If you are anything like me, you live at The Arc, know when the sales are at Zara and have all The Ordinary products. But do you know the history of this brand?
The skincare brand has revolutionised the beauty industry and has made most millennials and Gen Zs run to the store to get their hands on the hyaluronic acid serum.
HISTORY
The brand started in 2016 and has a dark and tragic history. The story of The Ordinary is by no means ordinary (sorry I could not help it) and may guide fellow entrepreneurs about flying too high to the sun without trusted support.
The Ordinary was created by Brandon Truaxe, an Iranian-Canadian computer scientist and cosmetics entrepreneur. Truaxe had created and worked for a number of beauty brands before he started DECIEM, the umbrella company that would own The Ordinary.
DECIEM was created in 2012. The brand was created to shake up the beauty space.
What made DECIEM so interesting from a company structure standpoint is that it was self-reliant.
Truaxe realised that he needed to keep everything in-house so the company had its manufacturing system, lab, e-commerce space, brick-and-mortar stores and proprietary marketing infrastructure.
According to co-founder and now CEO Nicola Kilner Reddington the brand was created to not just be a beauty company, but would have a tech component, food business and more. The possibilities were endless, with a “viewpoint of doing 10 things at once”.
Reddington told The Diary Of A CEO host Steven Bartlett that The Ordinary was meant to give consumers the ability to hone in on their skin issues and find something that worked for them in the way that one would use a chemist or pharmacy. The most important thing was to get this skin product at a reasonable price point.
That explains why The Ordinary became a juggernaut in popularity when it was launched, as it created scientific skincare products at a reasonable price.
When interviewed by The New Yorker in 2018, Truaxe said that he knew that the brand would be a success, but did not see how big it would be right from the start.
There were waiting lists for the products, and that frustrated Truaxe. At one point there were more than seventy-five thousand names on the waiting list, according to The New Yorker.
On the Emma Guns podcast, he said “We don’t plan a waiting list. Nobody plans a waiting list. This is not an Hermès bag. It’s skin care.”
By June 2023 the skincare brand was producing 400,000 units of products per day, according to Reddington.
It should be noted that The Ordinary could only be purchased online, but later became available in department stores.
In South Africa, consumers had to purchase the products online on international beauty stores and wait for the skincare items.
In mid-2023, The Ordinary became available in SA department stores.
THE RISE AND THE FALL
It is not surprising that with such a great rise in popularity, huge beauty companies were interested in buying up DECIEM.
Beauty conglomerate Estée Lauder Companies (ECL) scooped up 29% of the company in 2017 for $50 million and by 2021 owned 76% of the company. ECL paid $1 billion for the majority stake in the company, according to Forbes. It will own the entire company in due course, according to Reddington.
DRUGS AND MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS
But back to Truaxe, at the height of his success, Truaxe, who was known not to partake in copious amounts of alcohol, started behaving strangely, according to Reddington.
“It truly happened what felt like overnight,” Reddington told Bartlett.
She said that he was seen as a visionary and was full of energy but he started to behave erratically at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018.
She explains that he became intrigued by psychedelic drugs like Psilocybin mushrooms and how that could alter his thoughts. He was intrigued by how he could access different parts of his brain.
“He was inquisitive and wanted to know how the mind works.”
Reddington said that during the Christmas holidays in late 2017, she got calls from Truaxe and his behaviour was so foreign and so erratic. He asked her to return from her holiday, and Reddington knew something was not right. This was not her co-founder and friend.
When they met, she said that she could see a coldness in his eyes and demeanour. He was always full of joy and now he was this “zoned out cold person”, Reddington explains.
Reddington notes that because Truaxe was such a genius, she even questioned her misgivings of his behaviour at first.
His warm behaviour turned to angry, shouting, scary and cold in a short period of time. This played a huge role in his business dealings and created tension in the workplace.
Reddington cites that he at random decided to cancel a brand on Instagram just out of the blue, a brand they had worked so hard on. Another report notes that he used drugs in front of colleagues. His controversial behaviour became more and more erratic with drug use and expounding conspiracy theories on social media.
Reddington challenged Truaxe about his behaviour and his decisions to cancel brands and partner deals. He then decided to fire her without board approval.
Reddington now looks back and told Bartlett on his podcast that Truaxe probably had some mental health problems, and coupled with drug abuse, believes that triggered some sort of mental episode.
In October 2018, ELC took action against Truaxe and required DECIEM's operations to close as he was accused of "financial crimes".
Later he was removed as CEO and Reddington was named CEO to get the business back on track.
After a number of assaults, especially on social media by Truaxe on ECL leadership, executives and his workers, a restraining order was placed on the founder of the company.
It should be noted that Pricewaterhouse Coopers were asked to investigate the company and its financial malfeasances.
DEATH
On 20 January 2019, Truaxe died from falling from his Toronto apartment. Reddington noted that she believes that it was an accident, as she argues that “he would have left a note, given his personality”.
In her interview with Bartlett, she explains the importance of having a strong company culture that strives to be there for its employees, especially in this era where mental health has become the priority it needs to be.
She noted that this ethos of “family” at work was started with Truaxe and will no doubt be his legacy, despite his passing and his tragic fall.
She noted that in his last will and testament, most of the people he mentioned in his will were DECIEM employees.
WATCH THE PODCAST WITH STEVEN BARTLETT HERE:
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