The celebrity skincare brand announced Wednesday that it is winding down operations.
The clean beauty market is slightly less saturated with celebrity brands now that Scarlett Johansson’s skincare line, The Outset, has announced its closure.
Johansson launched The Outset as a vegan and allergen-free skincare line with Kate Foster Lengyel as co-founder in 2022. The brand started out as a direct-to-consumer operation and later secured deals with retailers including Sephora, Amazon, and Nordstrom.
The Outset has yet to release official details regarding the closure, but the brand website displays the following message:
“After an incredible journey, The Outset has made the decision to wind down operations. We’re so grateful to everyone who welcomed us into their routines and supported us along the way,” the website reads.
While online shopping at The Outset has come to an end, the brand assured customers that any existing orders will be processed as usual. Customers may also continue to see The Outset products on shelves at Sephora or available on Amazon as the retailers still have the line in stock.
Given how crowded the skincare category is as a whole — and how celebrities tend to dabble in business ventures — it is not surprising when a brand like The Outset goes under, JP Kuehlwein, an adjunct associate professor of business at Columbia Business School, told ADWEEK.
The failure rate for new products introduced in retail stores is about 75 percent after three to five years in business, Kuehlwein told Adweek. That rate can vary across industries, but the skincare category is not an easy one to break into by any means, Kuehlwein said.
To make their mark, a brand needs something that stands out: a revolutionary new ingredient, an emotional backstory, or perhaps a celebrity face. For brands built around celebrities or influencers, this promotion is usually in-built. Gwyneth Paltrow comes to mind as the face of her brand Goop. But Johansson was relatively invisible while marketing The Outset. The approach seemed intentional, as she aimed to build a brand that did not solely rely on her name. But in doing so, she sacrificed believability, Kuehlwein told ADWEEK.
“We’re using that moisturizer in a way to become Scarlett,” Kuehlwein said. “If that’s not credible, if there’s no strong link to that, then the proposition quickly loses interest, which seems like what happened here.”
In the end, the brand’s undoing might be not having forefronted their celebrity spokesperson enough.
The Outset did not respond to ADWEEK’s request for comment.
