Higginson’s Huddled swoops for beauty ecommerce business

Huddled Group, the e-commerce group run by entrepreneur Martin Higginson has taken a controlling stake of 75% of the equity in Boop Beauty Limited, an e-commerce business specialising in surplus beauty and cosmetic products.
Described in a stock market announcement this morning as a “modest sum” the investment is the next step in Higginson’s strategy to build a portfolio of e-commerce brands, using fulfilment and warehousing capacity in Leigh.
Boop Beauty’s online store has been taken offline whilst it is integrated into Huddled group, before a relaunch in early September 2024.
It will be aligned with Discount Dragon, which sells surplus consumer products, and Nutricircle which was acquired as Food Circle Supermarket in April 2024, and rebranded.
Upon completion, additional working capital will be made available to the business allowing it to purchase a broader and deeper range of relevant stock, as well as a deeper range of the faster selling items and increase customer acquisition marketing.
Boop Beauty was founded by former L’Oreal in-house lawyer, Yasmine Amr, and is an online, direct-to-consumer retailer specialising in the sale of excess beauty and cosmetic products, including Aromatherapy Associates, Foreo and Legology.
With limited capital at its disposal Boop delivered 558 orders in Q2 2024, with an average order value of circa £39.
Yasmine Amr will remain with the business both as a shareholder and non-executive director. She said: “Over $4.8 billion worth of beauty products are destroyed globally each year, many of these due to overproduction. Boop had set out to tackle this serious issue and a growing number of brands have already embraced the concept. The investment from Huddled will allow me to accelerate the vision I had for Boop – I’m excited to be working with the Huddled team to drive the business forward.”
Higginson added: “The Boop business concept is fantastic and sits perfectly with the Huddled circular economy strategy. It was clear that Huddled could provide Boop with some key ingredients- more stock, marketing and fulfilment – to drive growth.
“I’m confident with the resources and support of the Huddled Group, Boop can flourish, and become a trusted and ethical partner for beauty and cosmetic companies in solving their excess stock challenges”.
After Lancaster-born Higginson sold Location Based Entertainment VR (LBE) and Uvisan businesses for £19 million, and returned cash to shareholders, he retained the market listing, changed its name to Huddled and is now building a suite of ecommerce businesses that use data analytics for marketing and stock control.
In September 2023 Huddled bought Leigh-based Discount Dragon in a £4m deal, integrating the Beer Monster brand as part of a strategy to create a portfolio of e-commerce brands.
Discount Dragon is its main trading business, which sells branded dry and tinned groceries, and beverages at a big discount to supermarkets.
In an interview with Rainmakers platform, Higginson said he was confident that running the business as a publicly traded ecommerce businesses has more upside than down.