HelloBody

HelloBody is a German clean-beauty brand specialising in skincare and body care, founded in Berlin and grown almost entirely online through influencer marketing. The brand sells directly to consumers across several European markets and describes itself as making effective, clean formulas accessible at fair prices. It is no longer independent: after passing through the consumer-goods group Henkel, HelloBody has been owned since 2022 by the Mannheim-based Grenion Group, which operates it through Grenion GmbH [2][6].

The company's own account dates its founding to 2015 [1], though that year is contested. Editorial coverage records the HelloBody brand as launching in 2016, with 2015 marking the founding of its original parent company, Invincible Brands [5][7]. The two figures are easily conflated, and the brand-launch year is plausibly 2016.

HelloBody was created by Monique Hoell, who set out to build a natural-cosmetics brand that was, in her words, fun, colourful and loud — aimed at young women around the age of 20 who she felt lacked youthful, approachable natural-skincare options. Before HelloBody, Hoell had co-founded an unrelated butler app that appeared on the German pitch show Die Höhle der Löwen without securing investment.

The brand emerged from Invincible Brands, a Berlin company founded in 2015 by Gennadi Tschernow and Björn Keune [7]. HelloBody launched online with no physical retail presence, selecting its first products — among them a black detox mask and a coffee body scrub — for their potential to spread on social media. According to OMR, the company grew its following organically and reported never having bought a single follower on its own channels [5].

HelloBody has changed hands twice. In July 2020 Henkel acquired a 75 percent majority stake in Invincible Brands' three beauty labels — HelloBody, Banana Beauty and Mermaid+Me — which together generated around €100 million in revenue over the preceding year; the London venture-capital firm Capital D retained 25 percent [7]. In December 2022 the Mannheim D2C company Grenion Group bought the same three brands back from Henkel, its first acquisition under a stated "buy & build" strategy [6].

The current operating entity, per the site's legal notice, is Grenion GmbH of Mannheim, with Fjolla and Nik Myftari listed as managing directors [2]. Banana Beauty and Mermaid+Me remain sister brands within Grenion's wider beauty-and-wellness portfolio.

The company frames itself around three values it labels "EFFEKTIV & CLEAN", "BORN SOCIAL" and "FUNdamental" — shorthand for effective clean formulas, a social-media-first identity, and a deliberately playful tone. HelloBody describes itself as "online-born", placing community at the centre of its activity, and states a mission to build "a conscious and inclusive community" under the wordplay tagline Hello(Every)Body. Its stated purpose is to make highly effective clean-beauty products accessible to everyone at fair prices [1].

Commercially, the brand has operated on a near-entirely direct-to-consumer model, which OMR puts at a 98 percent share, reaching customers across markets including Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States [5].

HelloBody's range centres on facial skincare and body care: cleansers, moisturisers, serums and face masks, alongside the body products it launched with. The company highlights commonly used active ingredients such as hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, retinol, vitamin C, AHA and BHA exfoliants, and peptides. It states that its formulas are, on average, around 96 percent naturally derived, and that products are dermatologically tested.

The brand markets its formulas as vegan and cruelty-free, and free of ingredients it lists as undesirable — silicones, mineral oils, microplastics, certain parabens and denatured alcohol. On packaging and logistics, it cites fully recyclable plastic packaging with roughly 60 percent post-consumer recycled content on average, and climate-neutral shipping. No third-party certification body is named in the brand's published material for these claims.

HelloBody became an early and widely cited example of influencer-led beauty marketing in the German-speaking market. Its campaigns involved figures including Sarah Harrison, Leonie Hanne and Sylvie Meis, and the company reported tens of thousands of influencer collaborations across multiple countries [5]. Its founding story and growth were profiled by OMR, while both the 2020 Henkel deal and the 2022 Grenion acquisition drew trade-press coverage from outlets such as Business Insider's Gründerszene and Startbase.

HelloBody remains in active trade through its own e-commerce site, which sells across multiple European markets. It is not an independent company: ownership rests with the Grenion Group, and the brand is operated by Grenion GmbH following its earlier spells under Invincible Brands and Henkel [2][6].