Beatrice Dixon has never treated The Honey Pot as a typical startup. For the CEO and co-founder, the brand is both a calling and a responsibility. The concept originated not from a boardroom strategy session, but from a dream she says was guided by her ancestors. That sense of purpose is why she shocked many in the beauty industry by turning away from a $450 million offer for her company. The story of her rejected millions recently resurfaced in media outlets. It is unclear when the offer came through.
Not Just About the Money
The Honey Pot, known for its plant-based, cruelty-free feminine wellness products, has built a devoted following since Dixon first debuted her washes and wipes. The business grew quickly, boosted in part by early placement at Target. But Dixon has always maintained that ownership, even if that meant turning down enormous checks.
As she once told Forbes, the idea for her first product emerged during a difficult health battle. She struggled to find anything on the market that truly addressed her recurring bacterial vaginosis. She recounted a dream in which her grandmother appeared. “She told me that she’d been walking with me, and seeing me struggle, and she knew what to do. The funny thing is, a lot of the remedies that I was doing individually, I needed to put all of them together to make myself a potion,” she shared.
In 2012, she secured a $21,000 loan and began experimenting in her apartment kitchen, determined to create a more holistic approach to feminine care. Two years later, The Honey Pot Company debuted its natural wash at the Bronner Brothers hair show in Atlanta, where the team sold 600 bottles in one weekend to customers seeking effective relief.
Dixon began testing her formulas in what she described as a “hood clinical trial,” offering samples to customers she met as a Whole Foods buyer. Her grassroots approach worked. After securing distribution with Target, she faced the far more complex challenge of staying on the shelf and scaling operations with limited capital. “Raising money is hard whoever you are,” she said, noting the countless rejections before receiving financial support from Richelieu Dennis, the owner of Essence magazine and founder of Sundial Brands (parent company of brands such as SheaMoisture and Nubian Heritage) and his venture capital firm New Voices Fund.
As Honey Pot grew, acquisition interest followed. But Dixon rejected offers she felt compromised the company’s spirit, including one for $450 million. “I would have been selling my soul,” she told Forbes. And along the way she faced scrutiny from her consumers who urged her not to sell–or as many charged, “sell out.” In fact, in 2022, she felt compelled to post a social media video post stressing she had not sold the company.
“We have not sold. We are the same brand that you lifted up and fought for two years ago,” she said in the post. “Honey Pot is a human-owned brand. I designed a brand and a product line that is revolutionary and owned by me, my brother, and our team. To negate the disruption this brand has created is to undermine everything our community, this brand, and I have achieved together.”
In 2024, she ultimately accepted a $380 million deal with Compass Diversified, a partner she said she believed valued her team’s vision. “They believed in who we were. They understood that in order for us to get to the next phase—to find Honey Pot a home—we would need to be the ones to do that. They gave us the ability to keep our team. They believed in our strategy moving forward,” she said.
Dixon retains a minority stake.
The Honey Pot Company had an estimated annual gross revenue of over $100 million in fiscal year 2023, according to Bloomberg, and gross sales of approximately $121 million. In 2024, following its acquisition by Compass Diversified, The Honey Pot contributed $104.6 million in revenue to its new parent company.
Even though Dixon remains The Honey Pot’s CEO and Chief Innovation Officer, she long ago talked about an exit plan for herself. In an 2020 interview with The Helm, she said, “I absolutely do want to exit my company and I’m so vocal about that because culturally as a Black woman, getting investment dollars or exiting your company can be looked at as selling out, and what I want to regurgitate constantly to anybody, to any human that’s looking to The Honey Pot Company as a light, I want to be public that there’s no shame in exiting your business because that’s how you’re going to get to wealth.”
She added, “Once you can get to wealth financially, you’re able to really contribute to your community, to your family, to yourself. You’re able to see the fruits of your f–king labor.”
