Brandon Truaxe was born with a different name. Ali Roshan came into the world in Tehran in 1978, and in 1995, as a teenager, he arrived in Toronto with his family as a refugee. The name he later used on every bottle of skincare he made was one he adopted in Canada.
That detail rarely comes up in the story of DECIEM, the company behind The Ordinary, which Estee Lauder would eventually value at US$2.2 billion. The usual version starts with the products. The real one begins with a newcomer in a new country, studying computer science at the University of Waterloo, graduating in 2001, and landing an internship at a large cosmetics company. What he saw there stuck with him: the markups. Creams that cost pennies to make were sold for the price of a dinner.
Shoppers could buy a bottle of a single active, read exactly what was in it and pay a fraction of what department-store brands charged.
He did not go into software. He started a software company and a supplements company, both of which were later dissolved. Then, in 2003, he launched a skincare brand called Euoko, and in 2009 another called Indeed Labs. He left both. Each one taught him something about the industry, and each one ended without him in charge.
DECIEM, founded in 2013 as an umbrella for several brands, was his third attempt at a beauty company, and this time he built it around a simple argument: make the lab, the factory and the shop yourself, and you can sell serious ingredients at honest prices. In August 2016 he launched The Ordinary. Shoppers could buy a bottle of a single active, read exactly what was in it and pay a fraction of what department-store brands charged. The line sold out again and again. By the time of the Estee Lauder investment in June 2017, a 28% stake for US$50 million, the company had grown to roughly thirty stores of its own.
The success was unusually loud, and so was what came next. In 2018, accounts of erratic behaviour spread. In October of that year Truaxe ordered the company's operations closed, alleging financial crimes, and was removed as CEO. A restraining order and an investigation by PricewaterhouseCoopers followed. In January 2019, he died in Toronto at 40. Estee Lauder called him a true genius.
The company he left behind did not stop. Nicola Kilner, his co-founder, ran it, sales continued, and in February 2021 Estee Lauder agreed to take its stake to 76% in a deal valuing DECIEM at US$2.2 billion. For the year ended January 2021 the company reported about US$460 million in net sales. In 2024, Estee Lauder bought the rest, bringing its total outlay to roughly US$1.7 billion.
For a founder, the lesson is uncomfortable. Truaxe saw clearly what the industry hid and built something customers loved. But a company that depends on one person's vision and one person's temper is fragile. DECIEM survived because others were able to keep running it.