E. Scott Beattie — who is already looking to double sales of Elizabeth Arden Inc.’s flagship brand — is now putting his foot on the spa business accelerator, taking a stake in Red Door Spa Holdings.
Arden teamed with John Anderson’s J.H. Anderson Holdings Inc. for the deal and together they paid $12 million for a minority stake in Red Door, with an option to buy the company outright.
Red Door operates 31 spas under the namesake brand in the U.S. as well as 18 Mario Tricoci Hair Salons in the Chicago area.
The idea is to rev up the Red Door business while reinforcing Arden’s prestige standing and then ultimately use the spas to expand the brand into the booming Asian market.
Arden already licenses the trademark for the Elizabeth Arden and Red Door brands to Red Door, which is backed by investor North Castle Partners and logged sales of about $150 million last year.
“It’s a logical time now to start to reintegrate not only the brand, but the ownership and align our interest more succinctly with the business,” Beattie, Arden’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, told WWD.
“We’re in the process of finalizing the business plan with our partners on this, but our first priority is to really optimize the U.S. business,” Beattie said. “We’ve got some critical mass here. But we also see great opportunity, particularly in Asia, to expand the platform as almost flagship stores and spa locations in markets where there is not a lot of prestige retail distribution.”