Cardi B’s hair-care brand Grow-Good Beauty is bringing new shoppers to Revolve Group and is already adding to its profits, giving the fashion retailer an early return on its expansion into celebrity-backed beauty.
During the third quarter, Grow-Good’s net sales nearly doubled from the previous quarter, making it one of the group’s top 10 selling brands, co-founder and co-CEO Michael Mente said on Revolve’s November 3 earnings call. The company did not disclose the brand’s revenue.
“Repeat purchases among existing customers have increased meaningfully over the past three months,” Mente said. He added that Grow-Good was already contributing to the group’s bottom line.
For Revolve, those repeat purchases are an encouraging sign that shoppers are returning after the initial excitement around Cardi B’s launch. The business is also reaching customers outside the retailer’s established fashion audience, according to co-founder and co-CEO Mike Karanikolas.
“The [Grow-Good] customer, of course, has a different profile than Revolve,” he said. The company is “still in the early stages” of understanding those shoppers’ behavior.
That distinction matters as Revolve invests in beauty alongside its clothing business. Grow-Good gives the group a way to attract shoppers who may not otherwise have bought from it. But Revolve did not say how those customers differ demographically or whether they are also buying fashion.
The brand contributed to a strong quarter for customer growth. The number of people who bought from the group over the 12 months ending September 30 reached 3.24 million, up 18% year over year. That compares with 11% growth in the second quarter.
Revolve added 202,000 active customers compared with the previous quarter, marking its largest quarterly increase. Karanikolas said Grow-Good played a “meaningful role” in bringing in new customers, although the company did not break out its contribution.
“Even absent the [Grow-Good] additions, we would have seen acceleration in that active customer growth rate,” CFO Jesse Timmermans said.
Beauty is serving two purposes within the business, he explained: attracting new shoppers and giving existing customers another reason to buy.
That growth comes with a trade-off. Grow-Good’s lower-priced products helped bring Revolve’s average order value down 5% year over year to $292. Without the brand, it would have been relatively flat, Timmermans said.
Revolve reports average order value as a key business metric. Smaller orders can make shipping and fulfillment costs harder to absorb, putting pressure on how much profit each purchase generates. Grow-Good is already contributing to profits, according to management, but the company has not disclosed its margins or customer acquisition costs.
The growing beauty business also helped lower Revolve’s overall return rate, which fell more than two percentage points year over year. Karanikolas attributed part of that decline to a greater share of sales coming from categories such as beauty and from international markets, where return rates are lower. He did not quantify each factor’s contribution.
Those benefits came as Revolve continued spending on expansion. Group sales rose 20% to $356 million, while adjusted EBITDA fell 7% to $23.5 million. Higher shipping costs more than offset the savings from fewer returns.
Still, the Cardi B venture is giving Revolve confidence to pursue further partnerships. Karanikolas said it “opened the door for the opportunity with Donatella,” referring to the group’s fashion and beauty venture with Donatella Versace, announced on September 21. The venture is expected to introduce its first products in 2027, starting with beauty.
“We do think that the Donatella partnership will open even more doors,” he said. “We will be extremely selective.”
For Grow-Good, the immediate priority is turning improved availability into further sales. All products were back in stock after several early sellouts, Mente said, allowing Revolve to begin investing in marketing to build awareness. Mini versions are due to launch in November to encourage shoppers to try the range ahead of the holidays.
Grow-Good’s marketing has drawn on Cardi B’s existing audience and her history of sharing homemade hair treatments online. Creative agency Bully developed a 45-second launch film narrated by the rapper that played to audiences on her national tour. The campaign’s imagery and packaging took inspiration from Bronx beauty supply stores, bodegas and Dominican salons, according to the agency.
Cardi B has also promoted the brand in person. On March 24, she hosted a Shopify-backed beauty bus pop-up outside the Hip-Hop Museum in the Bronx. Grow-Good later ran an activation across both days of September’s Create & Cultivate festival, where Cardi B performed. On the earnings call, Mente credited her profile and social following with supporting awareness, citing activations around her Create & Cultivate and iHeartRadio Music Festival performances.
