Lume

We invested in Lume because the deodorant category had been defined by convention for too long. Underarms were the whole product. The rest of the body existed as an afterthought. Lume's team saw the full product space, ran the clinical work to prove it, and built a brand credible enough to own the category they were creating.

Dr. Shannon Klingman, a physician, gave the brand real authority. The clinical backing made the marketing honest. The product actually performed. That combination, authority, substance, brand, is what makes a category-definer out of what could have been just a line extension.

The commercial trajectory confirmed the thesis. Lume moved from specialty retail to mass retail at a pace most personal care brands never achieve, and the velocity at mass suggests the category is even larger than the early DTC data implied. Retention numbers are the kind that tell you the customer believes the product.

We're late-stage investors at this point, and we expect the position to compound for years.

Lume is whole-body odor control with clinical backing. A deodorant system designed, tested, and marketed for the entire body. A category that effectively didn't exist as a real consumer product before Lume defined it.

The brand has become a retail force in personal care, with distribution across Target, Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, and specialty retailers. Multi-SKU product line, cream, stick, wash, wipe, that compounds through repeat purchase rather than promotion. Clinical messaging that the category's legacy incumbents cannot credibly match without reformulation.

The international opportunity is the next chapter, and the category expansion opportunity, adjacent personal-care segments where a physician-founder brand can extend credibly, is the one after that. We expect the company to execute on both.