The Beauty Tech Group, the London-listed owner of CurrentBody Skin, ZIIP Beauty and Tria Laser, reported first half results on 17 September. Source: https://theindustry.beauty/beauty-tech-group-raises-outlook-as-growth-continues-across-all-markets-and-brands/, with presentation figures reported by Investing.com at https://www.investing.com/news/company-news/beauty-tech-group-h1-2026-slides-ebitda-guidance-raised-on-margin-gains-93CH-4904957.
Revenue for the six months to 30 June rose 44.3% to £79.7m, from £55.2m. Adjusted EBITDA rose 53% to £21.3m, a margin of 26.7%. CurrentBody Skin, the largest business, grew 44.9% to £71.1m. ZIIP Beauty grew 25.7% to £7m, and Tria Laser 179% to £1.6m. Every region grew: US and Canada up 37.2% to £33m, Europe up 48.4% to £17.5m, UK and Ireland up 29.7% to £14.2m, and Asia up 56.6% to £9.6m.
Full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance was raised to at least £48.5m from £45m. Revenue guidance was held at no less than £170m. A share buyback of up to £20m was announced.
Those are strong numbers from a company that listed in October 2025. But the figure a direct-to-consumer founder should pin above their desk is on a slide, not in the headline.
The slide that matters
According to the results presentation as reported by Investing.com, 85.4% of the group's revenue now comes from brand-name searches, up from 55.2% in 2020. Brand-driven sessions rose to 68.9%, from 39.9% in 2020. Direct-to-consumer is 87.0% of revenue, up from 82.1%.
Put simply: most of the people who buy now arrive by typing the brand's name into a search bar. In 2020, a much larger share of revenue came from people who found the brand some other way.
That shift is the difference between renting demand and owning it.
Why branded search is the honest metric
Most direct-to-consumer brands measure marketing through return on ad spend, customer acquisition cost and conversion rate. All three are useful. All three can look fine while the underlying business stays fragile.
A brand that depends on paid social and generic search to find every new customer is permanently exposed to the price of those channels. When costs rise, when an algorithm changes, or when a competitor outbids you, revenue drops with it. The brand has customers, but it does not have demand. It is paying for each sale.
Branded search measures something different. Someone typing your name has already decided they are interested in you specifically. They heard about you somewhere: a friend, a creator, a dermatologist, a review, a shop assistant, a previous purchase. The marketing that created that intent may have happened weeks earlier and in several places at once. Branded search is where it shows up.
When branded demand grows as a share of revenue, it usually means the brand's reputation is doing more of the selling. That is cheaper, more durable, and much more valuable to anyone who might one day invest in or buy the business.
How it was likely built
The presentation offers a few clues without claiming a single cause. The group works with around 4,550 key opinion leaders, according to the slides, which points to a very wide base of people talking about the products rather than a few big names. It describes a device development timeline of two to three years from concept to market. The third generation of its CurrentBody Skin LED range, due in the second half, followed two years of research and development including clinical testing.
That is a patient approach. Many voices over a long period, and products that take time to develop and come with evidence. It is not a formula a £1m brand can copy wholesale, but the direction is transferable: fewer, better products, a large and steady base of genuine advocates, and claims that hold up.
It is also worth noticing what founder and CEO Laurence Newman chose to emphasise: "What matters more to me than the growth rate is that the business became stronger as it grew."
How to measure your own version
You do not need a listed company's analytics team to find this number. You need a quarter's worth of honesty with your own data.
Start with your search console data. Split the queries that bring people to your site into two groups: those that include your brand name or a product name that only you use, and those that do not. Look at the share of clicks in each group, quarter by quarter, for the last year.
Then look at your analytics and add up revenue from branded organic search, branded paid search, and people who came directly to your site. Express it as a share of total online revenue.
The absolute number matters less than the direction. If it is rising, your brand is building reputation faster than you are buying attention. If it is flat while your ad spend rises, you are growing by paying more for each sale, and that should shape next year's plan.
What moves the number
Three things tend to move it, and none of them are quick.
The first is a hero product that people can name. Branded demand often starts with a product someone asks for by name rather than a brand they vaguely remember.
The second is a broad base of genuine advocates. Hundreds of people who actually use your product and mention it over months will usually build more branded demand than a small number of expensive posts, because the mentions keep arriving.
The third is evidence. Claims that hold up give professionals, journalists and reviewers something they are comfortable repeating, and repetition from credible voices is what makes people go looking for the name.
What does not move it durably is cutting brand-building to hit a short-term return on ad spend target. That protects this month's figures at the expense of next year's demand.
The plain version
The Beauty Tech Group grew revenue 44% and raised its profit guidance. The more useful figure for smaller brands is that 85.4% of its revenue now comes from people searching for its name, up from 55.2% in 2020.
Find your own version of that number this week. It will tell you more about the health of your direct-to-consumer business than any single campaign report, and it is the number that shows whether your marketing is building something you own.