CBD brand Fleur Marché has been acquired by functional wellness and CBD company Equilibria for an undisclosed amount.
As part of the deal announced on Tuesday, Fleur Marché and its team will continue to operate independently, with co-founders Ashley Lewis and Meredith Schroeder remaining at the helm. Following the acquisition, Equilibria will support Fleur Marché in areas including product development, innovation and national distribution.
“There are so many exciting synergies between our two brands. [They’re both] female-led and female-founded, and have a deep passion for democratizing wellness. Also, both Fleur Marché and Equilibria were born with our first category being deep into CBD and cannabinoid space,” said Coco Meers, CEO of Equilibria.
When former Goop executives Lewis and Schroeder first launched Fleur Marché in 2019, it gained the nickname “the Goop of CBD” and functioned as a multi-brand CBD marketplace. It transformed into an exclusively private-label brand in 2021 as part of a shift from an e-commerce to a wholesale-oriented strategy. The brand previously received $1.5 million in a pre-seed friends and family round of funding, with Subversive Capital listed on Crunchbase as an investor. Its product lineup includes four transdermal patches containing CBD and other ingredients that are to be absorbed through the skin when applied.
For product development, Fleur Marché has shifted its focus “away from just CBD and into larger plant-based wellness,” said Lewis.
“We both feel really strongly convicted as management teams that CBD is just the beginning,” said Meers. The companies’ press release mentions that, along with CBD, “mushrooms, nootropics and adaptogens are more accepted than ever.”
They’re currently “exploring which of [Fleur Marché’s] innovations, both CBD and non-CBD, make sense to bring over to the Equilibria side, and vice versa,” said Meers.
Equilibria was also launched in 2019 and has raised a total of $5 million led by cannabis fund Salveo Capital and Hyde Park Angels, with participation from the venture arm of an unnamed global CPG conglomerate. It sells its brand of CBD ingestibles and topicals exclusively via its DTC site and defines itself as part of the “telehealth” arena, said Meers.
The brand has 25 “dosage specialists” on hand who conduct virtual consultations with customers, offering advice on CBD dose size.
Meanwhile, Fleur Marché is “really building up a veritable wholesale business,” said Lewis. The brand is currently stocked in Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Foxtrot and Earthbar, and is in conversations with other national retailers about partnering in the future. The brand’s wholesale relationships were a draw for Equilibria.
“We don’t have any wholesale presence and they’ve got such great marquee accounts,” said Meers.
The brands are also focused on different age demographics. While Equilibria’s main customer demographic is postmenopausal women, Fleur Marché is targeting Gen Z.
The goal for the next phase in growth after the acquisition will be “focused on helping Fleur Marché achieve massive scale” in national retail, said Meers.
