Scarlett Johansson’s clean skincare brand The Outset is closing down. The announcement, posted on the brand’s website Wednesday, brings an end to a run that took the label from direct-to-consumer roots to shelf space at Sephora, Amazon and Nordstrom.
What The Outset said
The brand has not yet shared detailed reasons for the shutdown. Its website simply states: “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 Outset says existing orders will be processed normally, and customers may still find remaining products at Sephora or Amazon while those retailers hold inventory. The company did not respond to a request for comment from Adweek.
A crowded category, a quiet founder
JP Kuehlwein, an adjunct associate professor of business at Columbia Business School, told Adweek that skincare is not an easy category to enter. Around 75 percent of new products introduced in retail stores fail within three to five years, he said.
Johansson launched The Outset in 2022 with co-founder Kate Foster Lengyel as a vegan and allergen-free skincare line. The brand was intentionally low-profile. Rather than putting Johansson front and centre, the team tried to build a label that did not depend entirely on her name.
That move created an unintended problem, according to Kuehlwein. Beauty shoppers often buy into a transformation story. If a celebrity founder is the promised shortcut to that transformation, they need to see the link.
“We’re using that moisturizer in a way to become Scarlett. 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,” Kuehlwein said.
He contrasted that with celebrity brands where the founder is the product narrative, such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop. The point is not that every star should be on every asset. The point is that the brand’s reason to exist has to be immediately legible.
What marketers can take from the closure
For brand and performance marketers, The Outset is less a warning about celebrity fatigue and more a warning about positioning in a saturated category. A few lessons stand out:
- Don’t mistake distribution for demand. Sephora, Amazon and Nordstrom gave the brand reach. Reach is not the same as a reason to prefer the product.
- Make the founder link do real work. If a famous name is a co-founder, either put that name in the value story or show why the product doesn’t need it.
- Pick one stand-out asset. Kuehlwein’s test for new brands is whether they have a revolutionary ingredient, an emotional backstory or a compelling face. Most winning beauty labels make one of these obvious.
Why this matters now
The celebrity beauty market has thinned out, but the mechanics haven’t changed. Consumers still buy a promise: a more glowing version of themselves, a better routine, or a piece of a founder’s world. A brand that keeps its most famous asset invisible needs another asset strong enough to carry that promise. The Outset had distribution and access; what it did not make clear, in the end, was the transformation.
For marketing teams watching from the sidelines, the takeaway is practical. Before launching or relaunching a founder-led brand, ask what the shopper can retell in one sentence. If the answer is not obvious, neither is the purchase.
Source: Adweek
