Estée Lauder sues Deciem's Brandon Truaxe

By

Jennifer Braun

Published
Oct 11, 2018

The Estée Lauder Companies is ready to deal with Deciem in court and has filed an injunction against founder Brandon Truaxe.

 
Just days after the head of the Toronto-based cosmetics company abruptly announced plans to shut down until further notice, Truaxe took to Instagram Thursday morning to share an email from Lauder lawyer Mark Gelowitz. 
 
The email states that the lawyer was instructed by Estée Lauder “to commence injunction proceedings in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice”. The first hearing was scheduled for Thursday at 10:30 am in Toronto. 

Truaxe shared the email with the caption: “3 emails to say less than one word but more than 0 words”.  
 
The French company acquired a 28 percent stake in Deciem in 2017. It’s asking for co-chief executive officer Nicola Kilner to take the helm of the company as CEO and for Truaxe to be ousted with no more rights to fire or communicate with employees or to post to Deciem social media accounts, among other things. 
 
"This is the final post of Deciem. We will shut down all operations of Deciem until further notice... Please take me seriously", Truaxe announced Monday, again on Instagram. 
 
During the week, Deciem’s website was updated to list 23 stores around the world as 'closed', including in New York, London, Sydney, Amsterdam, Toronto and Seoul, while its home page was replaced with an empty red page.

Deciem is headquartered in Toronto. They call themselves “The Abnormal Beauty Company” and feature nine beauty brands under its corporate umbrella. The beauty company currently has a growing portfolio of more than 50 products in over 15 markets.