Unilever Ventures, the venture capital and private equity arm of Unilever, has acquired a minority stake in True Botanicals, a prestige natural skin care brand founded by Hillary Peterson in 2014. The deal was part of a more than $3 million round of seed funding that includes several investors, and is significant as it marks the firm’s first investment of a direct-to-consumer luxury skin care brand.

“True Botanicals ticked a lot of boxes for us: an early, but demonstrable high growth trajectory, a great founding management team, an authentic brand with a distinctive positioning as well as an innovative, digitally native business model,” said Olivier Garel, the London-based head of ventures at Unilever Ventures. “From a business perspective, the direct distribution enables the company to invest much more than has been traditional in the product quality and the shopping experience.”

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