Estée Lauder sues Deciem after Toronto company closes stores

Estée Lauder, owner of 28 per cent of Toronto-based Deciem skin care firm, filed a lawsuit against its founder, Brandon Truaxe, in Toronto Thursday morning, applying to prevent him having further involvement with the company.

In its court filings, the cosmetics giant sought to prevent Truaxe from having contact with the company, its activities and assets, and to have him replaced as Deciem’s head by Nicola Kilner, the company’s cochief executive.

The injunction also seeks to protect Deciem, its employers, employees, assets, social media links and e-commerce infrastructure.

Estée Lauder’s move comes just days after Truaxe posted a video on Instagram that all of Deciem’s worldwide locations — billed as the Abnormal Beauty Company — were shutting down.

The main Deciem website was down Thursday, although its online shopping site appeared to be working.

Phones went unanswered at various locations. Stores listed on the Abnormal Beauty Company website were all listed as “closed” Thursday.

Established by Truaxe in Toronto in 2013, Deciem sells skin and hair products at the company’s own shops in major cities all over the world. They are sold at department stores such as Hudson’s Bay in Canada.

They come in lab- or industrial-looking tubes, pill containers and dropper bottles, and carry bland labelling, and go under product names such as “the Ordinary” and “the Chemistry Brand.”

Beauty product giant Estée Lauder, which was among the various celebrity and corporate names checked in Truaxe’s social media post this week, be- came a minority shareholder in Deciem in 2017, when fewer than 300 people worked there.

In April, Deciem’s Kilner, who was fired by Truaxe and rehired earlier this year, said in an Elle magazine article that 450 people, most under the age of 35, were employed by the company.

In an Instagram post in May, Truaxe wrote: “I control the company; I’m running the company. Forget the shares. Yes, I may be the biggest shareholder, but that doesn’t mean anything. There are arrangements in place that no shareholder, even if they end up owning 99 per cent (can fire me). I choose to leave when I choose to leave.”

Truaxe has boasted in the past of spending nothing on marketing and reaching an eager clientele via social media postings and word of mouth.

A court hearing has been scheduled for today.