and can they get forward? And the actuality is, at this level, and actually in diaper, it doesn’t seem to be they will.”

Jacobs estimates that Coterie is roughly 18 months forward of legacy diaper manufacturers.

However CPG giants nonetheless have some benefits, in accordance to Modi. For instance, the battle with Iran is complicating provide chains for key parts like packaging supplies. Whereas nonetheless a headache for legacy manufacturers, they’re ready to navigate the problem extra nimbly thanks to their dimension and bargaining energy.

After which there may be innovation. Modi mentioned that he thinks that huge manufacturers nonetheless have higher analysis and growth groups, which ought to assist them create the greatest product doable.

And Kimberly-Clark’s publicity to the very aggressive Asian diaper market is fueling its innovation, CEO Michael Hsu mentioned that Barclays Americas Choose Convention in Might.

“We’re going to undergo these trial cycles the place individuals are going to strive these new issues, and they’re like ‘Yeah, possibly I do not like this as a lot,'” Modi mentioned. “They usually begin switching again to a few of the greater manufacturers the place the merchandise truly work.”

Moderately than attempting to beat them, some legacy gamers have determined to be part of the upstarts as a substitute. Procter & Gamble purchased Native deodorant for $100 million and turned it into one in every of the firm’s dozens of billion greenback manufacturers, by Modi’s estimate. Unilever has snapped up numerous challenger manufacturers, like Gruns, the DTC complement gummy model, and Squatch, which sells private care merchandise geared toward males.

However these offers aren’t all the time successful for the purchaser — or the vendor. Generally their company cultures do not mesh, or the new owner doesn’t know the way to incubate a smaller model, in accordance to Modi.

For a lot of legacy gamers, Modi thinks that the greatest technique is to create new manufacturers, reasonably than attempting to deliver present traces up to velocity.

“It is about how rapidly they will transfer and how prepared they’re to be affected person and develop a model,” Modi mentioned, including that many corporations lack the willingness to anticipate a small model to develop into one value $1 billion.

For its half, Mammoth is attempting to show itself as the sort of firm with the potential to assist upstarts develop into private care powerhouses.

“We’d reasonably have a small portfolio of enormous manufacturers than a big portfolio of small manufacturers,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned.

Going ahead, he and Raider need to add extra manufacturers in what they name the “on a regular basis care and wellness” classes. They’re wanting to add extra merchandise to their portfolio which might be in “consumable client classes,” barring human meals and drinks.

“We’re actually dogmatic about a few of these issues that we might by no means do M&A simply to do M&A and purchase scale and progress, as a result of we’re not attempting to flip these items. We’re attempting to personal them eternally,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned.

In contrast to conventional client items corporations, Mammoth is much less centered on getting into particular classes to complement its total portfolio and as a substitute extra interested by buyer retention and its progress prospects throughout e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail, in accordance to Katz-Mayfield.

“We have now to consider that one thing is online-led however has huge omnichannel potential,” he mentioned. “It could possibly be an enormous $200, $300 million-plus model as a result of that is the place we’re going to add the most worth, serving to these manufacturers scale on that journey.”

Mammoth has a crew that tracks new manufacturers, beginning once they start to achieve traction on social media or Amazon. However each potential acquisition is probably going additionally getting consideration from legacy CPG corporations or enterprise capital and personal fairness corporations.

To founders, Mammoth offers its pitch as an owner that gives independence and autonomy, with the infrastructure and company help that may introduce upstarts to huge retailers like Goal. Mammoth additionally desires the founders and govt groups to keep on for some time.

“We sort of view ourselves as a bit of a Goldilocks,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned.

And a brand new acquisition is probably going coming to Mammoth sooner reasonably than later. The corporate is primarily centered on rising its portfolio by way of dealmaking, in accordance to Katz-Mayfield.

“For us, I believe like one or two offers a yr might be the proper tempo,” he mentioned, including that he believes that Mammoth could have portfolio of eight to 10 manufacturers inside the next three or 4 years.

For all the concentrate on M&A, innovation hasn’t stopped at Mammoth’s present manufacturers. For instance, Harry’s has been increasing its vary of skincare for males.

“The best way we give it some thought, these manufacturers are nonetheless fairly early of their journey,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned. “All of them have large potential.”

Mammoth nonetheless launches new merchandise on-line first, demonstrating the firm’s continued perception in the DTC enterprise mannequin, regardless of rumors of its demise. About half of Mammoth’s income nonetheless comes from on-line gross sales, in accordance to the firm.

“I believe DTC is the single biggest place on the planet to construct merchandise and manufacturers,” Raider mentioned.

However the buzziest information for Mammoth will possible be its preliminary public providing, though the co-CEOs performed coy about these potential plans.

“Do not know the place that got here from,” Katz-Mayfield mentioned when requested about the Bloomberg report a couple of potential IPO as quickly as this yr that recognized 4 banks reportedly engaged on the deal.

“We’re lucky that we become profitable as an organization, and we’re ready to use a few of that money move,” he added. “We have all the time been type of extra agnostic to what the construction is, however we actually desire a arrange that permits us to have entry to capital, whether or not that is privately or publicly, in some unspecified time in the future in the future to pursue that technique.”