Olamide Olowe steps down as CEO of Topicals

Olamide Olowe is stepping down as CEO of Topicals, the skincare brand she co-founded in 2020.Take note she isn't stepping away from the company.

Sukiana Chancy, a former Fenty Beauty executive who previously led the brand's skin, hair and fragrance divisions, has been appointed CEO. Olowe will remain involved in Topicals' day-to-day operations and is transitioning into a chair role.

And the choice of Chancy is interesting for blfans of the brand.

Olowe told The Business of Fashion that Topicals has reached a point where she wanted someone with experience building global brands and managing a larger profit-and-loss operation to help lead its next phase.Topicals is no longer operating like a tiny founder-led skincare startup.

Once outside capital enters a company, the conversation changes from:

Can we build this?

to:

How efficiently can we scale this?

Topicals has already demonstrated that there is demand for the brand. The next financial question is whether that demand can be converted into a much larger, repeatable international business.

And that is where Chancy's appointment becomes significant.

That tells consumers something about the stage Topicals is entering.

The company says it has achieved 12x revenue growth in five years, sold more than 10 million eye masks and raised more than $22 million in venture capital, according to figures Olowe shared.

Now the founder is making a distinction between building the brand and scaling the brand.

Olowe built the cultural language.Chancy is coming in with experience scaling global beauty businesses.

And the next chapter appears to be about taking what made Topicals culturally resonant and building the infrastructure around it.

That becomes even more interesting when you look at where the company is heading.

Topicals already has a presence in the U.S., Canada and the UK, and the company is looking toward further expansion across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

So this doesn't read like a founder disappearing from her creation.

It reads more like a founder recognising that the person who builds the house isn't necessarily the person who has to manage every floor once the house becomes a city.

Olowe started Topicals at 23.

Now, 6 years after its launch, she's changing her position within the company she built.

#JaiyeWhyItMatters: Sometimes the next stage of a founder-led brand isn't about holding onto the CEO title. It's about knowing when the brand has become bigger than the role that created it.

If Topicals executes successfully, the next chapter could see the brand become less dependent on its founder's personal visibility and more dependent on the strength of its distribution, product economics and international customer base. 

This would be an important transition for any founder-led beauty company: from “Olamide built Topicals” to “Topicals became a scalable consumer business.” The key things to watch are international revenue growth, retail expansion, profitability, repeat purchasing and whether the brand can preserve its cultural identity while becoming a much larger business.

Can Topicals turn the cultural relevance Olamide Olowe built into a globally scalable beauty business—without losing what made the brand culturally relevant in the first place?

Is Fenty Beauty positioning to acquire Topicals?