Vasiliki Petrou is leaving Unilever as chief executive officer of the Prestige Division that she started a decade ago.
“I’ve made the difficult decision to leave in pursuit of my dream to set up my own investment fund,” she said in a statement on LinkedIn.
Petrou was tapped by the CPG giant 10 years ago to create a prestige division from scratch. Through a series of acquisitions, starting with the much sought-after Dermalogica in 2015 for an estimated purchase price of $1 billion, she built a division that today encompasses 11 brands overall, the most recent being the buzzy biotech hair care player K-18 Biomimetic Hair Science.
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Under the leadership of Petrou, Unilever has become a key player in prestige beauty, although the division is still dwarfed by sales of its mass market products, which includes brands like Dove and Vaseline. In all, the Prestige division has net sales of 1.4 billion euros, with a CAGR for 2019-23 of 12 percent; it has posted 12 consecutive quarters of growth.
Comparatively, Unilever’s Personal Care division has sales of 14 billion euros and its Beauty & Wellbeing division, including prestige, reached 12 billion euros in revenues in 2023.
Still, there are some industry analysts who would like to see growth accelerated even faster, noting that the bulk of the business remains North American focused and that the division has been slow to globalize its brands.
“The growth has been double digit, which is what you want to see,” said Henry Dennis, a senior associate analyst at Bernstein in London earlier this year. “But because they acquire brands thorugh M&A, the challenge is how do you create value over and above — if you’re buying a high-growth asset, you’re paying full price for that growth.”
Petrou’s departure comes at a time of change for Unilever, under CEO Hein Schumacher. His stated strategy is to premiumize Unilever’s overall portfolio and focus on its billion-euro power brands. In March, Unilever said it would spin off its ice cream business and amplify its focus on beauty, home and well-being. As part of Schumacher’s plan, he appointed Priya Nair group president of Beauty & Wellbeing. She previously serviced as global chief marketing officer of the business.
The move is part of a wider productivity program that will see Unilever make 7,500 office-based layoffs globally and achieve total cost savings of around 800 million euros over the next three years.
The prestige division has two brands knocking on the door of billion-euro status: Dermalogica and Paula’s Choice. Five brands exceed $100 million in turnover — Murad, Living Proof, Tatcha, Hourglass and K-18, while Ren, Kate Somerville and Garancia, a French skin care brand acquired in 2019, are thought to be less than $50 million in revenue.
“Our focus in Beauty & Wellbeing is to consistently deliver growth in line with our Growth Action Plan, stepping up our competitiveness and accelerating our premiumization through multiyear innovation across the portfolio,” Nair told Beauty Inc earlier this year. “Prestige plays a pivotal role in achieving this.”
Petrou is known for taking a founder-first approach to the business. “I don’t like one-size-fits-all,” she said earlier this year. “No cookie-cutter.”
Under her leadership, Unilever became known for successfully integrating founder-led brands into the company with a method that respected the vision of the founder while allowing the brands to capitalize on the operational expertise and scale of the parent company.
Petrou could not be reached for comment, and Unilever had no comment as of presstime regarding succession plans.