THG published its results for the six months to 30 June 2026 on 10 September. Source: https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2026/09/thg-sales-and-earnings-beat-guidance-as-myprotein-fuels-strong-first-half/.
Group revenue rose 7.2% on a continuing constant currency basis to £828.7m, ahead of guidance. THG Beauty, the division behind Lookfantastic, Cult Beauty and Dermstore, grew revenue 5.9% to £500.2m. UK retail was up 6.7%. Beauty adjusted EBITDA rose 23.8% to £25m. Lookfantastic skincare was up 17.4% year to date, and the business added more than 50 new launches in the half, including Clarins on Lookfantastic.
That is the headline, and it is a solid one. The more useful numbers for a founder sit a few lines further down.
The three numbers that describe the customer base
Active customers were maintained at 7.5 million, year on year.
Loyalty membership rose 9% to 3.5 million.
Returning customers accounted for about 90% of sales, up from about 89% a year earlier.
Put those together and the picture is clear. The number of people shopping is flat. The people who do shop are more loyal, more of them are in the loyalty scheme, and they account for a slightly larger share of revenue than before. That is a healthy base, and it is also a base that is not getting bigger.
For a retailer, a business built on repeat customers is valuable and a little exposed. Growth has to come from existing shoppers spending more, which has a ceiling, or from finding new ones, which is harder and more expensive.
Where the new customers came from
The results name one clear source of new shoppers: K-beauty, which THG says attracted more than 64,000 new customers in the half.
That is the detail to hold onto. Of everything in the beauty section, the category singled out for acquisition was the one bringing people who were not already there. K-beauty buyers arrive with their own discovery habits, their own creators and their own reasons to search for a specific product, and when they find it on Lookfantastic they become a customer the retailer did not have before.
The other channel named is TikTok Shop, where THG says Lookfantastic held the top spot among multi-brand beauty retailers in the UK throughout 2026, with revenue from the channel up 26%. It is another route that reaches people outside the existing base.
What this means for your pitch
More than 50 new launches in six months means the buyer is not short of new products. Every one of those launches arrived with a deck explaining why the formula is better, the packaging is beautiful and the brand story is distinctive. Most of them are probably right.
What the buyer is short of is new customers. A retailer with 90% of sales coming from repeat shoppers will always welcome a brand that sells to them, but the brand that is genuinely hard to replace is the one that brings shoppers the retailer could not reach alone.
So the question to answer in a pitch is not "why is this product good". It is "who will this brand bring here, how many of them, and how will they know to come". That means evidence of an audience that does not already shop the retailer: your own customer data, where they currently buy, the creators who drive your sales, the search demand for your brand name.
Be specific about the size. A brand that can credibly say it will introduce a few thousand shoppers in its first quarter, and show where they will come from, is making a different pitch from one that promises awareness. Buyers can compare the first against the 64,000 that K-beauty delivered in a half. They cannot do anything with the second.
It also means a plan for sending that audience to the listing. A launch that relies on the retailer's homepage and newsletter is a launch aimed at the existing 90%. A launch where your own channels, creators and community send people to the retailer page brings the people the retailer is actually looking for.
The second job: keep the new ones
The loyalty numbers point at a second requirement. THG's model is built on people coming back, and 3.5 million loyalty members show how seriously it takes that.
A brand that brings a new shopper who buys once and never returns has helped a little. A brand whose customers replenish, try a second product and join the loyalty scheme has helped a lot more, because it has added to the thing the retailer is best at.
That favours products with a natural repurchase cycle and ranges that give a first-time buyer an obvious second step. It also rewards brands that give the retailer content that keeps working after launch week, rather than a single burst of activity.
One more line for UK brands selling into Europe
THG expects Q3 revenue growth of about 2%, and says the main reason is EU duty applied to THG Beauty since 1 July 2026, with the European heatwave and the timing of own-brand sales also playing a part. It describes these as one-off factors and expects growth to accelerate again in Q4.
If a group of THG's scale is seeing a visible effect from EU duty on its beauty revenue, a UK brand shipping directly to European customers should check what the same change has done to its own landed cost and conversion since July, rather than assuming it has absorbed it.
The plain version
THG's beauty business grew, gained share in UK prestige and added more than 50 launches. Its active customer count also stayed flat at 7.5 million while returning customers rose to about 90% of sales, and the category it credited with new customers brought in more than 64,000 of them.
That is a retailer telling you, in its own numbers, what it needs. Not more product for the people it already has. New people, and a reason for them to stay. Pitch that, and prove it.