Revlon: makeup icon falls to social media rivals

theguardian.com:

The end of the pandemic was supposed to usher in another “roaring 20s”, with bumper makeup sales as wearing lipstick became a “symbol of returning to life”. But the party is over for one of the most storied names of the makeup business, after Revlon collapsed under the weight of its debts.

It is a story of social media star power trumping old-school glamour in today’s beauty industry.

This week Revlon filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, a legal process that enables the ailing company to continue trading while it figures out how to repay its substantial debts. It is a fall from grace for the 90-year-old beauty icon, which invented matching lipstick and nail polish, and set the pace in beauty halls during much of the 20th century.

During its heyday, Revlon was second only to Avon in sales, but in a sign of its ailing fortunes, the company has now fallen outside the top 20, according to a recent industry poll, as sales shift from beauty halls to the web, and celebrity brands such as Kylie Jenner-backed Kylie Cosmetics – with its near-26 million Instagram followers – and Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty are hailed as the new taste-makers.

Revlon’s financial crisis is “not entirely surprising”, says Samantha Dover, the category director of beauty and personal care research at Mintel. “We’ve seen from our data that the recovery from Covid-19 in colour cosmetics has been quite slow. Sales recovered a bit in 2021, but by nowhere near as much as a lot of brands hoped for.”

Due to the pandemic, women have become accustomed to using and buying makeup less frequently, with cosmetics sales in the UK still below pre-pandemic levels, according to Mintel. In the year to April 2020, 44% of women bought a lipstick for themselves, but in 2021