Colgate-Palmolive explores $1 billion sale of Softsoap, Irish Spring and Speed Stick

Colgate-Palmolive is exploring the sale of a handful of its mass-market personal care brands, including Softsoap liquid soap, Irish Spring bar soap and Speed Stick deodorant, according to people familiar with the matter. The brands under review could together fetch more than $1 billion, and the New York-based consumer products giant has enlisted Goldman Sachs to run the process, the people said. Colgate and Goldman both declined to comment.

The review does not extend to Colgate's entire personal care division, which also includes prestige skin care and other lines. Only a subset of the mass-market brands is on the table for now, and no final decisions have been made, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is private.

A shrinking corner of a much larger company

Personal care is a comparatively small piece of Colgate's business. The segment accounted for 17 percent of the company's net sales for the six months ended June 30, 2026, according to Colgate's quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Oral care remains Colgate's largest category by far, at roughly half of sales, followed by home care and the Hill's pet nutrition business.

The brands being shopped sit squarely in the slower-growing, more commoditized end of personal care, competing with private-label soaps and deodorants in a category where Colgate has struggled to hold share against both discount retailers and rivals. Softsoap and Irish Spring compete in bar and liquid soap, a category with thin margins and heavy retailer pricing pressure, while Speed Stick sits in a deodorant aisle dominated by Unilever and Procter & Gamble brands.

The numbers behind the review are laid out in Colgate's own financial disclosures. Worldwide net sales rose 4.9 percent in the second quarter to $5.36 billion, the company reported in its second-quarter earnings release filed with the SEC. But North America, Colgate's home market, told a different story: net sales there fell to $891 million from $919 million a year earlier, a decline of roughly 3 percent, even as sales grew in most other regions and categories.

All three brands are decades-old fixtures of American drugstore and supermarket shelves rather than recent additions to Colgate's roster. Irish Spring, a deodorant bar soap, launched in the United States in 1972. Softsoap, the liquid hand soap credited with popularizing the pump dispenser, arrived in 1980 before Colgate bought the business in 1987. Speed Stick traces back even further, to 1963, and came under Colgate's ownership through its purchase of the Mennen Company. Their longevity is part of the problem: all three compete in mature categories where growth now comes mainly from private-label alternatives and value-priced challengers rather than established national brands.

North America as a "long-term turnaround"

The North American softness has become a recurring theme for Colgate executives this year. Chief Executive Noel Wallace, speaking at the Barclays 19th Annual Global Consumer Staples Conference on Sept. 9, told investors and analysts that the company faces intensifying competition in its largest market.

"I think we're confident as we move forward, we'll start to see things improve, but it's going to be a long-term turnaround to get that business where we need to," Wallace said.

A sale of the mass-market soap and deodorant brands would give Colgate cash and management attention to redirect toward oral care and Hill's, its fastest-growing units, while shedding categories where it has less pricing power. It would also trim a segment that has been diluting margins relative to the rest of the portfolio, without touching the businesses that generate most of Colgate's profit.

Part of a broader industry reshuffling

Colgate's move, if it goes forward, would follow a wave of portfolio pruning across household-name consumer companies this year as they contend with tariffs, cautious shoppers and elevated input costs. Unilever agreed earlier this year to combine its food business, home to brands such as Hellmann's and Marmite, with McCormick in a deal that regulatory filings value at nearly $45 billion, a step toward becoming a pure-play beauty and personal care company. Nestlé, meanwhile, agreed this month to sell its vitamins and supplements business, including Nature's Bounty and Osteo Bi-Flex, to private equity firm Yellow Wood Partners for roughly $1 billion.

In each case, the logic is similar: concentrate capital and management focus on categories with better growth and margins, and let private equity or strategic buyers take on slower, more mature brands. For Colgate, that increasingly means oral care and pet nutrition rather than bar soap and stick deodorant.

A sale would also have direct implications beyond Colgate's own balance sheet. Retailers that stock the brands, the factory workers who make them, and the private equity firms and strategic acquirers that specialize in buying up "orphaned" consumer brands would all be affected by any eventual transaction. Buyers of divested household-name brands, including firms like Yellow Wood Partners, have generally kept manufacturing running and continued selling the products under their existing names, betting they can run slower-growing brands more efficiently outside a larger conglomerate's cost structure than inside one.

For consumers, a change in ownership would likely be invisible in the short run. Packaging, pricing and store placement tend to continue unchanged through a transition period after this kind of carve-out, with a new owner typically taking a year or more to decide whether to invest in the brand, let it run largely as-is, or gradually wind it down.

• Personal care made up 17 percent of Colgate's net sales for the first half of 2026, or roughly $1.8 billion.
• North America net sales fell to $891 million in the second quarter from $919 million a year earlier.
• Companywide net sales rose 4.9 percent in the quarter to $5.36 billion.
• Colgate shares have risen about 11 percent this year, and the company carries a market value of roughly $70 billion.

What happens next

No timeline for a sale has been set, and the people familiar with the matter cautioned that Colgate could still decide not to proceed, or to sell a different mix of brands than currently under consideration. A deal of the size being discussed would likely draw interest from private equity firms that have been active buyers of divested consumer brands, following the template of Yellow Wood's purchase of Nestlé's supplements business and earlier carve-outs in the sector.

Colgate is scheduled to report third-quarter results on Oct. 30, a date that could bring the company's first public comments on the brand review if talks have progressed. Until then, the company, its bankers and any potential buyers are staying quiet, leaving the scope and price of any eventual deal to further reporting.