Hello, everyone. Welcome back.
Thank you so, so much for joining me.
Today we're doing something a little bit different.
I'm always asking you over on my instagram,
what brands are people not buying?
Aren't they using anymore?
So I'm gonna dive into one of those today that
was heavily suggested, and I totally agree with.
Today we are discussing how and why one of the most
once beloved beauty brands, Lime Crime, lost its, let's
say, unicorn sparkles to a point where even a complete
brand redo and even changing up its CEO might not
be able to help fix its soiled, heavily soiled reputation.
There are, in my opinion, multiple reasons people no
longer use this brand, and for good reasons too.
So to understand those reasons, let's take a very quick
trip down memory lane.
Just before we get into that today, if this is your first time here,
hi, my name is Robert.
I'm a professional makeup artist here on YouTube.
Also, in real life.
It's my goal to help you become a pro yourself or just
someone who's really good at makeup.
So if that sounds like something you
are interested in, do, please consider subscribing.
Give this video a thumbs up, and if you
like it, I'll make more videos like this.
Lime Crime.
Hmm...
From questionable product quality and inconsistent
customer service, which is never a good thing,
and many controversies that just kind of left
us feeling uneasy about the brand, untrustworthy and
in general, just generally grossed out, to be
honest, to say the least.
It's extremely hard not to notice the kind of
dramatic shift in Lime Crime's reputation from when they
started out to the middle, to now. It's a story.
It has a beginning, middle, end.
Lime Crime kind of burst onto the
makeup scene with vibrant colors, formulas.
It captured the interest of
makeup enthusiasts worldwide, myself included. Loved it.
I thought, wow, this is... this is... yes.
From their lipsticks, their eyeshadows, they definitely carved a niche for
themselves as kind of like the lead in, I guess,
unconventional alternative beauty, I guess you could say.
It was a different time.
This brand was kind of wild back then, and their
kind of, like, approach to cosmetics and making it this
very particular kind of brand got everyone really excited and
kind of made us want to experiment with color a
little bit more, especially lip colors.
And as they stated, it was a brand to
kind of help you unleash your inner unicorn.
Now, my inner unicorn has black
hair and hates glitters and rainbows.
So maybe the brand wasn't for me,
but I liked it at that time.
The brand was founded by Doe Deere
and her husband Mark, in 2008.
The brand very quickly became extremely popular, mainly
for, like, their extremely unique aesfetic... aesthetic...
and the bold colors they had, as I said,
in their lipsticks, and their eyeshadow palettes.
Now, Doe Deere is one of the huge reasons for this brand,
in my opinion, allegedly, taking such a nose dive.
So Doe Deere is...
that's not her real name,
obviously, but she's originally from Russia.
She moved to the States.
So she began actually selling clothes on Ebay, like clothes she made herself.
And that was also under the name Lime Crime.
Now, allegedly Lime Crime, the name,
I never thought about it, but apparently
it comes from her favorite color, lime.
And like criminals.
No.
It was like from breaking the rules of traditional clothing and makeup crime.
Lime Crime.
So mine would be like, Black...
Winter.
Oh.
So all this success she had from Ebay selling
her clothes online and people being like, oh, my
God, they're so crazy clothes, gave her the confidence
to kind of, like, start her own makeup brand.
This is something that didn't really happen back then.
Like, back in the day, we didn't
have all these indie brands popping up.
It was online only.
And it started with a very small collection of
lip products, highly pigmented, vegan, and cruelty free.
And from then on, it kind of spiraled.
It really gained like a cult following.
You know, like movies like Beetlejuice that gain
like, a very specific type of audience, a
very specific kind of following.
It was that kind of movement, that
kind of like, gathering of all these fans.
And it was mainly among makeup artists,
young makeup enthusiasts, alternative subcultures, pastel goths.
Who else? Emos.
I was emo then. Wait, was I?
But looking at the other makeup options we had,
especially where I was from, we had what?
Clinique, Estee Lauder, Benefit.
It was very... like this.
If a brand was like a person, it would be like that.
That's all the options we had.
So seeing all those colors
online, that packaging was insane.
Even me and my friends, we were
going through these emo phases still.
I think, I can't remember. I swear we were.
So this brand looked so incredibly intriguing to us.
And it was these bold shades.
They had blue lipstick, green lipstick.
Where were you going to see those kind of colors?
Apart from theatrical brands in
2008, you know? Scandalous.
This was like a new brand.
Expression through makeup wasn't so much
of a thing back then.
So this brand was was like, yes.
So one of their standout products
was, of course, the Velvetine lipsticks. Velveteen?
They were basically a liquid lipstick, really comfortable on
the lip, really soft and smooth and really long
lasting and in like, crazy colors back then.
I remember I got a set and
it had like this pumpkin yellowy shade.
I literally never used it.
I think I just opened it and sniffed it occasionally.
It wasn't in my kit.
I wasn't doing YouTube back then.
I don't know why I had it.
I just wanted to own a Lime Crime Velvetine.
Like, it was just like the thing to do.
And also their unicorn theme collection, which is kind
of still on the brand at the moment.
We'll touch on that later as well.
But unicorns were definitely a kind of thing for them.
But something happened along the way, a few things happened
along the way and it's kind of no secret that
Lime Crime have had their fair share of controversies.
The brand really experienced this period, this rocky road that
kind of left us thinking, do we trust them?
And are they worth still us giving them our money, basically.
Doe Deere has a horrible, horrible, disgusting history filled
with controversies, allegedly, and I could sit here and list
them off, but what I'm going to do is leave
some links to some videos down below that explain it
a lot more and they have intensively looked into it,
and I think they need the correct research.
Go and check them out.
Doe Deere gives off very much,
I paid for a blue tick on Twitter, so
now everyone has to read my racist, homophobic, bullsh*t
kind of person energy, you know what I mean?
One of the biggest controversies with them
was their huge, huge security breach.
Now, a lot of their
customers personal information was compromised.
Whatever their customers information they
used to purchase products on
their website was compromised completely.
And bear in mind, this started in 2014.
Lime Crime only spoke about it publicly on their
Instagram and let their customers know in 2015.
Now, unless it was December the 31st and then
they let their customers know January 1st.
I feel like that's a lot of time
to not let people know that their personal
details and bank accounts could be in danger.
And of course that led to a lot of
criticism and a huge loss in trust from customers.
What's to say it's not going to happen again?
What's to say they're improving stuff, their systems.
I don't know how it works.
I don't know how people hack the mainframe.
And Lime Crime did claim to up their security, fix these issues
and pretty much hoped it would rebuild trust with their
customer base or what was left of it.
I assume.
The brand definitely started to fizzle out because
it was taken over, basically in 2018
it was taken over.
It was sold to a company called Tengram. Tengram? Yes.
Capital Partners.
I don't know why Tengram shocked me.
I don't know what that means.
And this was a private equity firm
focused on consumer and retail brands.
Their goal was to basically expand Lime Crime's reach.
So maybe, I guess, make it... put it in more stores, maybe sell
it on, like, ASOS, I don't know.
Is it on ASOS?
But also like staying true to what the
company was meant to be, like that unique
image they had, which was now racist thieves.
No, I'm joking, I'm joking.
So where we are now with this brand, a former
CEO of The Body Shop, which...
quite different if you ask me.
Is now CEO of Lime Crime.
Doe Deere has stepped down completely, allegedly.
And although for a lot of people, Doe Deere being
involved in Lime Crime was a huge no go for
them because of the racism and all the horrible things
that she did in her past.
I think the brand were kind of like, oh, you know what?
Now she stepped down.
And now she's completely out of the question.
Like, what a great fresh start for us as a company.
We can take this name that's already
established, bad background, but now it doesn't
matter because she's not involved.
I think the trust is lost and understandably so after
all the drama and that big data breach, people don't
trust the brand, and I can see why they
don't quite believe that they aren't putting money into Doe Deere's
pockets if they continue to buy Lime Crime, even now.
And even looking at the latest
Trust Pilot reviews of Lime Crime,
it seems like some distrust is still warranted.
Here's my personal view.
Like, I haven't sprinkled that in throughout.
As a longtime makeup artist, beauty enthusiasts, an
avid consumer, and especially as somebody who just
likes to buy products when they have incredible
packaging, I'm a packaging person.
I remember Lime Crime being a brand
I strive to own one day.
I remember being like, one day I'm
going to have one of those palettes.
They were kind of pricey back then for makeup.
I'm going to have a lipstick.
And I did eventually end up owning some, as I said.
I loved the unique style, the unique shades.
Would I have ever used a blue lipstick in my life?
Absolutely not.
Did I want to own one?
Yes, I did.
So I can open it and sniff it.
However, I think what's happened to this brand is
a big, big example of people expressing their feelings
for brands with their wallets, with their money.
Like I always say, we're in this place in time,
at a moment where people see brands as people.
If that brand was a person,
would you hang out with them? Would they be your friend?
Would they be that annoying person
that you just don't want
but is was always there?
Do you like their morals?
Do you like who they are as a person?
And once you lose trust in a person, once you see
a dark side of them, once they post their horrible,
horrible Facebook status during lockdown, you lose trust in them.
You don't want to see them again.
You block them, you unfriend them.
And then they're always that person in your mind.
And that's the same with brands.
They've definitely changed it up a little bit.
The brand seems to be leaning really into hair products,
hair care and hair color, to a point where if
you type in Lime Crime and it comes up
on their homepage, the first thing you see, or the first
category of product is hair care, it's hair color.
Personal opinion.
Some of these packagings give off white label.
I'm not saying it is, just personal opinion.
It looks like it could be next to the 'at home
brow lamination kits' on Amazon, you know what I mean?
And the packaging and the brand altogether do kind of have
a more of a drugstore vibe now, which is not bad.
We all love a drugstore product.
We all love a bargain.
Their prices don't necessarily reflect drugstore.
And I know they have tried
to decrease their products prices.
I don't think they necessarily claim to be drugstore or
high end, but they do kind of need to meet
themselves in the middle and establish some sort of like...
identity there.
Beecause their prices give leaning towards high end, yet
the look of their products give drugstore.
They also had wax melts on their
website, which I thought was really weird.
I personally don't see Lime Crime ever achieving that
kind of like cult status they used to.
That popularity among people who love makeup, who
love creating looks, who love creating artistic things.
There's so many other brands to
choose from with less problematic pasts.
Although, let's be real, most brands have
problematic pasts in some way or another.
And in this kind of like world where anyone can
make their own brand, this unique idea that Lime Crime
once was doesn't necessarily seem so unique anymore.
It seems like, okay, what's next?
And to be honest, I'm kind
of surprised they're still around.
The reason why people aren't buying Lime Crime
anymore is because the name is tainted.
People don't trust that the former CEO, Doe Deere is
actually making royalties from a brand in any way, despite
claims that she is no longer involved in the brand.
Whether it be true or not, the trust is
gone and it's something you can't really get back.
Why should people trust you or try and re-trust you
again when there's so many other products to choose from
and so many other indie brands on the market that
we can buy and celebrate and support small businesses.
I would love to know your opinion, where you think
Lime Crime will be, let's say in five years time.
Will they still be selling hair dye and wax melts?
Thank you so much for joining me.
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I will see you very, very soon. Bye.