Ecommerce Acquisition Multiples by Vertical (2025)

Founders who went through diligence or fielded an inbound LOI (letter of intent, the non-binding offer that kicks off a deal) in 2025 keep making the same mistake: they anchor on 2021 multiples that no longer exist. In 2020 and 2021, a DTC brand with a strong social following could credibly pitch 4x to 6x revenue. Today the market has split hard by category, and the vertical you operate in sets the band before any of your own numbers get a look. This page lays out current acquisition multiples by vertical on both an EV/Revenue and EV/EBITDA basis, and then shows what actually moves you up or down inside your band. EV here means enterprise value, the total price a buyer pays for the business.

Why 2021 multiples are the wrong benchmark

The single most expensive belief a founder can carry into a sale process is that the 2021 market is coming back. It is not, and the data is blunt about it. The consumer-industry median EV/EBITDA fell to 9.2x in 2025, the lowest reading in 10 years and below the 2016-2025 historical median of 10.5x. The DTC peak in 2021, when the aggregator frenzy and a COVID ecommerce boom pushed consumer multiples toward 13x, was an outlier, not a baseline.

Two structural forces drove the reset. First, the iOS-14 privacy changes broke the cheap-CAC engine that made paid-acquisition-led growth look durable, so buyers stopped paying premiums for revenue that only existed as long as ad spend kept climbing. Second, the aggregators that were buying Amazon and DTC brands at aggressive prices retreated, removing a whole tier of bidders. When I talk to founders who received an LOI in 2021 and did not sell, the hard truth is that most are now being offered 30% to 50% less on a revenue-multiple basis, and they spend the first call grieving a number that was never going to hold.

The takeaway is not that exits are bad right now. It is that you have to reset your anchor to the current market before you can tell a fair offer from a lowball one.

EV/EBITDA and EV/Revenue ranges by vertical

Here is the core of it. The vertical you are in sets your starting band, and the spread between the top and the bottom is wide enough that two brands with identical revenue and profit can be worth very different amounts simply because of what they sell.

Beauty and personal care sit at the top. The sector averaged 14.9x EV/EBITDA in YTD 2025 and 3.6x EV/Revenue across 2022 to YTD 2025, against a broader consumer average closer to 9.7x EBITDA and 1.9x revenue. Vitamins and supplements come next at 10.7x EBITDA, edging above the consumer average, with subscription-heavy brands transacting at 10x to 15x. Pet sits in a synthesized 8x to 12x EBITDA range on the back of repeat consumables and autoship. Apparel lands lower, roughly 6x to 10x EBITDA and rarely above 1.5x revenue. Food and beverage took the sharpest correction of all: median strategic deal multiples collapsed to 5.8x EV/EBITDA and 1.4x EV/Revenue in 1H 2025, down from 14.7x and 1.9x a year earlier.

The reason beauty carries a 3 to 5 EBITDA-turn premium over apparel is not brand hype. It is structural. Beauty brands run 70% to 85% gross margins, repeat well, and hold their equity through an ownership change. Apparel runs thinner margins, higher returns, and more fashion risk. Buyers pay for the durability of the cash flow, not the logo.

Strategic buyer versus PE: why the same brand gets two offers

One of the most common points of confusion is why a founder gets two wildly different LOIs for the same business. The data explains it cleanly. In 2025, strategic buyers paid a median 8.6x EV/EBITDA while private-equity buyers paid 10.4x. The strategic, a larger operating company in your space, has to justify the price to a board on cost-saving grounds, so it stays disciplined. The PE firm running a buy-and-build roll-up can underwrite a higher entry multiple because it plans to bolt your brand onto a platform and sell the combined entity later at a larger number.

When we see a founder get a higher offer from a financial buyer than a strategic, it is usually this dynamic, not a sign that one of them mispriced the deal. The pattern we see again and again is a founder walking away from a PE process too early because they assumed the strategic would always pay more, then watching the strategic come in lower and more conditional. Run both tracks. The point of a real process is to make these two buyer types bid against each other, because their math is genuinely different.

The three levers that move you inside your vertical

Your vertical sets the band. These three levers decide where in the band you land, and they are the only part of this you fully control before a sale.

Gross margin is the biggest lever. Above roughly 65% gross margin, buyers will have a premium-tier conversation with you even if you are not in beauty. Below it, you get commodity pricing. When I talk to founders sitting just under that line, the highest-return work before a sale is often margin repair, not revenue growth, because a clean 67% gross margin reframes the entire valuation conversation. One supplement operator I worked through this with described getting a completely different reception once they presented clean gross margin instead of a blended contribution figure that buried the real picture.

Repeat rate is the annuity proxy. Buyers tie the EBITDA multiple to your 12-month repeat rate. Below 25%, offers come in at commodity pricing. Above 35%, the multiple discussion reopens. Predictable repeat revenue is worth more per dollar than the same revenue bought through paid acquisition, because the buyer does not have to keep spending to keep it.

Channel concentration is the discount. Founders assume that a big share of revenue from one channel is a strength. Buyers read it as dependency risk and discount for it. The pattern we see is a founder surprised when a buyer asks for three months of CAC trending data before they will reopen the EBITDA discussion, specifically because the brand is Amazon-heavy or Meta-dependent. Diversified channels with owned audience and retail distribution earn a premium that single-channel brands do not.

Reading an LOI: what the multiple is actually saying

The headline number on an LOI is rarely the real number, and the revenue multiple and EBITDA multiple are two views of the same price. Translate between them before you react.

Take a $10M revenue supplement brand running a 15% EBITDA margin, so $1.5M of EBITDA. A 1.5x revenue LOI looks modest until you do the conversion: $10M times 1.5 is $15M of enterprise value, which is $15M divided by $1.5M, or 10x EBITDA. For a supplement brand, 10x is a market-rate to slightly-strong outcome, not the lowball the 1.5x revenue framing might suggest. The buyer will quote you whichever multiple makes the business look cheaper to them. Your job is to convert both ways and judge the deal on the basis that fits your category.

Then read the structure. Many disclosed beauty deals carry large earn-outs. Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare transacted at 4.8x EV/Revenue on the full deal, but roughly $143M was the immediate payout and about $111M was an earn-out spread over up to five years. The headline EV and the cash you are reasonably likely to realize can be very different numbers. Before you celebrate a multiple, separate the guaranteed consideration from the contingent consideration, and stress-test the earn-out targets against your own forecast. This is the work our fractional CFO for ecommerce team does before a founder signs.

What actually traded in 2023 to 2025

Most DTC deals are private, so the disclosed comps matter more than usual. The ones you can compute paint the same picture the benchmark ranges do.

Beauty anchors the top. Naturium, the mass-DTC skincare brand, was acquired by e.l.f. Beauty in 2023 in a deal widely reported at roughly $355M, implying a 4x to 6x revenue multiple. At the sub-scale end of supplements, Bloom Nutrition cleared at just $110M and about 0.6x EV/Revenue in the Nutrabolt acquisition in September 2025, a useful reminder that category membership alone does not save a brand whose maturity and unit economics are still thin. Apparel rarely shows up with a revenue multiple above 1.5x at all.

Reset your anchor first. The vertical you are in sets the band, three levers (gross margin, repeat rate, channel mix) decide where you land inside it, and the structure of the offer decides how much of the headline you actually keep. Get those three reads right and an inbound LOI stops being a mystery and starts being a number you can judge.

Sources and methodology

Consumer M&A benchmark data is compiled from sell-side advisory reports, not a single index. The vertical multiple ranges in this post draw on published consumer M&A coverage from advisory firms that track disclosed and computable transactions. Where a vertical lacks a clean single-source median (pet and apparel DTC), the range is synthesized from multiple advisory benchmarks and presented as a range, not a point estimate. See the Capstone Partners Annual Consumer M&A Report 2025 for the consumer-industry median series and the strategic-versus-PE split.

Beauty and personal care figures come from dedicated beauty M&A coverage. The 14.9x EV/EBITDA and 3.6x EV/Revenue beauty averages are from the Capstone Partners Beauty M&A Update. The Dr. Dennis Gross 4.8x EV/Revenue figure and earn-out structure are from the Intrepid Investment Bankers Beauty Care M&A Report Q4 2023. The Attractive Scent personal-care transaction (15.4x EBITDA, 3.1x revenue) is from the Seale & Associates Personal Care Industry Valuation Update Q3 2025.

Food and beverage figures reflect the 1H 2025 correction. The 5.8x EV/EBITDA and 1.4x EV/Revenue median strategic deal multiples, down from 14.7x and 1.9x in 2024, are from the RL Hulett Food & Consumer M&A Update Q2 2025.

The time-series chart mixes reported and estimated points. The 2024 (9.6x) and 2025 (9.2x) median EV/EBITDA values are directly reported. The 2019 to 2023 points are estimated from the trend narrative in the same consumer M&A reporting and are illustrative of the arc, not published point-in-time series data. Treat the shape as directional and the two recent points as precise.

Deal-multiple limitations. Most DTC acquisitions are private, so the comps table is limited to disclosed or computable deals, and some multiples are inferred from reported deal value against estimated revenue. The Naturium deal value of roughly $355M is from press and sell-side reporting, not an explicit figure in SEC filings, which disclose a smaller fair value of acquired net assets. Use the comps as directional evidence for the vertical bands, not as precise reads on any single brand.

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