How a Brand Built on Strengthening Bonds Broke Down
Diluted product.
Diluted experience.
Diluted sales.
Olaplex built a cult brand on a single molecule. Four years after its IPO, it sold for a fraction of what it was worth at its peak.
The product literally repairs broken bonds in chemically damaged hair.
The company couldn't repair the bonds that actually mattered for DTC growth.
This is a cautionary tale for every founder scaling a brand right now.
Best Buds at your service, here with a POV that may cause your DTC follicles to fall out.
Before We Start
I have not worked with Olaplex. I have not been inside their business. What follows is my read of a public story through an operational lens. I'm not diagnosing what happened. I'm naming what I see from the outside, and what it rhymes with from the inside of other brands I have worked with.
If I'm wrong about the specifics, I'm confident about the pattern.
What Olaplex Built
Founded in 2014 around a single patented molecule, Olaplex did something most brands never do… it created a category. Bond-building haircare did not exist before Olaplex. Hairstylists discovered it, fell in love with it, and became its distribution channel. The professional community fueled the brand from the chair up.
By 2021 Olaplex went public with a valuation north of $15 billion, EBITDA margins exceeding 60%, and fewer than 150 employees. Impressive. Lean, powerful, beloved. Everything a founder dreams of.
By early 2026 the stock was trading around $1.30 -- down nearly 95% from its IPO price. Henkel acquired it for $1.4 billion.
How did this happen?
Fail Point 1: DTC Without Infrastructure
Olaplex built its brand through professionals. The DTC channel came later, and based on the review record, it came without the operational backbone to support it.
Undelivered orders. No customer service response for days. Shipping carriers flagging products as hazardous goods. Wrong items sent. Bottles arriving without lids. These aren't product problems. They're fulfillment and CX problems happening at the exact touchpoint the brand owned completely.
Here's the part that burns my eyes. A customer who buys direct has chosen you. They've gone around the retailer, the marketplace, the salon. You literally earned their trust and effort to pull the trigger. And in the final mile, you not only failed them, you also failed your brand.
I know. I know. Fulfillment and customer support are not nearly as sexy as the product development, branding, marketing, PR. However, they are critical to closing the loop that generates repeat purchases.
Fail Point 2: Compromised Quality
The reviews tell a specific story. Not 'this product doesn't work.' Something more damning: 'this product used to work, and now it doesn't.'
Customers noted formulation changes around 2022 and 2023. Consistency becoming watery, results disappearing, the thing that made the product worth the price ghosted. Whether that's a supply chain decision, a cost-cutting measure, or a quality control gap that nobody caught, I don't know. But the outcome is visible in the review data.
68% of Trustpilot reviews are 1-star. That's not a fringe complaint. That's the dominant customer experience.
Is this a story of a bad batch? I’m not sure. But what I can assume is that Olaplex, catapulted by what would have had to been a legion of devoted product evangelists driving that 60% EBITDA margin, compromised on both product advocacy and customer advocacy along the way.
Diluted product. Diluted experience. Diluted sales.
Fail Point 3: Erosion of Trust
While Olaplex was managing lawsuits and losing stylist endorsements, K18 was doing the exact thing Olaplex had done in 2014, winning hairstylists one chair at a time, maintaining a continuous feedback loop with the professional community, and expanding methodically from salon to Sephora to DTC. Founded in 2020. In Sephora by 2021. $300 million in sales by 2023. Acquired by Unilever in 2024 as a win, not a rescue.
Same category. Same science-led positioning. Same salon-first channel strategy.
K18 didn't beat Olaplex with a better molecule. It stepped into the space Olaplex's operational failures created and didn't let go.
That's what failed operations actually cost. Not just the customers you lose. The competitors you make room for.
The Real Lesson Isn't About Being Lean
Olaplex operated with 150 people at 60% EBITDA margins. That not only sounds good, it feels unbreakable.
A lack of product advocacy and a deteriorating customer experience made room for competitors to take over a category Olaplex pioneered.
In my head, I can see internal teams raising concerns in vain to a leadership that was either overwhelmed or just simply looked the other way.
Olaplex had a world-class product and a cult following. What it needed, and what I can't confirm, was a framework where the people closest to those three failure points had the clarity, the authority, and the accountability to act when things started slipping.
Who in your business can you depend on to own product and customer advocacy? If it’s not everyone, we should talk.
At your service…
Best Buds CX is a fractional COO partnering with bold brands built on core values. We implement customer-retaining operations across the business that empower teams to operate at their highest potential so you can reclaim your time, energy, and ambition. Learn more.
