CoverFX is gone. Mally Beauty is gone. Gwen Stefani’s Gxve Beauty is gone. Malin + Goetz shuttered its UK operation. Good.clean.goop folded. Ami Colé. Youthforia. Sknmuse - the list grows daily, and we’re barely halfway through 2026.

These closings are not as alarming as you might think when measured against the sheer volume of brands that flooded the cosmetic marketplace over the past decade. This wave of brands closing is the industry correcting itself, and honestly, it was overdue.

Before we get into why, I want to be clear about something: I don’t want to sound insensitive, like I’m just throwing around industry statistics and don’t care about the people this has affected. These were not faceless companies quietly winding down. Behind every one of these brands were founders with a vision, teams who showed up every day and worked hard to make that vision a reality, and communities of customers who bought and loved their products. That matters, and it deserves to be acknowledged before the autopsy begins.

But to understand why these brands died, an autopsy is necessary. Because what’s happening in 2026 is not random, not simply bad luck - it’s structural. And understanding these structural changes is the only way to make sense of what comes next, and which brands will (hopefully) survive.

The Body Count

AS Beauty, a New York-based multi-brand beauty holding company, owned CoverFX and Mally Beauty and shuttered both brands simultaneously. CoverFX had been around since the late 1990s, and was considered an expert on complexion makeup, with formulas and finishes that makeup artists loved. They were among the earliest consumer-facing brands to take shade inclusivity seriously before the industry made it a talking point. CoverFX was a staple in my pro makeup kit before Sephora decided it was “too pro” for consumers and demanded that the brand change its formulas and shade matrix. Sephora was responsible for the beginning of their demise, but we’re used to this scenario. Sephora’s marketing team has destroyed so many indie brands with short-sighted, trend-driven forecasting and thuggish threats if brands don’t follow their direction. Yet even with all these brand failures, due to Sephora’s inept forecasting, I still see indies tripping over themselves trying to get their attention. Go figure.

Mally Beauty was built on the personal charisma and genuine talent of celebrity MUA Mally Roncal, a QVC institution with a fiercely loyal following who bought into her authenticity as much as her products.

Both brands had real audiences. Both had real histories. AS Beauty cited tariffs and a shifting global market as the reasons for closing both. While those were major contributors to their demise, it’s not the whole story either.

Gxve Beauty, Gwen Stefani’s color cosmetics line, launched in 2022 with Sephora distribution and the built-in press attention that comes with a famous name. By early 2026, Sephora had quietly removed the brand from its shelves. No farewell campaign, no statement - just gone. A few years seems to be a marker for how long celebrity-driven brands last when nothing is holding them up beyond the celebrity name.

The Malin + Goetz news stings. Founders Matthew Malin and Andrew Goetz built something genuinely special - a minimalist, gender-neutral apothecary-style brand with real aesthetic integrity and meaningful formulas. The UK store closures were unexpected, and seventy-two people lost their jobs. The brand itself isn’t shutting down, but closing a market that abruptly rarely happens without a reason. I’m keeping an eye on this one.

Then there’s a pile of smaller indie closures that didn’t make headlines but collectively tell the same story. Good.clean.goop, the beauty extension of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop empire, folded without fanfare. Ami Colé, a makeup brand designed specifically for melanin-rich skin tones and backed by genuine community support, shut down. Sknmuse, a body care brand that made it to Nordstrom’s prestige cosmetic shelves, was sold off.

Each of these brands offered something consumers wanted. Most of them ran out of gas before they could get to their destination.

Youthforia warrants its own paragraph.
I’ll be direct, because I covered the Shade 600 controversy when it happened, and my position has not changed. As a cosmetic developer who specializes in calibrating complexion products to match real human skin tones, I called bullsh*t on the release of Shade 600 immediately.
After reading the ingredient list (INCI), I identified what Youthforia’s “darkest shade” actually was: Black Iron Oxide (CI 77499), the universal black mineral pigment in cosmetics, with a touch of titanium dioxide (a white pigment) added for opacity. Those two pigments, on their own, cannot create a human foundation shade. Every skin tone on this planet, regardless of shade depth, has an undertone. Cool, warm, or neutral. The lightest skin has it. The deepest skin has it. Any working cosmetic developer understands this as a basic complexion shading reality.
The fact that Shade 600 was approved for production by the brand founder and landed on Sephora shelves was no oversight. It was a decision made by a founder who had already been called out for failing to properly represent dark skin tones at its original foundation launch.

Youthforia’s closure lands differently than the others mentioned in this article because they committed brand suicide by intentionally failing a community that deserved better. The brand repeatedly proved it was unwilling to do the work, and consumers refused to support such behavior.

It’s Not Just the Economy

The easy narrative is that tariffs, rising raw material costs, and soft consumer confidence took these brands down. That’s not entirely wrong. But the real story started years earlier.

The marketplace became unsustainably overcrowded. Why? The barrier to launching a cosmetic brand has dropped to near zero over the past decade. Finding Private Label or White Label manufacturers with low Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ), setting up a Shopify business account, and opening a social media “shop” were enough to call yourself a cosmetic company. The result was an overwhelming volume of new brands flooding the industry. Genuine consumer fatigue set in. Too many products, and not enough meaningful differentiation between them. The signal-to-noise ratio on retail shelves and in social feeds became impossible to navigate.

Now let’s look at cash flow. Most indie brands were undercapitalized from the start. Raising enough money to launch is difficult. But raising what you actually need to scale once you’ve been noticed is an entirely different problem. Many brands that looked healthy at $5M in revenue started burning through capital when they tried to grow to $20M. The brands that raised capital during the 2020-2022 investment window, when capital was cheap and beauty was a hot category, have already burned through that money with no clear path to profitability. And as the marketplace has become oversaturated, the funding environment has shrunk considerably.

We can’t discuss brand failure without discussing margins. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) was never the salvation it promised to be. The appeal of having a direct line to your customer, cutting out retail overhead, and scaling through social media shopping sounded great at the time. But US DTC beauty spending is down 14% year-to-date in 2026. The DTC business model and its margins belonged to a specific economic moment, and that moment is over. Brands that built their entire distribution model around DTC margins are now scrambling to adjust, or simply failing.

Most indie brands manufacture overseas because it’s less expensive, and the lower manufacturing costs provide healthier margins. The Trump import tariffs destroyed those margin gains, and brands without the cash reserves to cover tariffs and keep products in stock hit a wall.

And here is the number that should stop you cold:
54% of beauty executives identify uncertain consumer spending as the top risk going into the second half of 2026. Read that again - more than half of the people running cosmetic companies say the floor could give way at any moment because consumers are exhausted by an oversaturated marketplace. The industry built significant infrastructure on DTC margins through social distribution channels (such as TikTok Shop), which are rapidly becoming less viable.

The Celebrity Brand Problem

Gxve Beauty deserves a deeper conversation, because it represents a failure mode that the industry keeps repeating - without seeming to learn from it.

It had everything a celebrity beauty launch is supposed to have. Gwen Stefani is a genuine pop cultural icon with decades of style credibility. Sephora distribution is the closest thing prestige beauty has to a guaranteed audience. The products were well formulated (for the price point), and the packaging was aesthetically pleasing. By every pre-launch metric, this should have worked.

But, it didn’t.
When a brand launches without purposeful innovation or a distinct hero product, the question is, was the brand built solely on the assumption that celebrity association alone would carry it?

Let’s be honest, the celebrity brand model always had a shelf life. Most celebrity beauty brands were never designed for longevity. They were designed to capitalize on a moment of cultural proximity - what we affectionately call a celebrity “cash grab”. But consumers have wised up to this type of marketing and aren’t as motivated to purchase a product simply because a celebrity name is attached.

But why are some “celebrity brands” working? Simple, they were designed to stand alone if the celebrity founder stepped away. Rhode has moved well past its Hailey Bieber origins because the products it offered built genuine consumer loyalty on their own merits. Rare Beauty continues to grow because Selena Gomez built a brand with products that stand on their own, regardless of the founder’s name. In these cases, celebrity connection is a useful marketing asset, but not the DNA of the brand.

The Brands That Are Surviving

Let’s be clear - the $670 billion global cosmetic industry isn’t failing, it’s adjusting. The brands holding on, and in some cases growing, share characteristics worth paying attention to.

Probably the most important factor in building brand loyalty is transparency over marketing claims. Brands leading with actual published third-party research on their formulas and active ingredients are outperforming brands built primarily on an aspirational identity or founder fame.
There is a HUGE difference between a brand citing its own internally commissioned testing and one pointing readers to independently published, peer-reviewed third-party test data. In-house scientific studies are nothing more than marketing collateral, with data designed solely with the brand’s financial interest in mind. Independent third-party, peer-reviewed research is entirely different and provides verifiable facts, not carefully controlled data that fits a brand’s narrative. Consumers in 2026 have become sophisticated enough to ask which one they’re looking at when a brand starts making scientific claims. The brands that present actual third-party, peer-reviewed scientific data to validate their marketing claims are the ones gaining ground.

The surviving brands also understand that social media shops aren’t a business model. Consumers want a brand philosophy that resonates with their lifestyle, a founder who speaks honestly and earns trust over time, and products they want to repurchase — that’s the foundation of a successful brand. The businesses holding on through this wave of closures have built communities that don’t evaporate when social platforms’ algorithms shift or trends change.

#MyTwoCents

The 2026 closure wave isn’t an anomaly. It’s the delayed reckoning of a decade of product oversaturation, with social media success standing in for genuine brand equity.
It was a good run while social feeds sustained the insanity, but the climate has changed. This inevitable collapse of many brands was necessary for an industry in desperate need of editing, but unwilling to do so while the money was flowing freely.

The brands that remain after this cycle will be stronger for the experience. And the ones that closed had warning signs long before 2026 and could have survived if they had paid more attention to building brand longevity and not chasing viral sales.

The uncomfortable truth is that some of these closures aren’t tragedies. They’re outcomes of a lack of foresight. The actual tragedy is in the jobs lost and the communities left without something they loved. That part is real and worth mourning.

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate. Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

Men have been spending an unprecedented amount of money on personal grooming (skincare, haircare, body products, fragrance) since COVID. So why is the cosmetics industry still doing the bare minimum, still pushing uninspired, dumbed-down, gender-coded products on them? This is 2026, and the data is ALREADY telling the story. When are cosmetic marketers going to WAKE THE F*CK UP?

Let’s begin by talking about the wall the cosmetic industry has built to segregate genders, and then have the audacity to pat themselves on the back for being “inclusive.”

We’re living in the 21st century, yet cosmetic marketing remains notoriously antiquated and gender-specific. Serious, cutting-edge skincare, haircare, and body products are formulated for and marketed to women. Men are placated with a few oversimplified basics that smell like cologne and are presented in “masculine” packaging, with the word “MEN” prominently displayed - so there could be no question as to who this product is for. The message is clear, even if no one says it out loud. This space is not designed for men, but here’s a bar of soap named after Bigfoot to make you feel included (looking at you, Dr. Squatch).

Then COVID happened. Men stuck at home looked at themselves in the mirror for over a year, realized they could look better, and quietly started researching and making choices.

The industry noticed the influx of money (and liked it), but the way they’ve responded makes it obvious they’re not reading the room. Or the data.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

This isn’t a trend. It’s a shift that was building slowly for years, then hit fast-forward when the world went into COVID lockdown. And the numbers don’t just show men spending more. They show something the industry has been trying to ignore: the brands embracing gender-neutral marketing are outpacing brands that continue to push gender-coding to women or men separately.

Here’s the thesis, backed by three years of revenue data. Circana and the SeeMe Index have tracked beauty brand performance annually, and the results are unambiguous: inclusive beauty brands grow 1.5X faster than non-inclusive competitors. That’s an 18% collective growth rate versus 12% for brands still operating on a gender-specific model. For the third year in a row. That’s not a cultural moment. That’s a structural market shift, and the gap isn’t closing.

The consumer behavior backs it up. 62% of consumers globally now prefer beauty products that don’t conform to gender stereotypes. Among Gen Z, 38% actively seek gender-inclusive products, and 40% explicitly prefer gender-neutral brands. These aren’t niche preferences - they’re the mainstream consumer in the fastest-growing demographic in the category. And 45% of Gen Z plus 50% of millennials say they’d stop using a beauty brand that lacks inclusivity. That’s an active loyalty penalty for gender-specific marketing, and it compounds every year.

Now for the category picture:

Skincare is the sharpest growth story - and the clearest proof point. By 2024, 52% of U.S. men reported regular daily use of facial skincare, up from just 31% in 2022. Among Gen Z males specifically, adoption rose from 42% to 68% over the same period. Nearly doubled in two years. Here’s what makes that number interesting: a significant portion of those men are buying from brands that have never once said the word “men” in their marketing. CeraVe. The Ordinary. Bubble Skincare. None of them make “men’s” products. All of them have substantial and growing male customer bases. CeraVe ran a Super Bowl campaign in 2023 built on a single idea - skincare is for everyone - and male adoption spiked. The market has been sending this message for a while now. The industry hasn’t been listening.

The men’s skincare market itself has grown 65% from $11.6 billion to $19.2 billion, and is projected to reach $52.1 billion by 2036. But that figure doesn’t actually give us the complete picture and undersells what’s happening, because it doesn’t count the men buying from gender-neutral or women-positioned brands. The real number of men investing in personal grooming products is much larger.

Haircare is following the same trajectory. The men’s hair care and styling market is on track to surpass $54.7 billion by 2030. Men aren’t just washing their hair anymore. They’re investing in treatments, scalp health, and styling products - and choosing based on performance, not because something says “For Men” on the bottle.

Body care, the category the industry arguably dismissed the most, is seeing 14% year-over-year usage growth among men aged 25-49, and their expectations have moved well past soap on a rope.

Fragrance is one of the fastest-growing segments, with a CAGR of 8-11%. Men are building collections, layering, and talking about scent with the same enthusiasm they once reserved for sneakers. The online fragrance community is significantly male-driven at this point, and most of the brands attracting that attention don’t market themselves as “men’s fragrance” brands; they market as unisex.

The numbers don’t lie. Men are taking better care of themselves across the board. The brands winning their business are the ones that didn’t ask them to use a separate entrance. The white-space opportunities for the global cosmetic industry are enormous. The industry’s response so far? Embarrassing. But I’m getting to that.

Skin Is Skin. Hair Is Hair.

There is no meaningful biological reason for men’s products to be different or “simpler” than women’s. None.

Yes, there are real biological differences. Men’s skin is about 25% thicker and tends to produce more oil (men generally have larger, more active sebaceous glands than women), while facial hair can affect how a product is absorbed in some areas. These are real differentiators that a well-crafted product could accommodate - WITHOUT being gender-specific. Here’s what those differences don’t call for: dumbed-down formulas with fewer active ingredients.

Active ingredients are the ones actually doing something: hydrating, rebuilding, protecting, repairing. Think retinol for cell turnover. Peptides that support collagen. Antioxidants that defend against environmental damage. Thicker, oilier skin, if anything, is an argument for MORE active ingredients, not less. The logic of selling men simplified products because their skin is “different” falls apart the moment you look at the biology. The “simplified” men’s formula argument holds up in a marketing brief. Nowhere else.

Haircare is no different. Keratin is keratin. Hair and scalp are not gender specific. Most “men’s” shampoos are little more than a basic cleanser with a masculine scent, while equivalent women’s products are packed with conditioning and strengthening ingredients. This is not product development based on science; it’s based on the outdated gender-segregating marketing story the industry perpetuates. Why? Because they continue to position men as ingredient-illiterate. That might have been true before - but not now.

The Industry Responded. Just Not Correctly.

This is where it gets frustrating.

The playbook most brands reached for looked like this: Men are spending more money on personal grooming products, so let’s take an existing product we originally developed for women, remove most of the expensive actives, add a sporty fragrance, put it in masculine packaging (typically dark colors), and make sure it says “men” on the label.

Calling this lazy AF (and sexist) is an understatement.

This pattern runs deep across the industry. Walk into any major beauty retailer, and you’ll find products that are functionally similar, presented on shelves with separate gender assignments, and the men’s products are typically watered-down versions of those offered to women. The industry perpetuates this two-tier system to cash in on the growing men’s personal grooming market, and actually believes it’s “serving” its customers by providing the most basic, bullsh*t formulas in a package labeled “MEN”.

And then there are the brands that knew better, began by marketing themselves as gender-neutral and inclusive, and then somehow talked themselves out of it.

Lume Deodorant is the case study I keep coming back to. Founded in 2017 by Dr. Shannon Klingman, Lume launched the category of whole-body deodorant built on a simple, honest premise: body odor doesn’t discriminate by gender, so neither should the product. The science was sound, the positioning was inclusive, and it worked. For everyone. Men were using it. Women were using it. The whole-body deodorant category basically didn’t exist before Lume created it.

So what did they do next? The brand was sold, and the new owners decided to launch a separate men’s brand - Mando. Let that sink in for a second. MANdo. I guess the new owners thought they might be missing a few sales from “dudes” who can’t wrap their heads around the concept of gender-neutral deodorant, and won’t buy a product if they don’t see the word MEN printed in BIG letters on the packaging. It’s not subtle. It’s not clever. It’s the most on-the-nose piece of gender-coding in recent memory, and it tells you everything about the antiquated industry mentality behind it.

Let me be clear about what MANdo actually is: it’s Lume. The exact same formula, the exact same mandelic acid technology, just in differently decorated packaging with “masculine scents” and a gender-coded name. They took a product already working for everyone, decided men needed their own masculinity-coded version, and called it a new brand. That’s not product development. That’s a cash grab dressed up as (misguided) consumer insight.

IMHO, as a brand and product developer, Lume should have continued marketing to everyone. Full stop. They had the science, the efficacy, and the proof that men were already buying their products. The smart marketing move, one that actually respects the male consumer, would have been to invest in ensuring men knew Lume was for them, too. Run campaigns that include men using it. Let the formula do the talking. Instead, they blinked, built a wall that wasn’t necessary, and gave men a patronizing brand name to go with it.

MANdo launched in late 2022, with its exclusive Target brick-and-mortar debut in 2024. And here’s what that decision actually cost the Lume brand: Lume had a first-mover advantage in a category it created from scratch. It was the only name in whole-body deodorant; it had the science, and it already had customers across all genders spending. That is an extraordinarily rare position for any brand to be in. Instead of building on it, the decision was made to give the male customer base a separate brand, and, in doing so, MANdo cannibalized the category dominance Lume had worked for years to establish. Mammoth Brands, the parent company that acquired Lume in 2021, wanted to capture revenue from both sides, so the split makes a certain kind of misguided corporate sense. But for Lume as a brand, voluntarily spinning off Mando, after already being the definitive name in whole-body deodorant for EVERYONE, diluted the brand equity and category dominance. At the exact moment, the data was pointing in the other direction.

What Men Are Actually Being Sold

Next time you’re in Sephora or Ulta, try this: pick up a gender-coded men’s moisturizer and a comparable women’s moisturizer at the same price point. Read both ingredient lists (INCI).

The women’s product will typically contain more actives, including ceramides, peptides, retinols, and other ingredients that deeply hydrate and repair. The men’s version usually has a shorter INCI, lower concentrations of meaningful actives (if included at all), and leans harder into a simplified, “no nonsense” formula to signal it’s “for busy guys.”

Same price, less efficacy, better margins for the brand. That’s the deal men have been getting because the industry counted on them not educating themselves. News flash - it’s 2026, and they’re reading, and they’re not ok with “men’s” products doing less.

Brands that genuinely include men rather than segregate them are building real customer loyalty. Brands that still operate on the gender-specific “for men” sales model are losing market share.

The Language Is the Problem Too

Formulation is only part of the problem. Advertising and marketing language tells men which products are and aren’t for them before they even purchase one.

Gender-specific marketing of skincare, haircare, and body products is like a velvet rope. It tells men to stay on their side and use only products made for them. But educated men know that the better, more effective products are on the other side, and they aren’t on the guest list. And until recently, most men accepted this and grudgingly chose the black tube with “FOR MEN” printed on it.

The industry built that division deliberately because gendered categories are more profitable. Two worlds, two shelves, two sets of messaging, double the revenue. Tidy system. For them.

It also does something more insidious: it shapes what men believe they’re allowed to want. When every signal in the store tells you that the nourishing, high-performance products are “for her,” many men internalize it and don’t question it. They reach for a black “For Men” tube, not because it’s a great option, but because they’ve been conditioned to stay away from products marketed with women as their target audience.

The problem is that it only works as long as men don’t know what they’re missing. Once they’ve seen what a well-formulated serum or moisturizer with functional actives does for their skin, that sport-scented moisturizing “after-shave” lotion stops being good enough. They’re shopping in whatever aisle has the products that make their skin look and feel better. They’ve stepped over the velvet rope without an invitation from the industry.

Gender-Neutral Is Not a Niche. It’s the Answer.

Let’s be direct: gender-neutral formulation and market positioning isn’t a progressive experiment. It’s the correction this industry keeps trying to avoid. And the market has already started making it happen without them.

The Circana/SeeMe data isn’t a projection. It’s three consecutive years of documented revenue performance showing that inclusive brands outgrow gendered ones every year, without exception. 18% growth for inclusive brands versus 12% for less inclusive competitors. And 45% of Gen Z plus 50% of millennials say they’d stop using a brand that lacks inclusivity. That’s not a preference gap. That’s a churn risk that compounds annually.

The biggest beauty retailers in the country have already read the data. Ulta and Sephora are pulling men’s products out of dedicated “men’s” sections and integrating them into gender-neutral, skin-care-first displays. They’re not making this move for philosophical reasons. They’re making it because that’s where the sales are going.

The message is straightforward. Lead with what a product does: which skin type it’s for, which concern it addresses, and what results to expect. Not which gender it’s supposedly designed for. Build one well-formulated product that works for EVERYONE, and talk about it in a way that doesn’t segregate. That’s not a radical idea. It’s what the fastest-growing brands in the category are already doing.

The Lume example says it all. They had the proof of concept, an engaged gender-neutral customer base, and dominance as the category originators. The new owners blinked because they were greedy, and ended up diluting their category dominance by splitting into gender-specific branding. At that exact moment, the data told them to do the opposite.

The industry can’t afford to keep blinking. Men are putting real money into skincare, haircare, fragrance, and body care. They want products that perform. They aren’t asking for gender-coded masculinity baked into their products. They’re asking for the same thing every consumer wants: What does this product do, and how does it enrich my life?

The brands answering that question without a gender qualifier are already outgrowing those that aren’t.

#MyTwoCents

The cosmetic industry spent decades making sure men knew they weren’t their target audience, then acted shocked when men demanded more. Now men are spending serious money, and they’re reading labels. The industry’s response has been to dress up the same old gender-restrictive bullsh*t in better packaging and hope that’s enough.

It’s not enough. Not anymore.

The data is in. Inclusive brands grow 1.5X faster. Three years running. 62% of global consumers prefer products that don’t conform to gender stereotypes. Ulta and Sephora are reorganizing their shelves. This correction isn’t a prediction. It’s already underway.

Men don’t want simpler, “guy” formulas. They want the technically advanced formulas marketed to women. And they’re willing to spend money on them. The brands still insisting on gender-specific, dumbed-down product lines for men will stagnate, and no amount of clever “dude” marketing will convince men to come back.

The brands that embrace gender neutrality, invest in formulations that work for everyone, and stop treating men as if they need their own separate, inferior product line will win market share and real customer loyalty. The rest will be explaining their declining numbers to investors. Good luck with that.

What do you think? Let’s discuss this in the comments.

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate. Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

New NielsenIQ data confirms what many of us suspected: TikTok Shop is EXTREMELY successful.
It generated nearly $1 billion in US beauty sales over the last 52 weeks, making it the eighth largest health and beauty retailer in the country.

Eighth. Largest. Beauty. Retailer.

That puts it ahead of most regional chains, specialty boutiques, and every beauty brand that ever convinced itself a well-designed website counted as a retail strategy.
And TikTok Shop didn’t earn that ranking the way traditional retailers do - through decades of shelf and gondola real estate negotiations, carefully curated end caps, and in-store marketing activations.

It got there through a smartphone screen and an algorithm. You see something, you want it, you buy it …without ever leaving the app.
That’s the whole model, and boy oh boy, does it work!

We’ve already covered what TikTok Shop means for brands and consumers. But this number changes the tone of that conversation. A lot of established beauty brands have been treating TikTok Shop like a marketing experiment - a place to build awareness, not necessarily sell product.
To the brands still waiting to see the impact of TikTok shop, that ship has sailed. Nearly a billion dollars in annual sales doesn’t leave much room for your wait-and-see argument.

The brands that boldly adopted this emerging retail platform early on now have the advantage. And the ones still deliberating? Their caution has caused them to fall behind.

It’s Not Just About TikTok

The bigger picture here is what TikTok Shop represents within a broader pattern. For decades, the beauty industry was built around physical retail - department store counters, specialty chains, and the pharmacy aisle. Then Amazon showed up and rewrote the rules. Now it’s platforms like TikTok where shopping and entertainment happen in the same place at the same time. What you discover, what you buy, and what you think about a brand are all being shaped by the same algorithm - and that algorithm doesn’t care about your brand’s heritage or your relationship with a department or specialty store buyer.

The brands doing well on TikTok Shop aren’t necessarily the biggest or most established brands. They’re the ones who moved fast, kept prices accessible enough to drive impulse purchases, and let creators actually speak about their products — not hand them a marketing script to “control” the messaging. They’ve harnessed the real competitive advantage of TikTok Shop, and it’s showing in the sales numbers.

The Conversation Brands Keep Avoiding

The most common pushback I hear from established brands is the fear of upsetting their retail partners. If they start selling regularly on TikTok Shop, often at discount price points to drive impulse buys, will Sephora or Ulta push back? Will they lose shelf space? It’s a fair concern. Those are important relationships.

But here’s what’s actually happening: Sephora and Ulta are already actively responding. Both are building out their own online selling strategies and creator partnerships so they can compete in an environment that’s moving faster than traditional retail was ever designed to. That tension legacy brands are afraid of creating? It already exists. So, waiting won’t make it go away; it just means sitting on the sidelines while your competitors make sales.

The smarter approach is to build a TikTok Shop presence that is specifically for the platform — smaller size items at a lower entry price to introduce new customers to your brand, rather than competing directly with what’s on the shelf at Sephora. Done well, TikTok Shop attracts new customers, and some of them eventually become loyal buyers who will walk into a store to explore your brand's offerings in person.

The beauty industry has navigated many major retail shifts by adapting — sometimes successfully, sometimes not. TikTok Shop just handed us very clear data on where the industry’s future stands. Fearing or ignoring this retail channel’s viability is a major tactical error. And your competitors willing to take the leap of faith will be the winners.

MyTwoCents

Nearly a billion dollars. I’ve been watching this industry navigate every major retail shift for four decades, and that number stopped me cold.
TikTok Shop isn’t a trend anymore — it’s infrastructure. And the beauty industry has a long, uncomfortable history of ignoring infrastructure changes until their bottom line is affected, and it’s too late to recover completely.

The brands I worry about aren’t the small indies. They’re scrappy by necessity and tend to figure it out because they live in survival mode. It’s the established players - the ones with legacy retail relationships, lengthy approval chains, and quarterly targets that identify bold moves as dangerous. They are most at risk here. Caution is understandable. But caution comes with a cost, and right now that cost is a loss of market share.

I don’t think TikTok Shop is the end of traditional retail. But it is a clear signal that consumer shopping habits have evolved, and brands that refuse to evolve will suffer the consequences.

What do you think? Let’s have a conversation in the comment section.

A few months ago, I wrote about the evolving international cosmetic industry clusterf*ck created by the Trump tariffs. That was chapter one. This is chapter two, a critical update on tariffs, consumer price hikes, and why it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

The Numbers Nobody Is Explaining to You

Since Donald Trump’s April 2, 2025, “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, U.S. tariff rates have climbed to over 20% - the highest level in a century.
Let that sink in. We’re operating in a trade environment not seen since before we were born. And the US beauty industry, which imports a vast majority of its printed packaging, components, raw materials, and finished cosmetic goods, is fully exposed.

Here’s where the math gets uncomfortable:

• China, which manufactures an enormous percentage of the cosmetics on US retail shelves, is now subject to tariffs of up to 55%.

• South Korea, another top source of beauty imports into the U.S. and the engine behind the K-Beauty market here, faces tariffs of 25% or higher.

• France and Italy, our main resource for fine fragrance and prestige skincare, both face tariffs of over 20%.

• And BASF, one of the world’s largest ingredient suppliers, just announced price increases on amines used in personal care formulations across North America, effective today, April 6th. NOTE: Amines are organic compounds derived from ammonia and are primarily used as pH adjusters, emulsifiers, surfactants, and foaming agents in products such as shampoos, conditioners, and lotions.

Packaging costs alone are projected to rise by 5%-10% industry-wide. In aluminum-heavy categories - aerosols, tubes, closures - the exposure is significantly higher. And these cost increases don’t happen in isolation; they stack up. Raw materials (ingredients), components, secondary packaging, freight, and now legal fees (more on that later) are all rising simultaneously.

Industry analysts now project that retail prices on cosmetics and personal care products will increase by at least 10% to 15% across ALL categories. And a meaningful portion of that increase has already begun to hit the market.
I’ve used Haus Labs as an example of the price increases in the image at the top of the article. There’s been a $7.00 increase in the price of their bestselling Triclone foundation since April 2025. That’s a 15% price increase for one (1) ounce of foundation in less than 12 months!

It’s Not Just Indie Brands Anymore

In my original piece, I focused heavily on independent and emerging brands with no hedging strategies, alternative supply chains, or corporate treasuries to buffer the tariff shock. That story is still true and still urgent. But if you thought the cosmetic conglomerates were immune, I have some news for you.

Procter & Gamble has already raised prices. And Estée Lauder Cos. has publicly disclosed $100 million in profitability headwinds attributable to tariffs. Their “Profit Recovery Plan” includes cutting up to 7,000 jobs and a full reevaluation of pricing across their brand portfolio. That’s not a niche brand making hard choices. That’s one of the most powerful beauty conglomerates, restructuring its business model in real time in response to the tariffs.

E.l.f. Beauty, the brand that built its entire identity on accessible price points to a mass market, raised prices by $1 per SKU starting in August 2025.
On a product that retailed for $10, it’s only a 10% increase, but on a $3 product, that’s a 33% increase. The CEO, to his credit, was remarkably transparent about the reason, and the brand communicated directly with consumers via social media.
The result? About 98% positive sentiment (according to the company), suggesting that consumers are aware of the impact of these tariffs and aren’t necessarily opposed to price increases. They’re opposed to price increases from companies that aren’t being transparent about what’s happening.

The Lip Bar’s founder, Melissa Butler, was candid about the brand’s vulnerability. She shared that 85% of their products are manufactured in Taiwan, with much of the packaging sourced from China and some manufacturing done in Italy. They’ve been hit with a tariff exposure trifecta. Ouch.

The brands being hit in a fundamentally different way are the mid-tier. Established indie brands that have scaled up but are not at a level to absorb these costs as easily as multinational corporations are now stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Meanwhile, Conglomerates Are Suing

Here’s the detail that didn’t make many consumer headlines but absolutely should: L’Oréal, Sol de Janeiro, and Dyson filed lawsuits in February 2026 against the U.S. government, seeking refunds on tariffs already paid.
They’re not alone. More than 1,400 importers have now filed similar suits, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found Trump overstepped his authority by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose the tariffs in the first place.

Economists at Penn Wharton estimate that reversing the IEEPA tariffs could generate up to $175 billion in refunds across all industries.

So let’s be clear about what’s happening:
Major cosmetic corporations are pursuing legal action to recoup costs they have already passed along, or are in the process of passing along to consumers.
The consumer pays higher prices now. The brand will potentially recover the cost later.
BUT (there’s always a BUT) the consumer, who is being asked to pay $38 for a foundation that used to cost $30 just months ago, will not receive a refund.
Oh, and don’t hold your breath waiting for these brands to reduce prices once they’ve been reimbursed.

The Consumer Backlash Is Building

Consumers are quite aware of the price increases, and they are not amused. A CivicScience survey found that nearly 3 in 10 beauty shoppers (29%) are already planning to cut back on their product purchases if tariff-driven price increases continue. More strikingly, 60% of U.S. consumers said they would stop buying their favorite cosmetics if prices rose more than 10%.

That’s not a fringe group of disgruntled consumers. That’s a majority of your customer base telling you, in plain language, that even brand loyalty has a price ceiling.

The behavioral shift is already visible in purchase data. Some 38% of beauty consumers say they’re buying fewer products due to inflation. Another 37% say they will only purchase with coupons and discount codes. And 35% have traded down to cheaper brands.
Dupe culture, which I’ve written about as a consumer trend, is looking less like a Gen Z phenomenon and more like an economic survival strategy.

What’s making the backlash grow faster is the transparency gap. Most brands have not communicated clearly with their customers about why prices have gone up. A quiet $4 increase at checkout, with no explanation, breeds resentment.
E.l.f.’s transparency about their price increases demonstrated that honesty - even about unwelcome news - can actually strengthen brand loyalty. Unfortunately, that mindset has not been widely adopted across the cosmetic industry, and consumer resentment is growing quickly.

Which Categories Are Most Exposed

Not all products face the same risks, and if you’re a professional advising clients or a consumer trying to protect your budget, it helps to know where the pressure is most concentrated.

Color Cosmetics: Faces significant exposure because of heavy reliance on Chinese raw materials, manufacturing, and packaging.

K-Beauty: This is deeply ironic given that K-Beauty has spent a decade positioning itself as high-quality skincare at an accessible price point. That positioning becomes impossible to maintain when you’re faced with import costs of 25% or more.

Aerosols: Hair sprays, setting sprays, dry shampoos, body mists, etc., are particularly vulnerable because aluminum tariffs compound the already increasing materials and manufacturing costs.

Fragrance: France and Italy, two of the world’s premier sources of fine fragrance components, are now both subject to tariffs of 20% or more. Expect some of the sharpest price increases to hit prestige fragrances.

What Happens Next

The honest answer is: we don’t fully know. The tariff landscape is still in legal limbo, with multiple court challenges proceeding simultaneously. If the IEEPA tariffs are ultimately struck down, there will be refunds to brands - but the likelihood that those refunds reach consumers is slim to none.

It’s pretty clear that in 2026, we will continue to see price increases. The brands that haven’t raised prices yet are likely to do so before year-end, particularly in Q3 and Q4, as new inventory cycles through at post-tariff costs.

The brands that will navigate this best are those with diversified manufacturing and those with genuine consumer trust built through consistent communication.
The brands that will struggle are those that relied on marketing price point as their primary value. They are now being forced to pivot their marketing strategy toward product efficacy rather than affordability.

#MyTwoCents

Let’s call this what it is: a slow-moving price crisis that the industry knew was coming and is handling with wildly inconsistent levels of honesty.
The tariffs aren’t a surprise. The supply chain exposure wasn’t a secret. What is surprising is how many brands assumed they could quietly pass along cost increases without a single word to the consumers who’ve been loyal to them.

The e.l.f. strategy is illuminating. They told their customers what was happening, why it was happening, and what it meant for prices. They were rewarded with 98% positive sentiment. That’s not an anomaly; that’s what happens when you respect your customer’s intelligence and are transparent.

The truth underneath all of this?

• Indie brands can’t build and scale their businesses without capital, which will be scarce if their products become unaffordable.

• Prestige and Luxury cosmetic conglomerates can’t hide behind their sheer size or legacy status. Price increases could prompt consumers to trade down to mass market products or dupes…and they might not return.

• And today’s cosmetic consumer, who has more information and more options, has run out of tolerance for the industry’s lack of transparency.

The brands that come out of this strongest won’t just be the ones with the savviest supply chain strategies. They’ll be the ones whose transparency allowed customers to trust them enough to stick it out through this difficult stretch.

What are your thoughts? Will you continue to purchase your favorite cosmetic products at higher prices, or downgrade to less expensive options?

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate. Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

Hairstory just made its first move into brick-and-mortar retail.
As of April 5, the cult-favorite New Wash conditioning shampoo (co-wash) is on shelves at 370 Ulta Beauty stores and Ulta.com. For a brand that spent twelve years selling almost exclusively through salons and its own website, this is a big deal.

I’ve not only tracked Hairstory since its launch, but I was also a New Wash customer for a while. There’s a lot to like. But some of its marketing needs a reality check and some clarification, especially for folks with specific hair concerns.

Now that the brand is about to reach a much wider audience, let’s dive into exactly who should use New Wash and who should stay away.

Where This Brand Came From

The founder, Michael Gordon, isn’t some beauty influencer or celebrity who decided to launch a hair line. He’s the guy who built Bumble & Bumble from the ground up before selling it to Estée Lauder in 2006. He knows this industry inside and out. And after the sale, instead of cashing out and disappearing into the sunset, he spent years trying to solve a problem that had been bothering him for decades.

That problem? Shampoo.

Most traditional shampoos are built around a detergent called sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS). It’s what makes your shampoo lather, and it’s effective at cleaning. Maybe a little too effective. For many people, especially those with dry, color-treated, curly, or coarse hair, it strips the scalp of everything, including the natural oils your hair actually needs. Then you buy conditioner to restore moisture. Then, a targeted treatment to repair the damage (caused by the shampoo). It’s an endless loop, and it’s a loop the industry is quite happy to keep you in.

Now, to be fair, the industry has already moved on from the harshest formulas. Most mainstream shampoos today use Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES), a milder cousin of SLS that’s considerably gentler. And there’s a whole range of other mild modern cleansers that have become standard in more refined formulas. Cocamidopropyl Betaine, derived from coconut oil, is one of the most common secondary surfactants and is significantly gentler than SLS. Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate gives a creamy, gentle lather with minimal stripping. The glucosides, Coco Glucoside, Decyl Glucoside, and Lauryl Glucoside, are sugar and coconut-derived, very mild, and common in baby shampoo and sensitive-scalp formulas. Amino acid-based cleansers like Sodium Lauroyl Glutamate and Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate are appearing more frequently in prestige formulas and are very gentle yet effective at cleansing.

There’s also one worth flagging as a marketing sleight of hand: Sodium Coco Sulfate (SCS). You’ll see it on labels of brands that advertise themselves as SLS-free and coconut-derived. The catch? It’s a coconut oil sulfate that still contains the same lauryl sulfate chains as SLS, just dressed up in more natural-sounding language. Functionally, it’s nearly identical.
”SLS-free” doesn’t always mean what it sounds like.

Gordon’s answer to all of this was New Wash: a hair cleansing cream with no detergent at all. It cleans with natural oils and fatty acids rather than a lather. And one product does the job of both shampoo and conditioner.
The concept isn’t new; it’s called co-washing, and it’s been a staple in curly/coily hair care for years. But Gordon cleverly repackaged the technology for a broader audience, backed it with real salon development, and built a devoted following.

Over two million units sold before landing in a national retailer.
That’s genuinely impressive.

The binary he built the brand around, harsh detergent shampoo versus no detergent shampoo, made perfect sense - a decade ago. That doesn’t mean New Wash is irrelevant. It just means the conversation about co-washing hair has become more nuanced than their marketing suggests.

What the Brand Gets Right

For the right hair type, New Wash is legitimately excellent.

If your hair is naturally dry, coarse, curly, or fried from aggressive color-treatment, this product was designed for you. Skipping harsh detergents and conditioning while you cleanse makes real sense. Less stripping, less damage, better color retention. Many people who’ve switched report softer, healthier hair, and they’re not wrong.

The brand’s original commitment to sell through salons also matters. Hairstory’s history (and credibility) was built on its reliance on salon professionals, who can tell you honestly whether a product is right for you. That’s a very different model from most brands, which just want to move more product and let consumers figure out what works for them at their own expense ($$$).

The refillable packaging is grounded in genuine sustainability; it’s not a PR stunt. And the “fewer, better products” philosophy is consistent with what they offer - right now.
NOTE: The “fewer, better” philosophy often changes abruptly because some national retailers demand that a brand regularly offer new products to drive sales (this is how Sephora has destroyed sooooooo many brands).

Now Let’s Talk About the Part They’re Getting Wrong

The “all hair types” claim.

When you look at the description of New Wash “Original” Formula, it clearly states on both the Amazon shop and the Hairstory website that it’s a “Cleansing & Conditioning Cream FOR ALL HAIR TYPES”.
And yet, Hairstory also sells three (3) other versions - Rich, Deep, and Fragrance-Free. You can’t say one of your formulas works for everyone while also offering additional versions to address different needs. That’s contradictory marketing and deserves to be called out.
And if this co-washing system is so effective, why does Hairstory also offer a PRE-WASH Prebiotic Micellar Scalp Rinse to remove build-up before you use New Wash?

Here’s the reality: Co-washing is not for everyone. If your hair is fine, bone straight, or tends toward oiliness, adding lots of oils and creamy conditioning agents to your scalp won’t clean it. It’s going to coat it. And product buildup on the scalp can cause inflammation, clog follicles, and, over time, contribute to thinning. That’s not a scare tactic, it’s basic scalp biology backed by published research and documented by the American Hair Loss Association.

The “your scalp will stop overproducing oil” promise.

This one really bothers me. Hairstory claims that once you switch to New Wash, your scalp will eventually stop overproducing oil. The idea is that years of harsh shampooing have trained your scalp to overproduce, and now it can relax.

Here’s the reality: Your scalp’s oil production is controlled by hormones, not by your choice of cleanser. There’s a modest argument that extremely aggressive shampooing could contribute to some reactive oil production in certain people. But the broad promise that New Wash will regulate your sebum? That claim runs well ahead of the science.

The “transition period” bullsh*t.

When people with fine or oily hair try New Wash and report greasy, heavy, flat results (an issue which reviews verify happens consistently), the brand’s default response is: "You're in a transition period. Your scalp is adjusting. Try using more product, or rinse longer.”

Telling a customer that their bad experience with your product proves it's working is gaslighting them and avoiding accountability. They aren’t experiencing a “transition period” - the reality is that this product is a mismatch for their hair and scalp needs.

If this “transition period” dialogue sounds familiar, it should. The skincare industry has been gaslighting consumers for years under the term “skin purging.”
To be fair, purging is a real thing, but only with specific ingredients, like prescription retinoids or certain exfoliants, that accelerate cell turnover and briefly uncover underlying congestion. That’s a legitimate response to a legitimate mechanism.

But somewhere along the way, the industry stretched that logic to avoid accountability for people’s reactions to skincare:

• New Cleanser breaking you out or causing irritation? It’s Purging.

• New Serum or Essence breaking you out or causing irritation? It’s Purging.

• New Moisturizer breaking you out or causing irritation? It’s Purging.

“Skin purging” became a catch-all excuse for products that were simply wrong for someone’s skin. “Transition period” is the Hairstory version of the same bullsh*t excuse.

So What Happens at Ulta?

For most of its life, Hairstory had a built-in filter: the salon professional. A good stylist would look at your hair, assess your scalp, and tell you honestly whether New Wash made sense for you. That filter doesn’t exist in Ulta.

The typical Ulta shopper who picks up a premium “shampoo alternative” is completely unaware that co-washing may not be the right call for them because New Wash Original Formula makes the misleading “All Hair Types” claim.
The brand says it plans to use Ulta’s in-store salon space for consumer education, which is a great idea - but those salons reach only a fraction of the foot traffic in Ulta.

New Wash has the potential to convert the right customers into lifelong fans. My question is, what happens when a significant number of Ulta customers have a bad experience with New Wash and don’t understand why, because the brand's marketing tells them it’s their fault?

#MyTwoCents

Michael Gordon built something real here. A brand with actual roots in professional expertise, a genuine formulation philosophy, and the patience to grow slowly and do it right. That deserves credit.

But I’d be doing you a disservice if I just told you that part and left out the rest.

If you have dry, coarse, curly, or color-treated hair, New Wash is absolutely worth trying. It might genuinely change your hair.

If you have fine hair, an oily scalp, or you’re concerned about thinning, skip it. Not because it’s a bad product, but because it’s the wrong product for your hair. No transition period is going to change that.

And if a brand has the audacity to tell you your dissatisfaction is actually progress? That’s usually a sign they know the fit isn’t right for everyone, and they’d rather not say it out loud.

So, now you know the whole story, and I hope it helps you make an informed decision if you're considering trying New Wash by Hairstory.

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate. Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

If you follow the beauty community on social media, you’ve seen the Lipstick Lesbians’ Leaked Labs controversy - the launch, the product selling out, the backlash, and the (fake) press conference to address all the questions and confusion, which ended up causing more confusion and pissing off a lot of people.

I’ve been flooded with texts, emails, and DMs from folks asking why I’ve been so quiet about this controversy. I’ve been carefully watching this unfold, and I’ve waited to voice my POV because I want to give this controversy the honest, balanced conversation it deserves, because there’s a lot to unpack here. Most of the online narrative has been either too much praise or too much outrage, which is polarizing and prevents us from understanding what’s actually happening.

Now that I’ve done the research and looked at the information through multiple lenses, I’m ready to talk about Leaked Labs.

First, Who Are the Lipstick Lesbians?

If you’re not already following Alexis Androulakis and Dr. Christina Basias, they are known to their 1.75 million combined social media followers as the Lipstick Lesbians.

Here’s the short version:
Alexis spent years in the cosmetic industry, working as a retail makeup artist for NARS (for 9 yrs) before moving into product development. Christina holds a PhD in education technology. Together, they built one of the most genuinely educational beauty platforms on social media. Alexis walks into a Sephora, Ulta, or a high-end department store, picks up a product, swatches it on her hand, and correctly identifies key ingredients and their contributions to a product’s formula. She’s also known for correctly guessing a product’s country of origin (without looking at the label). Many times, she even recognizes the contract manufacturer behind the product.
She has offered all of this premium cosmetic education…for free.

That content has legitimate value. The Lipstick Lesbians occupied a niche that hadn’t been explored very deeply, breaking down the wall between brand, manufacturer, and consumer. People were entertained, engaged, and learned things. That matters. This generous sharing of “insider” cosmetic knowledge laid a foundation of trust, which made what came next so complicated (and messy).

Worth noting:
Before Leaked Labs, Alexis and Christina founded Fem Power Beauty, a lipstick brand they launched in 2019 that, by their own admission, nearly bankrupted them. They self-funded it, it didn’t work out, and they moved on. They’ve been candid about how painful that experience was. Which is exactly why people expected that their next brand would be, as YouTube creator Kiki Chanel put it, “ironclad” - bulletproof, built on everything they’d learned from their previous failure. That expectation matters and is why the reaction to Leaked Lab’s debut product was so intense.

So What is Leaked Labs?

In March 2026, the Lipstick Lesbians launched Leaked Labs, a cosmetic product incubator that sources innovative cosmetic products directly from manufacturers’ in-house R&D libraries. These innovations have been presented by the manufacturers at trade shows and in product development meetings, but were passed over by cosmetic brands, for whatever reason(s).

The Leaked Labs debut product, Leak 001: Amplify Flexi Powder, is a pigment disc built on a carrageenan-based flexible membrane technology that reactivates when dampened with water or setting spray. Amplify Flexi Powder was retailed as a set of four of these flexible discs in metallic shades, housed in a small generic tin with sticker labeling, for $34.00 USD ($40 with shipping).
The product sold out the day it launched.

The brand premise:
Instead of waiting the typical 12 to 36 months for product innovations to wind through development timelines, Leaked Labs sources existing lab-stage formulas, what Alexis called “innovation orphans”, because nobody wanted them, and releases them directly to consumers in limited quantities.
You’re not really buying a retail-ready product (although the marketing makes it sound that way). You’re buying into the development process. Your feedback, as a verified purchaser, determines whether the product becomes a permanent offering or rides off into the archival sunset.

The concept has genuine intellectual appeal on paper, especially for anyone who’s ever seen a disruptive, stand-out formula at a trade show, only to watch it get shelved because no brand saw the value in developing it further for consumers.
I’ve been a brand and product development consultant for almost three decades, and I’ve often been frustrated by a client’s lack of motivation to pursue genuine innovation. They default to imitating successful products from competitors because it’s a “safer” investment.

What Went Wrong (And It’s Not What You Think)

I realize the brand founders don’t agree, but the criticism of the product was real and fair.

• Consumers documented inconsistent disc thickness across shades, with some paper-thin and others substantially thicker.

• A common complaint was the discs ripping on first use, possibly because the user made it too wet or didn’t handle it gently enough.

• One reviewer noted the product had degraded into what she described as a “gelatinous blob” within a week of leaving it in open air, indicating that Flexi Powder absorbs moisture from the atmosphere and must be stored in an airtight container when not in use to preserve its stability. BUT you have to make sure each disc is completely bone dry before you store it back in the tin, or the residual moisture in the closed tin will dissolve the discs and could become a breeding ground for bacteria.

  Flexi Powder, in its current form, has the potential to create a sanitation nightmare in a professional makeup artist’s kit.

• The swatches, even in the brand’s own promotional videos, were inconsistent. So the product has a distinct learning curve, which is not presented clearly in the marketing. Comparable liquid, cream, and gel eyeshadow formats already exist in the market in more user-friendly delivery systems.
  This raised an obvious consumer question: If there are existing products that offer the same results, in a far more user-friendly format, what problem is this product solving?

But here’s where it gets more interesting than a bad product launch. The core issue wasn’t the Flexi Powder itself. It was the business model, and what it asks of consumers.

Kiki Chanel, whose nearly hour-long breakdown of the launch has racked up almost a million views, put the structural argument most clearly. Leaked Labs has found a way to transfer all of the risk onto the consumer. In a traditional focus group, the brand either pays participants or, at a minimum, compensates them in some way, because consumer feedback has real economic value.
Leaked Labs inverts that concept entirely. Consumers pay $34 plus shipping ($40 total) to receive lab samples, provide feedback, and essentially conduct the market research for them.

As one commenter framed it with uncomfortable clarity: “Collecting data from people while charging them to participate in a focus group isn’t user research—it’s exploitation.”

And then came the detail that, for me, tips this from a controversial business model into something that genuinely needs to be called out.
In a clip circulating on social media, recorded during the launch window while consumers were waiting for their shipments to arrive, Alexis mentioned she was already reformulating the Flexi Powder. Let that sink in for a moment.
The brand’s explicit promise was that these products are finished, safety-tested, and ready for consumer hands. Not prototypes. Not works in progress. Not lab samples. Finished goods. And yet, before the product had even landed on many customers’ doorsteps, the founder was already on record saying she was reworking it.

If the product was truly finished and ready, what exactly is being reformulated?

The reviews documented a product that ripped apart easily during use, or degraded into a gelatinous blob within a week of exposure to air, with wildly inconsistent disc thickness across shades. That is not aesthetic nitpicking. Those are stability issues. The kind that gets flagged and corrected during a PROPER development process.

That clip where Alexis makes the reformulation statement shouldn’t be considered a footnote. It’s the thread that unravels their whole narrative. You cannot simultaneously tell consumers they purchased a finished product and tell a social media audience you’re not satisfied with its performance and are already fixing it. That’s not a communication problem. That’s a credibility problem that damages trust.

The ‘State of the Union’ Made It Worse

When the backlash hit, the Lipstick Lesbians addressed the criticism by posting a response video that felt like a staged FAQ briefing - they called it a Leaked Labs’ “State of the Union”. The intent was transparency, but the delivery read as condescending and combative.

The State of the Union video’s central claim, “you’re not paying to do the work for us,” was in direct conflict with their earlier Leaked Labs messaging.

They had used the words “lab sample.” They had described customers as part of “beauty’s largest public focus group that’s being documented.” A founder publicly stated that they were reworking the product while some customers were just receiving the version she no longer considered good enough. And when negative reviews came in, the brand responded by liking a comment that said people who don’t work in the industry “just don’t get it,” - which is a strange message from two people who built their entire platform on the promise of making the industry transparent and understandable to everyone.

The feedback survey, when it arrived, asked customers to write in their own words how the product could be improved and what would make it stand out more. That is, functionally, asking paying customers to do the product development for you. The survey came weeks after the launch, after the brand stated they were reworking the formula. A little too late to feel like genuine engagement rather than damage control.

Days after the State of the Union, they pinned a comment acknowledging the video “missed the mark on tone,” while noting they were traveling and would respond to concerns when they returned. That timing, for a brand in active crisis communication mode, did not help.

What the Industry Actually Thinks

The professional consensus is more nuanced than the consumer outcry. The underlying concept, using consumer response to validate formulas before committing to full commercial production, has merit. It flips a process that usually requires manufacturers to convince brands to invest in new technology, without knowing if consumers actually want it. That’s legitimately smart.

The concern from industry professionals wasn’t the feedback loop itself. It was the framing. The narrative that these formulas are hidden treasures that the industry has been keeping from you misrepresents why most lab-stage formulas don’t make it to market. Sometimes it’s corporate inertia. Sometimes it’s a timeline. And sometimes it’s because the formula had unsolved problems that made it commercially unviable. One developer noted it plainly: a lab sample and a finished product are not the same thing, and the distance between them is where most of the actual science happens.

What I Think They Got Right

I want to be careful here, because I think Alexis and Christina are genuinely talented, and I think the instinct behind Leaked Labs came from a real place. Alexis has decades of cosmetic experience. She knows this world. The frustration of watching innovative formulas gather dust in the “frustration drawer” (her phrase) is real and industry-wide. The desire to close the gap between discovery and consumer access is legitimate.

The sustainability angle is genuinely interesting. A business model that only scales what consumers actually want, using sustainable formats that don’t contribute to packaging waste, has real environmental merit. Very few reviews addressed that, which suggests the launch communication prioritized concept over consumer benefit.

The seed of the idea, that the wall between consumer and manufacturer could come down, that people could engage with beauty innovation before it gets focus-grouped into mediocrity, is worth pursuing. Just not like this.

The Precedent Problem

Here’s what keeps me up at night about this whole situation, and it’s the point Kiki Chanel makes most forcefully in her breakdown: this is a precedent conversation, not just a product conversation.

If Leaked Labs succeeds, if this model gets normalized, the beauty industry will notice. Brands are already watching their margins and looking for ways to reduce the cost and risk of innovation. A model in which consumers fund the market research, generate the content, provide the feedback, and absorb the financial risk of an underperforming product is extremely attractive from a business logic standpoint.
That’s the danger.
Not that one brand tried something unconventional, but that an unconventional model gets copy-pasted industry-wide before anyone has seriously interrogated what it costs consumers.

Consumer feedback has always had economic value. The beauty industry has always paid for it, through focus groups, paid panels, seeding programs, and product sampling. The moment we accept paying for that privilege ourselves, we’ve handed something real away. And once a precedent is set in this industry, it tends to stick.

#MyTwoCents

I’ll be honest: I root for Alexis and Christina. They built something real before they built a brand, and that foundation matters. But trust isn’t just about transparency. It’s about what you do with the trust people have already extended to you. Their audience showed up with years of goodwill, genuine belief in their expertise, and real money. That deserves a product that’s been finished, tested, and packaged with the same care they’ve always told us to demand from other brands.

The concept of consumer participation in innovation is not the problem. The problem is asking people to pay for the privilege of doing your work, then framing their reasonable questions as a failure of comprehension. The audience understood exactly what was happening. They realized they were being taken advantage of, and they were upset.

But I keep coming back to the reformulation. That’s the detail I can’t get past. Because everything else, the messy launch, the defensive State of the Union, the late survey, the condescending liked comment, could in theory be chalked up to first-brand growing pains. Miscalculated messaging. Underestimating the audience’s reaction. We’ve all seen founders stumble on their communication and recover.

Reformulating a product you just charged $34 for, while customers are still opening their packages, is different. That’s not a communication problem. That’s a product problem. If the product wasn’t ready, it shouldn’t have shipped. Full stop.

Product development is exciting and very fulfilling - if you follow the correct steps.

1. Develop innovative products with the end user in mind. If the innovation doesn’t enrich or simplify the user’s life, it’s not viable in the current marketplace.

2. Finish and stability test the product properly, and only bring it to market when it’s ready.

3. Present your product in consumer-friendly retail packaging.

4. Charge a fair price.

5. Learn from your reviews and consumer feedback, and don’t become defensive or combative if the product isn't well-received.

That’s not a revolutionary business model; it’s the foundation of building consumer trust. And trust, once lost, is difficult to rebuild.
Leaked Labs “Leak 002” will tell us everything we need to know about whether the Lipstick Lesbians are listening rather than reacting.

What do you think?

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate. Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

Skinification is a beauty trend that applies advanced skincare principles and ingredients to cosmetic categories beyond facial skincare. It emphasizes treating the body, hair, scalp, and nails, as well as color cosmetics, with the same active ingredients used in facial skincare.

I spoke with BeautyMatter editor, Sophie Pitt, about the overwhelming impact of “skinification” on the cosmetic industry - product development, formulation, marketing, and potential consumer danger.

Read the article HERE.

If you’ve been following the talc saga (you have if you read In My Kit regularly), you’ll remember that MoCRA mandated that the FDA finally do something it has managed to avoid for over 80 years: establish standardized, enforceable testing methods for detecting asbestos in talc used for cosmetic manufacturing.

This is not a rule about banning talc. This is not even a rule about restricting it.
This is simply a rule to require testing for carcinogens in a raw material that has generated over 100K lawsuits globally.

The proposed rule landed in December 2024. It was genuinely substantive, requiring manufacturers to test every batch using two specific methods: Polarized Light Microscopy and Transmission Electron Microscopy. Rigorous, science-backed approaches developed by an interagency group that had been deliberating since 2018. Products that failed testing, or manufacturers that skipped it entirely, would be deemed adulterated under federal law. Finally, some teeth.

The final rule was targeted for this month, March 2026. It did not arrive.
WHY?
The proposed rule was withdrawn on November 28, 2025, signed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There is currently no mandatory federal testing requirement for asbestos in talc-containing cosmetics. No new proposed rule has been issued. No timeline has been announced.

So what actually happened?

The official explanation, per the Federal Register withdrawal notice, cites the “legal considerations under the Administrative Procedure Act,” and — perhaps most eyebrow-raising, it’s not a priority of the tRump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. 🤬

Industry groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers, argued that the FDA’s proposed definition of “asbestos” was broader than that used by other federal agencies, and that the testing methods could generate false positives, flagging non-asbestos mineral fibers as asbestos, triggering unnecessary recalls and reformulations. Those aren’t frivolous concerns in a regulatory context.

What’s harder to square is the timing and the outcome. The FDA didn’t narrow the rule, clarify the definition, or adjust the methodology. It withdrew the proposal entirely, with a vague commitment to issue a new one…eventually.
As of January 2026, over 90,000 lawsuits have been filed against Johnson & Johnson alone, with the company ordered to pay over $2.5 billion to talc victims in 2025. For an ingredient with such a litigious history, this “we’ll get back to you” messaging is a head-scratcher as a regulatory stance.

Meanwhile, in the EU…

While the U.S. regulatory machinery idles, the EU’s Committee for Risk Assessment did something more definitive in September 2024: it classified talc itself — not just potentially contaminated talc, but the ingredient — as a Category 1B carcinogen, based on evidence linking it to ovarian and lung tumors. That classification is entirely separate from the asbestos contamination question.

Under EU cosmetics law, a Category 1B carcinogen classification typically triggers a ban on use in cosmetic products. The formal regulation hasn’t been finalized yet, but industry experts anticipate it could take effect around 2027. That’s not a testing standard rule - that’s an exit ramp for talc in cosmetics.

The regulatory deviation between the U.S. and the EU on this ingredient is now stark and accelerating. Brands formulating for global markets are already doing the math: if talc is heading toward a European ban, does it make sense to keep it in your formulations at all — regardless of what the FDA does or doesn’t do?

What this means right now.

For consumers, the practical reality is unchanged from last year: there is no federal requirement for how your setting powder, blush, bronzer, or eyeshadow gets tested for asbestos. Testing happens voluntarily, by manufacturers, using methods of their own choosing. Some brands do it rigorously. Some don’t at all.
Unfortunately, you can’t tell from the label if the talc in your product has been tested.

For brands and formulators, the signal, however confusing and messy its delivery, is clear enough. The direction on talc is toward intensified scrutiny, not less, even if the U.S. regulatory path seems derailed. The EU’s carcinogen classification didn’t happen in a vacuum, and it won’t stay contained to European markets. Talc-free reformulation isn’t just a clean beauty marketing choice anymore; it’s become an increasingly important supply chain and liability management decision.

The FDA says it will eventually issue a new proposed rule. It’s statutorily required to. But “eventually” and “no timeline announced” are phrases that should sound familiar to anyone who’s been watching the painfully slow rollout of MoCRA.

#MyTwoCents

Here’s what I keep coming back to: the FDA was legally required to finalize this rule. Congress put it in writing. MoCRA mandated it. And the agency still withdrew the proposal — citing industry pushback over testing methodology — with no replacement and no timeline.

Meanwhile, the EU has gone in the opposite direction entirely, classifying talc itself as a probable human carcinogen — independent of the asbestos contamination issue. Two completely separate regulatory bodies, looking at the same ingredient, arriving at conclusions that couldn’t be more different. One is pressing pause. The other is heading toward a ban.

The talc story isn’t over. It’s just waiting for its next chapter, and the US cosmetic industry would be wise not to wait for Washington to write it.

If you’re a brand still formulating with talc and your distribution is global — or aspirationally global — the EU’s 2027 timeline should be the number on your radar, not whatever Washington eventually proposes. Reformulating ahead of a mandate is always less expensive, less disruptive, and better for the brand story than scrambling after one.

And for consumers?
Until there’s a federal standard with real enforcement - which we now know isn’t happening anytime soon - opting for talc-free products is the only reliable way to make an informed choice.
I know, it shouldn’t be that way. But here we are.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this industry-changing issue in the comment section.

Kevin James Bennett is a multiple Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, respected industry expert, cosmetic developer, and educator. He is the publisher of In My Kit®

On December 29, 2025, the FDA released its long-awaited Report on PFAS in Cosmetic Products. PFAS, the shorthand for per/polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of synthetic chemicals used across countless industries. In beauty, they go by names like PTFE, perfluorodecalin, and perfluorononyl dimethicone. You have almost certainly used a product that contains one.

The report was mandated by The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA), the biggest overhaul of federal cosmetics oversight since 1938. The FDA had a congressional deadline to assess the safety of PFAS and publish its findings.

What it found, essentially, is that it cannot tell you whether most of them are safe. Not because they are definitively dangerous, but because the data required to answer the question does not exist.
For 19 of the 25 most commonly used PFAS in cosmetics, the agency’s own language is “incomplete or unavailable” toxicological data. That is not what we expected - a shrug 🤷‍♂️ on government letterhead?

Why Are These Chemicals in Cosmetics at All?

Because they work. PFAS earn their place in a formula.

PTFE, which most people know as Teflon, is the most widely used PFAS in cosmetics. It shows up in eyeshadows, pressed powders, foundations, and long-wear formulations as a texture agent. It is what gives a pressed powder that smooth, almost frictionless feel on a brush. It helps waterproof mascaras resist humidity and long-wear products stay put. Other PFAS contribute to skin conditioning, water resistance, and consistency.

They are not accidental. A formulator puts them there because they deliver a sensory or performance result that has, until recently, been difficult to replicate with non-fluorinated alternatives.

What the Numbers Actually Say

Using new mandatory product listing data from MoCRA, the FDA identified 51 distinct PFAS intentionally added to 1,744 cosmetic formulations. That is roughly 0.41% of all registered products, so not the whole market. But the category concentration is what matters: eyeshadows, face powders, foundations, eyeliners, and leave-on face and neck products make up the majority of those formulations. Products applied close to the eye (a direct conduit to your bloodstream), worn for hours, and used daily.

PTFE alone appeared in approximately 490 products, making it the single most common PFAS ingredient in the category.

Of the 25 most frequently used PFAS reviewed, five were assessed as low safety concern under their intended use conditions. One was flagged as a potential safety concern, with significant uncertainty remaining. And 19 could not be assessed at all, because the toxicological data simply isn’t there.

One important scope note: the report covers only PFAS that are intentionally added as ingredients. It does not address PFAS that may be present as contaminants from raw materials, packaging, or ingredient breakdown. Separate research has found PFAS in products with no PFAS listed on the label, but that is a different, still-developing conversation.

States Didn’t Wait for the Federal Government

While the FDA was drafting its report, states were already acting. Eleven states have now enacted bans on intentionally added PFAS in cosmetics. California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington went first, with bans taking effect on January 1, 2025. Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, and Illinois followed on January 1, 2026. Oregon, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire are on deck for 2027.

France has a phased ban in place. New Zealand is phasing out all intentionally added PFAS in cosmetics by 2027 to 2028. The EU is evaluating a broad restriction proposal that covers thousands of PFAS uses, including cosmetics.

The patchwork is messy, the state definitions vary, and compliance is genuinely complicated for brands selling nationally. But the direction we’re heading towards with PFAS is clear.

How to Read Your Labels Right Now

If you want to know whether a product you use contains PFAS, the INCI list is your answer. Look for:

PTFE (the most common one, appears as exactly that)

Anything beginning with “perfluoro” or “polyfluoro”

Perfluorodecalin, perfluorononyl dimethicone, perfluorohexane

Rinse-off products are lower concern simply because contact time is short. The category to pay attention to is leave-on products used close to the eye daily: pressed eyeshadows, long-wear liners, setting powders, and foundations. That is where the cumulative exposure question becomes meaningful.

#MyTwoCents

Nobody is telling you PFAS in cosmetics are definitely harming you. The FDA report does not say that. What it does say is that for the majority of PFAS used in cosmetics, the science to answer that question has not been done. That is a meaningful distinction worth noting and understanding.

The regulatory environment is tightening, both at the state level in the US and globally. Reformulation away from PFAS is already underway at brands paying attention. Non-fluorinated alternatives for most PFAS functions now exist commercially, even if the reformulation process is rarely a simple swap.

The conversation about forever chemicals in beauty is gathering steam. This report is the beginning of a data infrastructure that will produce more answers, not fewer questions. So, stay tuned.

Kevin James Bennett is a multiple Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, respected industry expert, cosmetic developer, and educator. He is the publisher of In My Kit®

I’ve been working in this industry for over four decades. I have watched brands rise, fall, get acquired by conglomerates that had no business acquiring them, and be quietly shelved because nobody in conference rooms had the courage to say “this isn’t working.” I thought I had seen every mutation of corporate beauty chaos.

Evidently, I have not.

What is happening right now, in this single compressed moment of early 2026, is unprecedented. Not because any one of these stories is individually shocking. We have seen bankruptcies. We have seen mega-mergers. We have seen conglomerates cleaning house. What we have not seen is all of it happening simultaneously, across virtually every major player, in what amounts to the largest coordinated portfolio reckoning this industry has ever experienced.

Let me walk you through it, because the sheer volume deserves to be laid out in one place.

Pat McGrath Labs, once valued at $1 billion, is now controlled by its lender. Pat McGrath herself has ceded a 65% equity stake to GDA Luma Capital Management as part of a Chapter 11 restructuring. She transitions from CEO to Chief Creative Officer. The brand that launched with a $40 gold pigment that sold out in six minutes is now governed by a distressed-debt investment firm. Let that land for a moment.

Meanwhile, Estée Lauder Companies is moving in two directions at once. On the acquisition side, CEO Stéphane de La Faverie just completed an 18-year courtship by agreeing to acquire the remaining 51% of the Indian luxury Ayurvedic brand Forest Essentials, a roughly $63 million-revenue business with nearly 200 stores. On the divestment side? ELC is actively marketing Too Faced, Smashbox, and Dr. Jart for sale. The color cosmetic brands are being offered as a pair. Dr. Jart is being offered separately. The message is unmistakable: the portfolio that defined their 2010s acquisition spree is being disassembled.

At LVMH, the situation is even more dramatic. Bernard Arnault’s luxury empire is reportedly weighing the sale of Make Up For Ever (which has been loss-making for eight consecutive years), the skincare brand Fresh (also loss-making), and its stake in Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty (seeking €1.5 to €2.5 billion). During the most recent earnings call, Arnault mentioned none of them. He talked about Dior lipstick sales and Louis Vuitton Beauté. The silence said everything. For those of us who watched and worked with Dany Sanz to build Make Up For Ever into one of the most respected professional brands in the world, watching it reduced to “loss-making” and “not aligned with core luxury focus” after 27 years under LVMH ownership is... well, it’s heartbreaking.

Coty continues its strategic review of the entire $1.2 billion mass color cosmetics business, including CoverGirl, Rimmel, Sally Hansen, and Max Factor, plus its $400 million Brazil operation. The review was initiated under former CEO Sue Nabi before her December departure, and is now being led by interim CEO Markus Strobel, who stepped in from Procter & Gamble on January 1. The strategic direction is clear: Coty wants to be a fragrance house. Everything else is negotiable. The problem? Finding buyers for legacy mass color brands in a market where drugstore traffic is declining, e.l.f. is eating market share from below, and prestige is pulling consumers from above.

And then there is the Kimberly-Clark/Kenvue deal, a $48.7 billion acquisition that both shareholder groups approved with overwhelming majorities. When this closes in the second half of 2026, the company that makes Huggies and Kleenex will own Neutrogena, Aveeno, OGX, and Clean & Clear. Kimberly-Clark has zero beauty infrastructure, zero beauty expertise, and zero track record in the category. The most charitable read is that they will invest in the brands and leverage their commercial execution playbook. The less charitable read is that these beauty assets are about to experience the same kind of strategic neglect that got them here in the first place.

Over in China, Yatsen Holding (the parent of Perfect Diary, Galénic, Eve Lom, and DR.WU) posted 26.7% revenue growth for FY2025 and swung to profitability in Q4 by doing something radical: it invested in skincare R&D, shifted its portfolio toward higher-margin products, and exercised actual discipline. Skincare now represents 53% of revenue, up from a color-cosmetics-heavy mix just two years ago. Gross margins hit 78.2%. In a landscape of write-downs and restructurings, Yatsen’s performance reads like a quiet rebuke to everyone else on this list.

And a comprehensive WWD analysis published today maps the full buyer landscape for 2026. The conclusion is sobering. The traditional private equity players who fueled the beauty acquisition boom of 2018 through 2022 have largely pulled back. Eurazeo shuttered its brand investment arm entirely. Carlyle, TPG, and Summit Partners are described as “less focused on beauty.” The active buyer pool has shrunk from roughly two dozen firms to a small handful. Korean strategics and a few disciplined consumer goods companies (Church & Dwight being the notable example) are the ones still writing checks.

Let me say this plainly: The beauty industry is not experiencing a correction. It is experiencing a structural realignment.

The over-capitalized brands are being recapitalized. The brands that were mismanaged under conglomerate roofs are being shown the door. The legacy mass brands that lost relevance are looking for homes that may not exist. And the buyer pool that everyone assumed would always be there, waiting with term sheets and growth capital, has thinned to a fraction of its former self.

#MyTwoCents

This is not a cycle. This is a reckoning.

The brands that will emerge from this moment in strong positions share a few characteristics:

• They have real product differentiation (not just positioning)

• They have financial discipline (not just revenue growth)

• They have founders or operators who understand that a billion-dollar valuation is not the same thing as a billion-dollar business.

For everyone else, the music has stopped, and there are no chairs left.

Kevin James Bennett is a multiple Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, respected industry expert, cosmetic developer, and educator. He is the publisher of In My Kit®

Let me be direct (as if I’m not always direct 😉), if your brand is still treating MoCRA like the distant rumble of a regulatory thunderstorm, you’re about to get soaked in an unexpected downpour.

On February 11, 2026, the FDA updated its Cosmetics Direct portal with new features for facility registration renewals, including real-time registration status displays and renewal date fields. The agency also refreshed its guidance page, user guide, and supporting instructions.

PAT ATTENTION!
This wasn’t just some website rearranging and housekeeping. It was the agency making compliance as visible and trackable as possible, and that should tell you something about where enforcement is headed.

MoCRA (the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022) is the most significant change to U.S. cosmetics regulation since 1938. For eighty-four years, the industry operated under a framework so minimal that facility registration was voluntary and ingredient disclosure was largely optional.
How voluntary?
When the FDA published its first MoCRA compliance data in March 2025, the numbers were striking: 9,528 active facility registrations and 589,762 unique product listings under the new mandatory system. That’s nearly double the facility registrations and more than sixteen times the product listings compared to the old Voluntary Cosmetic Registration Program. That gap represents an entire industry that simply chose not to show up when nobody was taking attendance.

The Renewal Cycle Is Already Beginning

Facility registration was required by July 1, 2024, with biennial renewals. That means the first wave of renewal deadlines is arriving, NOW. If you registered your facility in February 2024, your renewal is already due this month. If you made the July deadline, you’ve got until mid-2026, but that’s going to arrive faster than your planning calendar suggests.

I’m not sure why so many brands have been dragging their feet. The FDA has made the process straightforward.
Cosmetics Direct now displays registration status and renewal date fields on every facility’s homepage, and the agency is sending email reminders. But brands don’t seem to understand that the consequences of falling behind are real. Products from unregistered or improperly listed facilities are legally considered misbranded or adulterated, which means border holds, import seizures, and the kind of disruption that makes retail partners rethink their relationship with a brand. MoCRA also grants the FDA authority to suspend facility registrations entirely when products pose serious adverse health risks, effectively shutting down a facility’s ability to distribute cosmetics in the United States.

Where the Actual Rulemaking Stands

While registration and listing are fully in effect, several of MoCRA’s more complex provisions remain in various stages of rulemaking. The timelines have shifted repeatedly, and I know some of you have been looking at the delays and thinking you’ve been handed more breathing room. You have. But confusing a delay with a reprieve is a mistake you’re only going to want to make once.

Fragrance allergen labeling is targeted for a proposed rule in May 2026. The original statutory deadline was June 2024, so this has been pushed back significantly. The FDA is expected to identify specific substances as fragrance allergens requiring label disclosure, with strong alignment to EU requirements. From a practical standpoint, brands should already be requesting allergen statements and IFRA certificates from their fragrance suppliers. A final rule likely won’t land before 2027, but the companies that have already mapped their fragrance compositions against the EU’s existing allergen lists will have a meaningful head start when the proposed rule arrives. The ones that haven’t will be redesigning packaging under deadline pressure, which is exactly as expensive and chaotic as it sounds.

The proposed formaldehyde restriction for hair-smoothing and straightening products is where this story becomes genuinely difficult to tell with professional detachment. The FDA has now missed its target date for this proposed ban six times: October 2023, April 2024, November 2024, March 2025, July 2025, and December 31, 2025. As of January 2026, the agency has stated only that the rule remains “a priority” without providing a new timeline. Formaldehyde is a well-established carcinogen that also causes respiratory irritation and skin sensitization, and the people bearing the greatest burden of these delays are salon workers and Black women, who disproportionately use these treatments and who have been advocating for regulatory action since 2021.
Six missed deadlines aren’t a scheduling problem. It’s a failure of urgency, and people are being harmed while the agency adjusts its calendar.

Talc and asbestos testing appears to be the rulemaking most likely to stay on schedule. The proposed rule requiring standardized detection methods was published in December 2024, with a final rule targeted for March 2026.

Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) have been moved to the Unified Agenda’s “long-term actions” list, which is the regulatory equivalent of “we’ll get back to you.” The statutory deadline for even proposing GMP regulations was December 29, 2024, and that deadline passed without action. No new target date has been set. But here’s what matters: the absence of a formal GMP rule does not create a compliance vacuum. The FD&C Act’s existing adulteration provisions remain fully enforceable, and FDA inspections continue. ISO 22716, the international standard the agency has repeatedly signaled it will reference, provides a clear framework for any facility serious about operating at a professional level.

The Political Landscape

MoCRA was enacted with bipartisan support in December 2022, and its core provisions remain in full force under the current administration. Early enforcement data from 2025 showed the FDA issuing warning letters under MoCRA at a pace consistent with the prior administration, and the current administration has not taken steps to alter registration, listing, or adverse event reporting requirements.

That said, the broader regulatory environment has shifted. Executive Order 14192 introduced a “one-in, ten-out” requirement, mandating that agencies repeal 10 existing regulations for every new regulation finalized. The FDA has also undergone leadership changes at both the agency and the Office of Cosmetics and Colors, as well as staffing reductions. These factors explain why MoCRA’s more complex rulemakings keep missing deadlines. The requirements already on the books are being enforced, but the rules that would provide the industry with clearer guidance on GMP, allergens, and ingredient restrictions continue to be pushed back.

It leaves the industry in a frustrating position - expected to comply with regulations of a law whose rules haven’t been fully written.

What Brands Should Be Doing Now

Companies that move early during regulatory transitions don’t just survive them; they set the standard everyone else has to meet.

So, here’s what current compliance with MoCRA looks like in practical terms:

• Confirm your registration and renewal status immediately.

• Log in to Cosmetics Direct, check the new status and renewal date fields, and put your deadline on every calendar that matters. If you registered in early 2024, you may already be due.

• Build or audit your adverse event reporting system. MoCRA requires serious adverse event reports submitted to the FDA within 15 business days.

• Begin fragrance allergen mapping now by requesting full allergen data from your fragrance suppliers.

• Cross-reference against the EU’s existing disclosure requirements. When the FDA’s proposed rule lands, it will be tighter than anyone expects, so following the strictness of existing EU rules will keep your brand safe.

• Operate to GMP standards regardless of the rule’s status. The current ISO 22716 covers production, personnel, documentation, and quality controls. Implementing it now protects you during inspections and positions you well ahead of whatever the final rule requires.

• Develop safety substantiation files for every product you market. MoCRA requires it, and even though the FDA hasn’t defined what adequate substantiation looks like or provided samples, the standards will likely be established in light of enforcement actions. You do not want to be the brand they use as an “example” of what NOT to do.

#MyTwoCents

MoCRA’s implementation has been slower and messier than the statute intended. For example, the delays around formaldehyde are particularly hard to justify given the human cost. But the direction is unmistakable: the grace period is OVER, the era of cosmetics operating as the most loosely regulated consumer product category in the US is ending.

The brands that will come through this FDA restructuring strongest are the ones paying attention to how MoCRA evolves, building real compliance infrastructure, and treating regulation as a competitive advantage rather than an inconvenience.
I can state with confidence that companies that don’t take MoCRA seriously at this point will become examples of “what not to do” and face substantial fines and potential shutdowns.

In October 2024, U.S. beauty distributor Amerikas acquired the vegan, cruelty-free brand from a group of French and Swiss investors—and both sides are framing it as a return to the brand’s original Nordic beauty positioning. Whether that’s spin or substance remains to be seen, but early signs are promising.

New Ownership, Same DNA (Hopefully)

Sarah Kugelman launched Skyn Iceland back in 2005 with a pretty specific mission: tackle what stress actually does to skin, using ingredients sourced from Iceland’s absurdly pristine environment. The brand changed hands to entrepreneur Antoine de Larocque in 2022, but now Amerikas is in the driver’s seat—and they bring something Skyn Iceland has arguably been missing: the distribution chops to actually get products in front of people.

Amerikas has made its name getting international beauty brands into the U.S. market through Amazon, TikTok Shop, and basically every channel where people actually shop now. The plan is to push Skyn Iceland into beauty retailers, pharmacies, department stores, and e-commerce platforms like Shopify—so if you’ve had to hunt for these products at random retailers with mixed results, your ability to find them easily will improve very soon.

The reassuring bit?
Kugelman, the founder behind the brand’s original concept, is still involved. So this looks less like random investors (not in the cosmetic space) gutting a brand to create better margins, and more like bringing in strategic financial partners who know how to scale and have the resources ($$$) to make it happen.

The Icelandic Complex: Actually Legit

Every Skyn Iceland formula centers on their proprietary Icelandic Complex, and here’s the thing—the ingredient story actually holds up, which doesn’t happen as often as brands want you to think.

We’re talking pollution-free Icelandic Glacial Water with 6 essential minerals, Arctic cloudberry and cranberry seed oils (the “super fruits of the Arctic,” and yes, that’s marketing-speak, but they genuinely are loaded with Omega fatty acids and antioxidants), plus pure molecular oxygen to deliver energy deep into skin.

That glacial water? It comes from ice formed thousands of years ago in Iceland’s Blue Mountains, filtered through volcanic lava rock over centuries, picking up minerals along the way. It’s not just pretty packaging copy—there’s actual provenance here.

The Products That Matter

Hydro Cool Firming Eye Gels are the hero product for a reason. They combine Icelandic Glacial Water with Arctic Cranberry Seed Oil, Peptides, and Coenzyme Q10. Ten minutes, noticeable de-puffing, no weird residue. Professional makeup artists working in all formats (photo, video, film) have been reaching for these remarkable gel eye patches for years, long before disposable sheet masks and eye patches were “a thing”. And they remain one of the most reliable quick-fix eye treatments on the market.

Dissolving Microneedle Eye Patches are where Skyn Iceland flexes on the innovation front. These patches contain hundreds of microscopic needles (think K-Beauty “Reedle Shot”) that penetrate the skin’s surface and deliver anti-aging actives directly where wrinkles form. They dissolve overnight, smoothing wrinkles and plumping fine lines while you sleep.
Think of it as professional microneedling’s low-commitment, no-downtime alternative. Not a replacement for the real thing, but a solid maintenance option between appointments.

Arctic Repair Cream and Nordic Renewal Pre + Probiotic Cream round out the lineup of must-see items for the barrier-obsessed among us. If your skin is reactive (rosacea, eczema), you’ve over-exfoliated (it happens to the best of us), or you’re struggling with retinoid dryness and flaking - these are worth investigating.

#MyTwoCents

Amerikas seems genuinely aligned with letting Skyn Iceland evolve by following its original DNA - result-driven skincare that combines powerful natural ingredients with innovative cosmetic science. While they (Amerikas) work in the background, handling the unglamorous business of distribution and retail expansion.

There’s a certain poetry when a brand built around addressing skin STRESS finally finds a stable, nurturing home. Whether Amerikas can scale it without diluting what made it innovative in the first place is the real question.
But for now? Cautious optimism seems warranted.

What do you think? Can Skyn Iceland reclaim its former glory?
Add your thoughts in the comments below, and let’s have a conversation.

If you watch the beauty industry’s mergers-and-acquisitions space long enough, you develop a sixth sense for when a brand’s financial health is in decline. Anastasia Beverly Hills (ABH) has been on life support for years, and TPG has been watching its poor investment linger, so they finally decided to pull the plug.

A $600 million plug.

There’s no nice way to frame this…
TPG just took a financial bloodbath, slashing its stake in ABH from 38% to roughly 6% through a debt restructuring that effectively vaporized its $600 million investment from 2018. And before anyone tries to spin this as some “brilliant strategic repositioning,” let’s call it what it is: a near-total wipeout.

The Peak: When Everyone Wanted a Piece

Let’s go back to 2018. ABH was riding a reported $3 billion valuation—the kind of number that makes CFOs salivate and founders believe their own press releases. Anastasia Soare (founder of ABH) and daughter Claudia (Norvina on socials) had genuinely built something people were noticing. They turned eyebrows from an afterthought into a mainstream art form to grab market share, then rolled out a fully realized range and rode the social media marketing wave like a pro.

TPG saw that ABH was an Instagram darling with explosive growth metrics and double-digit EBITDA margins (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization). On paper? TPG saw buying equity in ABH as a no-brainer for a quick return on its $600 million investment.

In reality? They were buying at the absolute top of the brand’s clout, and there was nowhere to go but DOWN.

The Cracks Begin To Show

Here’s where the industry insiders started getting nervous. By Q3 2023, net sales had crashed 12% year-over-year to $69.8 million, while adjusted EBITDA had imploded by 33.5%. That’s not a correction—that’s a brand in free fall.

The credit agencies saw it coming from a mile away. Fitch downgraded ABH to junk status in 2020, projecting that revenue could nosedive by around 30% that year. More telling? They estimated EBITDA peaked at $175 million in 2017 and was now bottoming out at around $40 million—a 77% collapse that would make any private equity firm break out in hives.

Death by a Thousand (Norvina) Product Launches

The official excuse for a dying brand is always “shifting consumer preferences” and “challenging macro environment.” Translation: they got outmaneuvered.

Consumer demand (and trust) shifted away from ABH when its carefully crafted identity as a high-quality prestige brand was muddied and cheapened by a persistent string of low-grade, fast-makeup products (Ali Express) that were pushed by Soare’s daughter, Claudia (Norvina), to grab sales from less expensive brands like Morphe, Colour Pop, and Juvia’s Place.

This did not sit well with the loyal ABH fans. They didn’t want drugstore makeup with an ABH logo (looking at you, again, Norvina 🤨); they wanted the PRESTIGE-level formulas ABH used to offer. And competitors stopped flooding the market with cheaper alternatives to ABH’s products - because ABH had already downgraded their quality and pricing.

But here’s the really damning metric: ABH’s Instagram following was approximately 17 million in 2018, and has only grown by 1.3 million in 8 years (18.3 million IG followers as I write this). For a brand that was supposedly built on social media marketing dominance, that’s not growth—that’s stagnation masquerading as stability.

The Debt Spiral Nobody Talks About Publicly

This is where it gets uncomfortable. The company operated under forbearance after missing a loan payment, triggering a cascade of credit downgrades. With over $600 million in loans maturing, ABH wasn’t just facing a liquidity crunch—they were staring down a potential restructuring nightmare.

Founder Anastasia Soare is reportedly considering injecting around $225 million to keep things afloat. Which raises the obvious question: if the business fundamentals are so “resilient” (an ABH spokesperson’s word, not mine), why does it need a nine-figure emergency capital infusion?

The Broader Carnage

ABH isn’t an isolated incident—it’s emblematic of an entire era of overzealous beauty deals going south. TPG’s other questionable beauty play from that period, Rodan + Fields, defaulted on its debt in July, while the competitor Norvina tried to emulate, Morphe, filed for bankruptcy in March 2023.

Those 2017-2018 valuations were built on Instagram growth rates that assumed compound annual growth would continue indefinitely. Spoiler: it didn’t. The social media algorithm changed, TikTok fragmented marketing attention, and suddenly those 9-12x revenue multiples looked less like shrewd investments and more like auction fever.

#MyTwoCents

TPG put in $600 million. They’re walking away with roughly 6% equity in a distressed asset. Even if you’re generous with the math, that’s a loss that’ll show up in fund performance reports for years.

Anastasia Soare built something genuinely impressive, but even the strongest brands can’t sustain the weight of overleveraged capital, especially when market conditions shift. Peak valuation earned that name for a reason - it marks the PEAK value of a brand…and we all know what happens when you reach a peak, there’s nowhere to go but DOWN.

The brand still has Sephora placement, Ulta distribution, and name recognition. But with mounting debt, declining sales, operational challenges (looking at you, again, Norvina), and a market that’s moved on from their confusing aesthetic? The turnaround playbook here requires either a miracle or a fire sale.

I’m betting on the fire sale.

Beauty ingredient innovator Croda has dropped some impressive new clinical data about their KeraBio K31 product, and it’s turning heads in the hair care world.

This next-generation ingredient is being called a game-changer for damaged hair, and the trial numbers back it up. KeraBio K31 works at incredibly low concentrations, delivering full efficacy at just 0.05% active inclusion. This will allow brands to create powerful products using fewer active ingredients - in effect, doing more with less.

What Makes It Special?

KeraBio K31’s innovative biotechnology allows it to function as a vegan keratin alternative, repairing bonds within the hair structure. The result is hair that’s 100% stronger than the leading bond builder on the market (looking at you, Olaplex and K18). Hair health increases with continued use, and can essentially reset hair to look and act like healthy virgin hair.

“KeraBio K31 continues to redefine what’s possible in hair repair,” said Stephanie Neplaz, who heads up Croda Beauty’s hair category. She emphasized how the ingredient’s high potency gives formulators the flexibility to create top-performing products while keeping active ingredient levels low.

Recognition on the Horizon

The industry is clearly taking notice. KeraBio K31 was shortlisted for the Product Innovation Award at the BBIA Demeter Awards 2025, which recognizes leadership in sustainable, bio-based technologies. KeraBio K13 was announced as the winner of the Laura Marshall Award for Technology and Disruption at London’s Royal Society of Chemistry in November.

Neplaz noted that the ingredient represents a new benchmark in biomimetic bond-building technology, signaling a significant step forward for what the company can offer brand formulators seeking to elevate both hair health and sustainability in their formulations.

#MyTwoCents

For an industry increasingly focused on sustainable, vegan solutions, KeraBio K31 seems to be checking all the boxes.

Do you think this new technology has the power to upset the dominance of Olaplex and K18 in the hair bonding category?

Ulta Beauty just rolled out its shiny new UB Marketplace a few weeks ago, but not everyone’s thrilled about it. The beauty retailer officially launched its marketplace offerings online, featuring more than 100 new brands. However, customers have complained loudly on social platforms (especially on Reddit) about the UB Marketplace not functioning correctly with Ulta Beauty shopping filters and the marketplace's failure to integrate with Ulta Beauty Rewards.

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A Los Angeles jury has ruled that Johnson & Johnson (J&J) must pay $966 million to the family of Mae Moore, who died in 2021 from mesothelioma linked to asbestos-contaminated talc products. The verdict was issued in October 2025. The verdict—comprising $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages—marks another significant moment in ongoing litigation over the company’s talc-based consumer products.

Mae Moore’s case centers on the company’s talc powder, which plaintiffs argue was contaminated with asbestos, a carcinogenic mineral that can cause mesothelioma when inhaled. Johnson & Johnson has maintained that its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos. Despite this position, the company discontinued its talc-based baby powder globally in 2023—a decision that came amid mounting legal pressure and decades of lawsuits.

FACT:

J&J chose to manufacture its products using an inexpensive, low-grade, potentially dangerous raw material. Cheap talc is sourced from mines that contain some nasty byproducts, including heavy metals and asbestos. Raw material suppliers that mine low-quality talc are supposed to take steps to purify the talc (remove toxins) before selling it as a raw material for use in cosmetics and food manufacturing.
Obviously, J&J didn’t use conscientious suppliers, but instead chose to save $$$ at the expense of people’s health.
This is an epic demonstration of #FAFO (f*ck around and find out).

The $950 million in punitive damages reflects the jury’s assessment that the company’s conduct warranted punishment beyond compensating the victim’s family. This component is typically intended to deter similar behavior and signal that a company’s actions crossed a legal and ethical line.

This verdict represents one of many cases linking talc products to cancer, contributing to a broader pattern of corporate accountability in the asbestos litigation landscape. For consumers and their families affected by talc-related illnesses, this verdict, along with others like it, underscores the importance of corporate transparency regarding the safety of raw materials used in cosmetic products.

FYI - the cheap, low-quality talc J&J has gotten in trouble for using should immediately make you worry about the questionable talc used in suspiciously cheap pressed powder makeup palettes. You know, the ones that top beauty influencers have been promoting for the last decade.
(looking at you, Morphe, and your most famous shills, Jaclyn, James, and Jeffrey).

#MyTwoCents

Talc is an important ingredient in cosmetic and food manufacturing, and properly sourced and purified talc is completely safe.

BUT - You are deluding yourself and putting your health at risk when purchasing talc-based color cosmetics at prices that are “too good to be true.”
As a respected cosmetic developer, I can confidently state that it is improbable for a palette of thirty-five (35) 1.5g eyeshadows, sold for under $30.00 USD, to be manufactured with safe, high-quality raw materials. IMPROBABLE.

When you use these cheap eyeshadow palettes produced in sweatshops in the Chinese countryside, you’re applying potentially contaminated talc to your eyes, where there are exposed blood vessels, allowing any toxins in the formula to go directly into your bloodstream. Sound scary? IT SHOULD.

#JustSaying #YouGetWhatYouPayFor

The NBA is taking skin and hair-care seriously this season - literally.
CeraVe, the top dermatologist-recommended skincare brand in the U.S., announced on October 6, 2025, a multiyear deal to become the league’s Official Skincare Partner, marking the first time a skincare brand has teamed up with the pro basketball league.

The announcement comes just ahead of the upcoming 2025-26 season, and it builds on CeraVe’s existing “Head of CeraVe” campaign featuring 10-time NBA All-Star Anthony Davis. Now, that partnership is going league-wide.

So what does skincare in the NBA actually look like? Fans can expect custom content across NBA social channels, on-site activations at major events like the NBA All-Star weekend, and even CeraVe integration into NBA 2K26—because apparently, even virtual ballers need a solid skincare routine.

But there’s a community angle, too. CeraVe and the NBA are launching “Care For All,” a program that will bring dermatology screenings, skin health education, and product samples to Jr. NBA clinics nationwide.

The partnership reflects the NBA’s growing focus on lifestyle and wellness brands—CeraVe joins a roster that includes Nike, as well as DoorDash. And for CeraVe, it’s a chance to reach what the brand calls “an unparalleled audience” of passionate, diverse fans who care about performance both on the court and in their skin and hair-care routines.

Who knew having a solid moisturizing game was just as important as your three-point shot?

The Clash Between Aspirational Luxury & Mass Market:

In luxury branding, there’s a fine line between democratization and dilution. Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Group learned this lesson the expensive way—by trying to be something it fundamentally wasn’t.
Two years after its October 2023 launch, Good.Clean.Goop has been quietly discontinued, and the reason is simple: you can’t create an inexpensive mass-market brand (for Target) after your entire brand identity has been built around exclusivity, elitism, and promoting unconventional, overpriced products and services (remember the vagina steaming?).

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October 2025 UPDATE — Australia’s sunscreen scandal continues to deepen as nearly 20 additional brands have been pulled from shelves following test results showing that they failed to meet their advertised SPF protection levels.

What’s Happening

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has identified serious concerns with a standard base formula supplied by Wild Child Laboratories that was used in dozens of sunscreens sold across Australia. Preliminary testing has revealed that some products claiming SPF 50+ protection were actually providing as little as SPF 4 — a disturbing gap that has left consumers and health experts alarmed.

The TGA stated that the controversial base formulation is “unlikely to have an SPF greater than 21,” despite being marketed as SPF50+.

How It Started

The controversy first erupted in June 2025 when the consumer advocacy group Choice tested 20 popular sunscreens with SPF 50 or higher and found that 16 of them fell significantly short of their protection claims. Major brands, including Bondi Sands, Banana Boat, and even Cancer Council products, were among those that failed to meet their advertised SPF levels.

The worst performer was Ultra Violette’s Lean Screen SPF50+ Mattifying Zinc Sunscreen, which tested at just SPF 4, despite its SPF 50+ label. Ultra Violette disputed these findings, claiming their own testing showed an SPF of 61.7. However, Choice repeated their tests with a German laboratory and obtained nearly identical results.

Current Status

Of the 21 products identified in the TGA’s latest review:

• 8 have been recalled or have ceased manufacturing

• 10 have had their sales suspended

• 2 remain under investigation

Wild Child Laboratories has halted production of the problematic base formula. The company’s CEO, Tom Curnow, has pointed to “industry-wide issues,” particularly with testing conducted by Princeton Consumer Research Corp (PCR Corp), which many companies relied on for their SPF verification.

The TGA has raised significant concerns about PCR Corp’s testing methodology and has tried to contact the lab, but hasn’t received a response. Wild Child has since stopped working with PCR Corp and switched to other accredited labs.

The Story Reaches International Attention

The controversy has now gained international attention, with The New York Times publishing coverage of the Australian recalls in early October 2025. The story has raised questions about sunscreen testing practices beyond Australia’s borders, as many of the implicated products are sold internationally.

The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) also covered the expanding recalls on air earlier this week, highlighting how the situation has gradually damaged consumer confidence in Australian sunscreen makers over recent months. The coverage emphasized concerns about the lack of direct regulation of laboratories that test sunscreens’ SPF levels.

Dr. Steven Wang, a skin cancer expert and dermatologist in California, told the Times that the Australian recalls shouldn’t immediately alarm US consumers. He noted that the Food and Drug Administration regulates sunscreens more stringently as an over-the-counter drug, providing an additional layer of oversight not present in all markets.

Why This Matters

Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world — two out of three Australians will be diagnosed with some form of skin cancer during their lifetime. The country enforces some of the strictest sunscreen regulations globally, making this scandal particularly significant.

The TGA has advised consumers who purchased any of the identified sunscreens to “consider using an alternative product” until their review is complete.

What’s Next

The TGA has indicated plans to overhaul SPF testing protocols, acknowledging they can be “highly subjective.” Choice is calling on sunscreen companies to publicly confirm which labs verified their latest SPF results, saying consumers deserve reassurance that products are “backed by strong testing practices.”

The lack of direct regulation of SPF testing laboratories has become a key concern, with calls for greater oversight of the labs that verify sunscreen manufacturers’ claims.

Despite the scandal, health officials emphasize that sunscreen remains crucial for sun protection. TGA chief Ashley De Silva noted that even products with lower SPF ratings are still effective, and it would be “a real shame if people decided sunscreen was not useful.”

Flower Beauty, an affordable, well-crafted cosmetic brand co-founded by Drew Barrymore with beauty incubator Maesa, has officially closed its doors after being on store shelves for over a decade. The brand was under-performing in the incredibly oversaturated category of mass-market (drugstore) beauty.

A Different Kind of Celebrity Beauty Brand

When Flower Beauty launched in 2012, it was genuinely ahead of its time. This was before every celebrity and influencer had their own cosmetic line, and Barrymore took a route that most celebrities wouldn’t dare: she went mass-market instead of prestige or luxury.

What set Flower Beauty apart, at least initially, was Barrymore’s hands-on involvement. At the WWD Beauty CEO Summit in 2016, she made a point of distancing herself from the celebrity “cash-grab” scenario, emphasizing her active role in brand and product development. The brand offered a comprehensive selection of around 200 affordably priced color cosmetics, including products for complexion, eyes, lips, and nails.

Flower Beauty made its debut exclusively at 1,500 Walmart stores with a clear mission - deliver prestige-level formulas at drugstore prices. Most products clocked in under $15, housed in sleek, minimalist white packaging with gold accents. By 2016, the brand was performing so well that Walmart rolled it out to an additional 2,500 locations. Flower Beauty was now in 4,000 Walmart locations.

In 2018, Flower Beauty launched in approximately 500 Ulta Beauty stores with special exclusive products. By that point, industry insiders estimated the brand was generating $50 million in annual retail sales. It also rolled out to 3,000 CVS doors by 2020, making it widely accessible across multiple mass-market retailers.

Lost In The Crowd

However, staying relevant in beauty is challenging, especially in the mass market. While Flower Beauty had an impressive run for a celebrity brand, it ultimately couldn’t maintain momentum in an oversaturated retail environment.

The numbers tell the story. Year-to-date sales on Ulta’s website showed significant drops. Search visibility for the brand decreased by 44%, and the brand hadn’t activated any sponsored placements in two years. The Instagram account went dark in 2024, and the website has been wiped clean.

The broader market wasn’t helping either. Mass makeup sales declined in both units and dollars during the first half of 2025, while prestige cosmetics experienced modest growth of only 1%. Meanwhile, the fragrance market experienced 17% growth in the mass market, a trend that Maesa has clearly noticed.

Maesa’s Strategic Exit

For Maesa, the decision to shutter Flower Beauty is part of a bigger strategic shift. The incubator is exiting the color cosmetics category entirely to focus on categories with stronger growth potential: skincare, body care, fragrance, and hair care. They’ve been building a fragrance empire with Target-exclusive brands like Fine’ry and Mix:Bar, plus they recently launched an intimate care brand called Niches & Nooks at Target.

In a statement, Maesa acknowledged that “Flower Beauty will always hold a special place in Maesa’s story” as the first brand they ever incubated. The decision to close reflects broader market realities: color cosmetics in the mass market are facing significant headwinds, and even established brands are struggling to maintain growth in the current environment.

#MyTwoCents

Flower Beauty’s closure reflects the challenges of building lasting beauty brands in an evolving market. Even with a household name like Drew Barrymore behind it and genuinely quality formulas, sustained success requires navigating ever-shifting consumer preferences, intense competition, and the complex economics of retail in a mass-market environment.

Flower Beauty accomplished something meaningful during its 13 years: it demonstrated that a celebrity brand could attract a cosmetic consumer to accessibly priced, prestige-quality formulations in a mass-market retail environment. And while the brand’s loyal customers will miss well-loved products, Flower Beauty leaves behind a legacy of making quality makeup accessible to a broader audience.

Barrymore continues with other Flower-branded collections at Walmart, including Flower Hair Tools, Flower Eyewear, and Flower Home, as well as her ‘Beautiful by Drew’ cookware line.