Brandon Truaxe, the founder of Deciem – the parent company of brands including, The Ordinary and Niod – has announced via Instagram that the it “will shut down all operations until further notice, which will be about two months.”
The news has come as a complete shock – not just because of the sad loss of these brilliant brands, but also because of the peculiar way it was delivered.
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Truaxe recorded himself delivering the message in the back of a car, but doesn’t appear to make very much sense; often sounding incoherent and going off on a tangent.
He claims that, people have often bullied him and that ‘almost everyone at Deciem has been involved in a major criminal activity which includes financial crimes and much other.’
In the caption under the video, he mentions celebrities like, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck. However, it isn’t entirely clear why.
Estée Lauder companies, who last year invested heavily in the company, gave a statement to the BBC, in which they 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.’
The Ordinary, arguably Deciem’s most successful brand, has become a world-wide phenomenon due to it’s affordable, yet hardworking formulas. Deciem has stores in Australia, the US, Canada, as well as the UK and has been on a rapid rise since it’s launch in 2013.
An internal Deciem email was leaked to Cosmopolitan UK, that was allegedly sent from Truaxe to employees instructing them to: ‘Please close all UK stores except the one near Spit-a-Field Mark iT [sic] as of immediately and until February 2019’.
Whilst Truaxe claims that the closure is only temporary, the brand’s website is now just a red screen and most of the UK’s branches have not opened their doors to customers.
