Beauty Pie founder builds subscription beauty business after decades of bootstrapping

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Beauty Pie subscription business

Highlights

Beauty Pie raised $170mn in its first venture capital round since its 2016 founding, with founder Marcia Kilgore recently returning to lead day-to-day operations.
Beauty Pie generated £64mn in revenue for 2025 and is preparing to open its first retail warehouse in King’s Cross as membership-based beauty offerings grow in the UK.
Kilgore previously sold Bliss for about $30mn and Soap & Glory for £40mn, and her company FitFlop reported $168mn in revenue last year.

Beauty Pie growth and founder return

As reported by the Financial Times, Kilgore has recently returned to day-to-day operations at Beauty Pie after a year away for personal reasons, as the business continues to grow its membership-based beauty offering.

Founded in 2016, Beauty Pie raised a total of $170mn in Kilgore’s first venture capital fundraising after she had resisted outside investment for decades. The company markets itself as a lower-cost route to premium cosmetics through monthly or annual subscriptions that give members access to products at prices below equivalent market levels.

The London-based brand now employs more than 100 people and is preparing to open its first retail warehouse in King’s Cross. Beauty Pie generated £64mn in revenue in 2025, adding to expansion in a UK beauty market where direct-to-consumer and membership models are competing with traditional retail channels.

Track record across consumer brands

Kilgore’s business career begins after she left Columbia University, where she had enrolled to study mathematics, because tuition costs became unaffordable. Supporting herself through a series of jobs in New York, she started giving facials in a small studio and built that operation into Bliss, a skincare and day spa brand that attracted celebrity clients including Madonna and Oprah Winfrey.

LVMH later bought a majority stake in Bliss for an estimated $30mn. Kilgore then went on to launch Soap & Glory, which she later sold to Alliance Boots in 2014 for a reported £40mn, and FitFlop, the footwear brand that records $168mn in revenue last year.

Kilgore has said financial instability in her childhood shapes her approach to business and spending. Born in Saskatchewan and raised partly amid periods of hardship after her father’s death, she has built her companies with a notably frugal operating style, a pattern that helps define her long preference for bootstrapping before turning to venture capital.

Chariot Claims’ $10 million Series A funding round highlighted how legal tech investors are backing tools that help consumers challenge issues like hidden fees, privacy disputes and hard-to-cancel subscriptions. Our earlier article noted that the company works with law firms and uses AI-assisted review to process large volumes of consumer claim submissions, as funding in the sector remains elevated and focused on scalable automation.

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