Nyakio Grieco takes back Thirteen Lune and pushes into South Africa

Nyakio Grieco has regained ownership of Thirteen Lune, the beauty retail platform she founded to spotlight brands built by and for people of colour, and has paired the reacquisition with an international expansion announcement: a partnership with South African online retailer Takealot. The move returns founder control to a business that has moved between ownership structures since launch, and signals renewed ambition for the brand beyond the US market.

The founder buyback is notable in a beauty retail environment where founder-led brands have increasingly ceded control to larger strategic or private equity owners chasing scale. Grieco reclaiming Thirteen Lune suggests she sees more value in steering strategy directly, particularly as she looks outward to markets like South Africa, where demand for inclusive beauty assortments is growing alongside a broader e-commerce build-out.

The Takealot partnership is the more consequential piece for Thirteen Lune's next phase. It gives the platform distribution into a market with its own established beauty retail dynamics rather than requiring Thirteen Lune to build local infrastructure from scratch. For an inclusive beauty platform whose whole premise rests on representation and access, expansion into Africa is a logical, credibility-building move, not just a revenue play. Watch for whether Grieco uses this template, founder reacquisition followed by an international retail partnership, as a repeatable model for further geographic expansion.

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