Welcome in, today is Monday, July twenty-seventh, and we begin with Cosmetics Business reporting that minimalist skin-care brand Merit has taken on institutional beauty capital. According to Cosmetics Business, Merit, the US minimalist brand, has landed a minority investment from Semcap's Beauty and Wellness vertical. The deal was led by Vasiliki Petrou, Semcap's Managing Partner for that vertical and the founder and former chief executive of Unilever Prestige. Petrou will take a seat on Merit's board and, per that reporting, support the brand's growth and globalisation plans. The amount was not disclosed. Her track record carries weight here. She built Unilever Prestige from twenty fourteen, folding in Dermalogica, Paula's Choice, Hourglass, Tatcha and K18, before stepping down last June after a decade at the helm. A former prestige chief taking a board seat signals institutional money moving toward the minimalist skin-care segment. Some in the trade read operator-led minority deals, capital paired with sector expertise at board level, as an emerging template for pushing consumer beauty brands global. Staying with the Unilever stable, K18 is moving into hair longevity. Cosmetics Business reports the brand has launched its FutureIQ Biomimetic Hair Longevity Serum, priced at one hundred ten pounds, pitched as its most significant innovation in years and its biggest launch since the Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask. Per that reporting, the serum uses proprietary MultiVital technology, and the brand says it targets premature hair ageing, supporting oxidative defense, follicle anchoring, pigmentation and scalp resilience, and is backed by ten pending patents. The company frames it as a shift from correction to preservation. It also shows the longevity positioning that reshaped skin care migrating into prestige hair care. Some in the beauty community read the longevity label as keratin treatment repackaged, more branding than breakthrough. Now to policy, and a tax decision the beauty trade is pushing back on. Cosmetics Business reports that the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has announced a twenty percent cut to business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues, taking effect from April next year, a measure aimed at reviving the high street. The British Beauty Council has branded it a slap in the face. Per the Council's chief executive, Millie Kendall, the relief rewards hospitality while ignoring salons and retailers, and overlooks a personal care sector of more than one hundred ninety-six thousand businesses that outnumbers pubs across most high streets. The stakes for the trade are direct. The same account notes the sector is eighty-six percent female-led, and that rising rateable values are already squeezing salon margins and forcing closures. A recurring concern in the reaction is that the hospitality-only scope leaves beauty, and charities, unaddressed. Also today, a read on India from Personal Care Insights, which frames the country as beauty's next growth chapter. The argument runs like this. India's beauty and personal care market has passed thirty billion US dollars, lifted by rising incomes, urbanisation and a quick-commerce boom, and that momentum is now spilling in several directions. Domestically, the outlet points to Reliance Retail launching Ajio Beauty, carrying more than fifteen hundred brands. On the clinical side, that read tracks dermocosmetics gaining ground, from Korean brand Dr. Melaxin entering through Tira to Glenmark building a dermatology-led portfolio. On exports, the argument notes UK retailer Superdrug adding Indian brand Minimalist across sixty-four stores, helped by a new UK-India trade deal that scrapped beauty tariffs once as high as twenty-two percent. Dermatologists quoted in that reporting add that Indian consumers are increasingly seeking products backed by clinical evidence and dermatologist recommendations, rather than advertising claims. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Global Cosmetics News reports GS Global has entered beauty distribution, launching three South Korean brands in Japan through premium retailer Cosme Kitchen. WWD reports Birchbox cofounder Katia Beauchamp is back with Buff Beauty, a twenty-two-product nail care line built on skin-care thinking, from formulas to tools. Also per WWD, GHD has launched Sculpt, its first consumer AI styling tool, which the brand says reads hair temperature nearly three thousand times a second for damage-free styling. And finally, Glossy reports dupe fragrance brand Oakcha is heading into hundreds of Ulta Beauty stores, its first move beyond online into physical retail.