Beauty brand Deciem shutters all stores following bizarre Instagram post
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Beauty brand Deciem, has closed all its stores until 2019 following an Instagram post by its founder who alleged “almost everyone at Deciem has been involved in a major criminal activity”.
The Toronto-based company’s founder Brandon Truaxe made the claim in an online post on the brand’s official Instagram account. He gave no more details about the claim in what he said was the “final post of Deciem”.
The post was accompanied by an incoherent caption in which he tagged the Instagram accounts of Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg, among others.
The company founded in 2013 produces The Ordinary brand, and has stores in the UK, Canada, the US and Australia. The brand’s website has also been temporarily shut down and currently displays a plain red screen.
In 2017, beauty giant Estée Lauder acquired a stake in Deciem. In a statement to the BBC, Estée Lauder said: “We are deeply concerned by the material that has recently been posted on social media and will defend our rights as a minority investor.”
This is not the first controversial post made by Truaxe since he took the decision to be solely responsible for the brands social media accounts in January 2018. Truaxe’s posts include publicly firing his collaborators, posting images of a dead animal and using an image of a homeless man to promote a new store opening.
Deciem was projected to earn $300m (£228m) in sales in 2018.
