Beauty Business News June 2025

Yes, it's a week early!

I’ve been compiling stories for BBN all month and there is such a lot, suddenly, going on. So, rather than wait til everything is old news, I’ve got a second BBN for May instead of hanging on til June.

Jo Malone (the original creator, not the Estee Lauder owned Jo Malone London) is in hot water for not thinking before speaking. She now lives in Dubai where she’s very happy, praising the healthcare and lifestyle, but in a recent interview for a supplement, when asked about the human rights record for Dubai, she defended Sheikh Mohammed as a ‘wonderful leader’. Some would say that he is a very problematic leader as several features thereafter pointed out. It’s also rumoured that Jo Loves is looking for a buyer.

Wayne Goss, one of our OG YouTubers and bloggers has parted ways as creative director with his own brand, Goss Beauty. While we are still in the dark about exactly why, Wayne stated that he had no choice. This conflicts directly with the Goss Beauty statement which says, ‘…We confirm Wayne has chosen to step down from his role as Creative director, we wish to clarify that he remains the majority shareholder and continues to be an owner of the company’. Wayne says, ‘From my resignation on the 28th March, 2025, any products launched from that day onwards that continue to bear my name have nothing to do with me. They are not my vision, and therefore, I cannot endorse them. They have not been created, approved, or signed off by me.’ My understanding here is that he will still profit from the sales whether he likes the products or not. This is yet another warning (Jo Malone being another) to think carefully before naming your brand with your own name because leaving it behind while your name is still attached causes so many problems.

Despite the disappointment when Bourjois pulled out of the UK in 2019, hopes were high when it returned to Superdrug exclusively in 2022. However, the range was small without any of the more exciting pieces. A reader flagged to me that her Superdrug was woefully low on Bourjois and had been for some time, so I took a closer look. At the moment, there are only 18 products listed for Bourjois on the Superdrug website and they’re all priced at £5, including Healthy Mix Foundation which should be around the £12 mark. It won’t surprise me at all if the brand disappears again.

In a move that won’t be visible to any Bobbi Brown customers, the brand has suspended its affiliate program. An affiliate program is where the content creator can create a special link that they get a small amount of the sale price of the product as a ‘reward’ for referring their audience to a product. Most brands have them. Suspending an affiliate program is not something that happens very often unless the brand is moving to a new affiliate provider or bills to the affiliate agency are unpaid and even then that is something that would be flagged up immediately. My guess is, bearing in mind the financial woes of Estee Lauder Companies, of which Bobbi Brown is a part, that their finances are not looking good and they simply can’t afford affiliates.

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Revolution Glow Edit Lip Oil Touch Review[/caption]

Is it a shock or not a shock that Revolution, ex-Make Up Revolution, has put itself up for sale? I can’t decide. The choppy waters that it’s been through, which resulted in both directors being ousted and subsequently fined. Sales have plunged since it all happened. What’s interesting about this is that Revolution apparently received a preliminary takeover approach from an ‘un-named company’. Surely, it’s got to be Boohoo who have a 27% stake in Revolution anyway. Boohoo increased their investment over a period of time and were involved in boardroom battles and board appointments which may indicate something of a power struggle. Boohoo currently own boohooMAN, PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, and Debenhams. The group also owns Karen Millen, MissPap, Coast, Oasis, Warehouse, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, and Burton.

I don’t know, in depth, really how company finances work but someone please explain to me how it is that Unilever are letting REN go to its grave while at the same time investing £80 million in a new UK fragrance facility. Set to be built in Port Sunlight, Merseyside, it’s Unilever’s attempt to get ahead of the lucrative fragrance game by building innovation labs, a blending and development centre and evaluation suites – whatever they are – for testing product performance and consumer preferences. Honestly, if they’re looking to build a solid Gen Y customer base, my free advice is just make everything smell of cakes. Also, I’m just going to flag up that Jo Malone London has seen a slight decline in sales and that’s a surprise because it seems like an unstoppable brand. Nonetheless, it’s a bit of a warning that fragrance may have found its level and adding extra £££ to perfume isn’t going to wash for much longer.

How much did Coty lose from selling SKNN to SKIMS? If anyone cares, it’s estimated at $71 million dollars. As a reminder, SKNN is Kim Kardashian’s beauty brand in which Coty purchased 20% in 2020 for $200 million. The minority stake was bought back by KK meaning that her empire sits under one SKIMS umbrella. This news was revealed in Coty’s third quarter finances with a profit forecast cut due to ‘economic uncertainty’. I beg your pardon? Economic uncertainty? Please.

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Drunk Elephant x Chris McMillan Shampoo & Conditioner[/caption]

Like most premium brands, sales are on the slide, but Drunk Elephant at a 65% slide in 2025 Q1? What is going on? Aside from cashing in as a ‘Sephora Kids’ must-have brand by elevating their presence on TikTok, when that trend took a turn by moving any brands that were targeted by children away from the serious skin care market and into the pink and fluffy, they just tried to rinse it more instead of distancing themselves. Then there’s the tariff concerns and of course, the dupe market. A 65% sales drop though. *Shakes head*.

L'Oreal is apparently in talks to buy UK skin brand Medik8. Apparently, there were others in the running to buy but it’s likely that L’Oreal will be the winner. I don’t understand this potential purchase at all – I don’t know a single soul that uses Medik8.

In Diva War news, Huda beauty has been in the hottest of water after claiming that their setting spray is better than Charlotte Tilbury’s Airbrush Flawless Setting Spray. After Charlotte Tilbury complained, Huda has now dropped the claim. The claim appeared in an influencer’s TikTok (thanking my stars once again that I’m no longer on TikTok) and because of the relationship between the Huda brand and the influencer, the brand, according to the National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs (an independent non-profit organization that oversees more than a dozen national industry self-regulation programs that provide third-party accountability and dispute resolution) should have regulated what the influencer was claiming. Upshot: Huda beauty is abandoning their claim of ‘the strongest setting spray ever’ for good.

Allure is at the centre of claims that Dior’s Addict Lip Glow Oil is discolouring women’s lips – particularly impacted are black women. The drill down as to why this might be happening, according to various US derms, suggest that an irritant could cause inflammation which in turn could cause dark spots on the lips.

Something of significance has happened for ELC. Michael Burry (made famous by The Big Short) has doubled his stake in the company at a time when it is performing poorly. His shares are valued at $13.2 million. Reading between the lines, despite ELC putting far too much faith in the Chinese and duty free markets and getting their butts well and truly bitten as a consequence, Burry is banking on a turnaround for beauty in the Chinese market. He’s not often wrong. ELC is currently in a ‘streamlining’ process with rumours of brand off-loads earlier this year that have come to nothing. But, please note the above Bobbi Brown story. The customer that ELC has tried so hard to capture still thinks of Estee Lauder, Bobbi Brown, MAC and Clinique as things to be found in their mum’s make up bags, not their own.