Olaplex’s ‘Broke My Hair’ Problem Is a TikTok Cautionary Tale

tech.hindustantimes.com:

It was the opposite of the celebrity endorsements typical of social media. Earlier this month, Kristin Cavallari went on Instagram to tell her 4.5 million followers why they shouldn't use one of the trendiest products out there.

“This is not an ad — at all,” the 35-year-old reality-TV actress turned beauty influencer and entrepreneur said in a video. Her target was Olaplex, the hair-care brand that has had a rapid rise in popularity thanks in part to rave reviews from celebs like her.

“I was using it too much, and it literally broke my hair,” said Cavallari, who declined to comment for this story. “That has happened to other people, so if you're using it, just be careful,” she said before recommending another product.

While the company says its offerings don't damage hair, Cavallari's post encapsulates the reputational challenge facing Olaplex, a once high-flying brand that has seen its stock collapse 80% this year — erasing $15 billion in market value — amid rising competition and a selloff in equity markets.

That drop came after the firm, based in Santa Barbara, California, raised $1.55 billion in an initial public offering in September 2021, which was the biggest in the US consumer-goods sector in two decades, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Social media played an outsize role in Olaplex's success. An unpaid endorsement by Kim Kardashian about a year after the company's founding in 2014 ignited online attention that it has maintained in its pitch to investors — its filing to go public last year touted metrics such as TikTok hashtag views (317 million).

That accelerant, however, has turned Olaplex into a cautionary tale about the volatile power of social media to lift a brand up — and then drag it back