Global beauty brand The Ordinary has been rocked by drama and tragedy in its short rise to global success including the tragic death of co founder Brandon Truaxe.
Co-founder Nicola Kilner has revealed the 'tragic' story behind its success on Steven Bartlett's podcast The Diary Of A CEO (DOAC). Starting the brand from scratch, the podcast details Nicola's "unthinkable, inspirational and tragic story of how she built a $2.2billion business empire".
Nicola started her career as a business-management student at Nottingham Trent University, where her sponsored work programme with the chemist Boots, led to her becoming one of the company's youngest buyers. A year after finishing her degree, she met Brandon Truaxe, a hugely talented Iranian-Canadian cosmetic computer scientist, who she later went on to found DECIEM and The Ordinary with in 2013.
After years of success, Truaxe began to display strange behaviour which caused major problems for both the brand and Nicola around 2017. Speaking of the DOAC podcast, she said that: "This is really where Brandon's behaviour started to change, it truly happened what felt like overnight so at the the end of 2017."
"We spent so much time together, like we didn't do drugs, he was just high on energy and happy...he's just drinking diet coke and eating fries with ketchup type person."
"Towards the end of 2017, he'd become intrigued I think by magic mushrooms and just kind of this idea of you know can you access different parts of your brain."
Brandon quickly became a different person according to Nicola, with the co-founder saying he had a "coldness" in his eyes and was increasingly erratic.
There were strange Instagram posts from the corporate account, the sudden termination of key partnerships with the likes of Sephora and instant firings in emails sent by Truaxe. The business appeared to be in freefall and even Nicola was sacked by Truaxe.
However, with investors scared, legal action was launched to remove him as co-chief executive. In October 2018, an Ontario judge sided with beauty giant Estée Lauder, then a minority investor in DECIEM, to strip Brandon Truaxe of his role as CEO, leaving Nicola as sole CEO.
Truaxe's downfall took less than 12 months, with Nicola telling DOAC that before October 2017, her business partner barely drank alcohol, let alone did drugs. Just a few months after being removed as CEO, Truaxe died as a result of a fall from his Toronto apartment. Talking to DOAC, Nicola revealed she was only told that he had died through a media inquiry.
Now, DECIEM and The Ordinary are thriving and Nicola is still CEO. Estée Lauder bought a majority stake in DECIEM in 2021 for $1billion and the brand continues to grow.
