On October 31, 2026, Sky News City editor Mark Kleinman reported that London private equity firm TDR Capital has agreed a takeover of Lovehoney Group valued at roughly €400M (£334M). Lovehoney is the parent of Womanizer, We-Vibe, Arcwave and the Fifty Shades of Grey licensed range. According to Sky, City sources said the deal was signed "in the last few days" after extensive talks with Lovehoney's shareholders. TDR is buying from majority investor Jacobs Capital, the family office that took control of Lovehoney in 2018 through Telemos Capital. Asian asset manager CDH Investments holds a minority stake. Houlihan Lokey advised the sellers. As of publication, neither company had confirmed the deal publicly in anything we could find, so the figures below are Sky's.

Why It Matters

This is the largest disclosed sexual-wellness change of control we've tracked this year, and it puts the category's biggest Western device portfolio in the hands of a mainstream buyout firm that runs supermarkets and pubs, not a specialist or family office. That is a legitimacy signal in its own right: TDR's lenders and LPs have signed off on intimate wellness as an investable consumer category. The stated plan, a platform plus bolt-ons plus a rebrand, means the remaining independents are now potential targets. That includes the device brands, lube makers and regional retailers that have been trading among themselves (Dame's acquisitions, SWG Brands, the Nalpac roll-ups). It also prices the pandemic hangover. A sub-€500M exit for a group valued at €1bn+ in 2021 resets the comparables every sexual-wellness founder and investor will be benchmarked against, much as Elvie's administration reset femtech hardware. Things to watch: how TDR finances the deal; whether the rebrand drops "Lovehoney" at group level (the consumer retail brand is unlikely to go); what happens to the loss-making French and Swiss arms; and whether the new owner keeps monetising the **Pleasure Air patent portfolio** through licensing, as with SVAKOM and XR Brands, or uses it more aggressively against rivals.

TDR is best known in the UK as the owner of Asda. It is also the controlling shareholder of pub group Stonegate and of David Lloyd Leisure. A source close to the deal told Sky that TDR sees an opportunity to build a "broader multinational intimate wellbeing platform" at a time of growing institutional interest in the category, through organic growth and "further consolidation of what remains a heavily fragmented sector." Sky also reports that the Lovehoney parent company is expected to be rebranded in due course.

Sky says the asset is a portfolio of about 20 sexual-wellness brands, including Fifty Shades of Grey, Amorana, We-Vibe and Womanizer, plus French retailer Espace Plaisir, which trades online and runs boutiques in cities including Lyon and Toulouse. The group is headquartered in the UK and Germany, employs more than 850 people, and designs, manufactures and sells into more than 60 countries. Lovehoney was founded in Bath in 2002 by Richard Longhurst and Neal Slateford, won a Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2016, and merged with WOW Tech Group in 2021. A statement at the time said the merger created a company worth in excess of €1bn.

That comparison matters most. If the €400M figure and the 2021 "in excess of €1bn" are measured on a similar basis (Sky doesn't say whether €400M is equity value or enterprise value), the business is changing hands at less than half its merger-era valuation. That fits what the group's own filings already showed. In October, Lovehoney Group UK Limited's 2025 accounts showed flat UK turnover (£93.2M), a £26.5M impairment on the French and Swiss businesses bought around the pandemic, and a £58.9M dividend paid up to the parent (our Oct 8 story). Sky notes that few have tried to build a global sexual-wellness platform: Waterland backs EQOM Group, and LELO explored a London listing in 2021 before dropping it amid buyer interest.

Sources

Update — 2026-11-01

Initial entry — story first created.