Clarisonic Is Shutting Down and Doing a Liquidation Sale

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Clarisonic is shutting down.

The L’Oréal-owned skin-care device brand, best known for its sonic skin-cleansing brushes popular with young Millennial women in the early 2010s, announced Wednesday via an Instagram post that it is closing on Sept. 30. All Clarisonic products, which are sold at Sephora, Ulta Beauty and on Amazon as well as the Clarisonic web site, are being marked down to 50 percent off.

“After more than a decade of game-changing innovation and technology, the Clarisonic brand will be shutting down on September 30, 2020,” reads the post. “We want to thank all of our loyal customers, dermatologists and retail partners who have helped put this brand on the map.”

L’Oréal did not respond to WWD’s request for comment.

When L’Oréal acquired Clarisonic from Pacific Bioscience Laboratories in 2011, it was considered to be one of the fastest-growing and hottest brands on the market. Industry sources estimated the brand generated $100 million in retail sales in 2010. But its popularity faltered under L’Oréal, and sales failed to meet expectations as the brand attempted to branch out from $150 skin-cleansing tools to devices for men, feet and makeup application.

Despite a lot of buzz around at-home skin-care devices, the category has never quite taken off in the way experts seemed to predict it would. Category sales were stable prior to the coronavirus, and certain devices, such as the at-home microcurrent tools NuFace and Ziip, have seen upticks during the pandemic, but these brands seem to be the exception — not the rule.

Meanwhile, Dr. Robb Akridge, the founder of Clarisonic, is set to bring a new beauty system to market this year through his new company, Opulus Beauty Labs — a novel beauty appliance with corresponding, self-contained, single-use, skin-care products, likened to a Nespresso for skin care.

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