As founder Brandon Truaxe announces his company will be shutting down until further notice, we look back at what's been going on at Deciem this past year
The founder of Deciem, the umbrella company launched in 2012 that owns cult Canadian skincare brand The Ordinary, has announced that the company will be shutting down all operations until further notice due to alleged criminal activity. “This is the final post of Deciem,” Brandon Truaxe said in an Instagram video last night, “almost everyone at Deciem has been involved in major criminal activity which includes financial crimes and much other.” Accompanying the post was a long, incoherent caption in which he claims a revolution is coming and that a variety of people including “most of the Lauder family,” “neary all @deciem employees,” Tom Ford, the founders of Too Faced, Tim Cooke, “all of Dishoom,” and “most of ‘Hollywood’” including Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and George Clooney, will face criminal prosecution. Donald Trump and Richard Branson are also tagged in the post for unspecified reasons.
In this video, Truaxe pleads viewers to take him seriously, saying: “You have no idea what a soldier I’ve been for more than 13 years. I’ve been made fun of as a porn actor and as a fucking drug dealer for 13 years, it’s all ending now." It's the latest event in a string of erratic online behaviour from the founder that has been going on for almost a year. While we await what happens next, here is a timeline of everthing that's occured since he took over the company Instagram account back in January.
January 2018
In January 2018, Truaxe posts an emotional video on Instagram announcing that he was cancelling “all marketing strategies” and that from now on he was going to “communicate personally with you on our social channels.”
February-March
In February the Deciem Instagram account posted seven videos of piles of rubbish with a caption announcing the brand’s commitment to eliminating plastic from their packaging. The post also appeared to fire the company’s packaging partner, saying “Peter of Mong Packaging, I'm sorry that we won't use plastic any more. You're such a good person. I'll sponsor you and your family to come to Canada if you want.”
The public firings continued when, two days later, in a now deleted post, Truaxe severed ties with cosmetic doctor Tijon Esho who had created Deciem’s lip care brand Esho. “I need to say goodbye to you because we are too busy to love your brand enough,” the post read. Esho later said in a statement to Racked that he had not been told prior to the social media announcement that his line was being discontinued.
The firings at Deciem continued through the next couple of months. At the end of February Co-CEO Nicola Kilner was let go, while in March Truaxe fired the entire American team on the brink of their planned US expansion.
April
Worries about the state of Truaxe’s mental health intensified when, in April, he posted a video, since deleted, in which a man called Jonathan, who was later revealed to be his lawyer, chases Truaxe down a street saying, “I’m trying to help you, Brandon. You need to calm down. You’ll end up getting killed. I’m trying to help you, please listen to me.” While Truaxe says “Jonathan this is abuse. Please tell them I won’t sue them, this is going to go on Instagram for Deciem in exactly one minute.” This post was followed by a short video, also deleted, where Truaxe, in tears, calls for help, “Zouk, I’m serious, please help him,” and several comments where he writes “Help me 911,” “Call police,” “This is real.”
The next day, after deleting the previous posts, Truaxe posted a video of himself discussing people’s concerns about his mental health. Addressed to “all the idiots,” “the sloppy journalists,” and the wife of Steven Kaplan, Deciem’s former chief financial officer who resigned after Co-CEO Nicole Kilner was fired, Truaxe denies any mental health issues.
"Hi everyone! I'm just really enjoying reading all the idiots that write on Instagram and all the sloppy journalists that can't even afford their phone bills who are saying that I've got mental health issues. Steven Kaplan, your wife Danielle wrote that nasty email saying that I have mental health issues...you're all jobless now. I don't have mental health issues. Yesterday and the day before I was at risk when I called for help, and the idiots that said I had mental health issues: You should have helped me."
The day after this, Racked released emails they obtained, that all Deciem employees had been sent, the final of which read “I’m done with DECIEM and EVERYTHING. No need to discuss.”
May
Despite the emails saying he was done with the company, Truaxe continued on at Deciem and in May released a video where the founder says he’s been “digging in the basement of Deciem" and “found some really bad wrongdoings from some of our shareholders.” The post then linked out to Deciem’s website which contained an open letter where Truaxe, among other things, claims a shareholder tried to defraud the company, that his colleagues tried to send him to a private mental health facility, and called the royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle “semi-rushed” and questioned George Clooney’s attendance. Although the letter is no longer accessible since the website has been shut down, extracts can be found here on the Cut.
July-September
In July, after a calmer couple of months it was announced on Instagram that Nicola Kilner was back and reinstated as co-CEO, despite Truaxe writing in his open letter of that “STUPID (and soon heavily investigated) Nicola Kilner” who had reported that he was addicted to drugs, several times, before he “terminated” her.
In the following few months, the Deciem instagram has been a chaotic mélange of work email screenshots (between the company and RBC, from Kilner ending Deciem’s relationship with Beautylish which Truaxe puts down to “Nils’ [co-founder] extreme disrespect” ); screenshots of emails between Truaxe and various hotels, one of which he accuses of a racist incident. Screenshots of emails between Truaxe and Leonard Lauder, the chairman emeritus of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc which made a minority investment in Deciem in 2017, which document a deteriorating relationship. There’s various random news stories (for example this one about spaghetti), an ode to American Express. There’s a strange recurring theme where Truaxe claims he doesn’t smoke, while smoking a cigarette, and a stranger recurring theme of Trump.
October
At the beginning of October, the Deciem account posted screenshots of an email sent to the entire Deciem company which states “the next few days will be more instrumental for DECIEM than DECIEM’S birth in 2012.” The email goes on to say:
“To the rest of the team at DECIEM - please have confidence that my love and respect for you is immense. I have tried to communicate with much clarity about issues that affect our company and our world. I recognise that such level of transparency and clarity may have seemed abnormal to you…I recognise that many of you may have allowed doubt to cloud your judgement of BT, despite much kindness, love, respect and generosity that our founder has shown us."
One week later, Truaxe posted the video announcing Deciem would be ceasing operations. While the website has been shut down, WWD reports the brand’s New York locations are still up and running with no current plans to close.
We tried to reach out to Deciem, but as of the time of writing, no one was available to comment. However, we hope that Truaxe is alright and that he is getting any help he needs.