Space NK sells US wholesale business

Space NK has offloaded its US wholesale division to global distribution platform PCA Companies for an undisclosed sum.

The British beauty retailer has nearly 600 points of sale in the US, including distribution in Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Hudson Bay, as well as a shop-in-shop partnership with Walmart.

PCA Companies, which specialises in beauty and wellness, told WWD that although the platform will be renamed in the US, it does not plan to touch the existing brand matrix or retail partnerships.

"The US business in its current form has been going for about three years. We pivoted out of retail to focus on our version of wholesale," said Space NK Chief Executive Officer Andy Lightfoot.

"We've grown a lot, but we have seen a number of opportunities that we couldn't fully capitalise on because of the scale of the business in the US. We saw the US and UK businesses becoming more and more differentiated, and the benefits we had leveraged earlier were being diminished, so it was a natural division."

The news comes after Space NK owner Manzanita Capital appointed bankers in April to handle a sale of the British beauty retailer, which is expected to fetch more than £300 million.

The firm hired Raymond James to oversee an auction later this year. One source revealed that based on Space NK's financial performance, it could be worth between £300-400 million.

Manzanita, which has owned Space NK for more than 20 years, was understood to be undecided on whether to sell a minority or controlling interest in the premium beauty retailer.

It previously explored a sale of Space NK in 2018, hiring Goldman Sachs to conduct a strategic review. It opted not to proceed with a deal.

Read TheIndustry's beauty's In History: Space NK, a timeline of a beauty retail trailblazer.