Nicola Kilner

The Extraordinary Beauty CEO

By Bonnie Langedijk

Nicola Kilner’s road to success reads like the script of a Hollywood movie. The CEO and co-founder built the billion-dollar beauty empire DECIEM from the ground up alongside co-founder Brandon Truaxe. Instead of building a singular brand, they built 10 simultaneously. This innovative, multi-brand approach allowed DECIEM to create brands that connected with the zeitgeist and resonated with customers who didn’t feel served by traditional beauty companies. In a time when exclusivity reigned, Kilner and Truaxe bet on a philosophy of transparency. Showcasing that great products don’t have to be expensive. 

With its radical approach, DECIEM birthed some of today’s most successful beauty brands, including The Ordinary and NIOD, and with it changing the way we talk about beauty products and ingredients. But as the company's success grew exponentially, Truaxe’s mental health spiraled. In 2018, five years after launching the company, Kilner found herself in the role of CEO—while 9 months pregnant—after the tragic passing of Truaxe. 

Leading with kindness and compassion, two values most traditional business leaders shy away from, Kilner continued to build on DECIEM’s success. In May of 2024, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. acquired DECIEM, investing a total of $1.7 billion over three years, after becoming a majority owner in 2021. Under her leadership, DECIEM continues to change the beauty industry. Its people-first, down-to-earth approach to marketing has garnered a loyal, global community of skin care devotees and has inspired a new generation of skincare brands to put authenticity first.

Bonnie: Language has been a key element of Deciem and The Ordinary. In my experience, it was the first beauty company to include science-based language in marketing and communications. How did you develop the concept, and how has it impacted the relationship between brands and consumers?

Nicola: It's important to know the context of why we launched the Ordinary. We had Deciem, which was the parent company, and we have many other brands in the portfolio. Some of those brands followed a more traditional path in terms of some of the naming in the messaging. We quickly realized that for the average person, including myself, it’s difficult to understand the difference between spending 30 pounds, 10 pounds, and 300 pounds. We started looking at the world of healthcare. When you have a headache, you walk into a pharmacy and you know you want paracetamol or aspirin, you know it's 500 milligrams. Within that context, education and transparency have always been there, but we never gave those tools to the consumer in beauty. That's how we landed on the concept of The Ordinary. Initially, we didn’t think this was going to be a billion-dollar brand. We very much thought the audience would be much narrower, but because we had other brands under the umbrella, we decided this was going to be a brand for those who appreciate science. They want knowledge, so let's give them the tools to understand the ingredients, to help them understand their skin, and build their regimes. Brandon always used to say that to get a million people to like you, you first have to get a thousand people to love you. That was the concept of The Ordinary. If they understand what we're doing, they understand the ingredients, they understand that we're really selling pure ingredients. We were trying to change this narrative that new isn’t always better. What's blown us all away, and probably the industry as well, is how big consumers' appetite is for this transparency and this ingredient knowledge.

“When you have a headache, you walk into a pharmacy and you know you want paracetamol or aspirin, you know it's 500 milligrams. Within that CONTEXT, education and transparency have always been there, but we never gave those tools to the consumer in beauty. That's how we landed on the concept of The Ordinary.”

I love what you said about newness. There’s this obsession with what’s new, whether you're talking about beauty, skincare, or fashion, but I do believe there's a growing group of consumers who are much more interested in what's best for them. 

Nicola: It's part of the success of The Ordinary. The brand picked up around the same time as Instagram was really exploding. It was this perfect marriage where we were giving people the tools to talk about ingredients, and understand ingredients. Brandon always used to say, would you post on your Instagram about a miracle anti-aging cream? There's not much you can say about it. Being able to go into the details of the science, why it works, and what's good, we allowed that conversation to happen. Over the last decade the rise of platforms like Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok allowed the communities to come together and for that conversation to live. I always think about my mother when she was buying skincare at my age. Her choice would have been to open a magazine and see which kind of glossy Hollywood actress appealed to her or walk into a department store and be at the mercy of the first counterlady who grabbed your attention. 

It was completely top-down instead of bottom-up. 

A couple of decades ago, all the power was in the hands of those who could afford the advertising. The dynamic between brands and consumers was very different. Today, everything is about authenticity and integrity because the consumer now has the power. 

I think the concept of what’s aspirational today has changed too. Luxury no longer necessarily means a high price point. 

Nicola: It's funny because many brands take inspiration from The Ordinary’s ingredients, but I think the most disruptive thing we did was change the conversation around price point and luxury.

I agree.

Nicola​​: Our accessible price point is probably one of the harder things for brands to challenge us on, especially as the brand is still so desirable. Our aesthetic is simple, but simple is very complicated. A lot of design and detailed thinking went into the design. We challenged the perception that price point doesn't define luxury. Apple is a great example. An iPhone is a luxury product—it's certainly an expensive product—but it's also mass.

Absolutely. Building a successful brand is one thing, but holding onto that momentum is a completely different beast. What do you think has been pivotal to the continued success of Deciem and The Ordinary?

Nicola: Today it's easier than ever to create a brand, but there’s much more competition too. It's quite easy to build that initial momentum. It’s easy to create virality around a new product on TikTok, but to hold onto that is hard. Our people have been, without a doubt, key to our success.  We have the most talented team when it comes to brand and social. Ultimately it's about creativity. You can have the best products in the world, but if people don't know about them, they won't sell. We’ve certainly seen ebbs and flows. We’ve had products go viral on TikTok, but we’ve also had our slowdowns. What I love about TikTok is that a lot of it happens organically. It also sees a much bigger result than other platforms because it's so organic. Instagram is much more curated and people feel less of an urge to buy products because they know most content has been paid for. Authenticity is critical in the world of brand in 2024. 

While the beauty industry has changed in many ways, the language around beauty has largely remained the same. The focus is on self-improvement or buying into this better version of yourself. How do you think these narratives affect consumers and how do you tackle that as a leader in this space?

Nicola: From a language perspective, The Ordinary is focused on science. We don't use emotive language. Brandon always used to say that our products are about function and results whereas in other categories, particularly within color or fragrance, there's much more of an emotive association. For us, skin care is about function. We may both use niacinamide, but we use it for different benefits, if you call something an anti-blemish serum or an anti-aging cream, you're selling that one thing when skincare ingredients can have multiple benefits. Focusing on the ingredients allows the individual to tailor what's right for them. You also may have noticed that in all of our adverts, Instagram campaigns, social media, et cetera, we only ever use our employees. 

Really? I didn't know that. 

Nicola: Our team is far more representative of our consumer base than going to a model agency and using traditional models. They are Deciem, they are The Ordinary. We'll often create content where our scientists talk about the product. Isn’t the best person to hear about this product from, the person who actually made it? We're very good at bringing our people to the forefront of our campaigns.

Hopefully, we’ve outgrown the era where brands only show perfection. In terms of talking about ingredients, I think it allows consumers to get nerdier about their skin. The ritual becomes focused on caring for your skin rather than solving a particular problem.

Nicola: No one needs a label. Our skin is changing all the time. Depending on where I am in my cycle, I'll have acne, but I don't have acne-prone skin all month. I'll choose when to use salicylic, based on when my skin needs it. It's this more fluid relationship with ingredients. The thing that I love about The Ordinary is when I talk to our consumers, people talk about having this skincare wardrobe. Rather than having a set three-step routine, they have 10 products from The Ordinary because they're building their regimen based on what their skin needs that day. 

That’s a good analogy. You don't wear the same outfit every day.

Nicola: Exactly. Depending on the season where you are, the country, the weather, and your cycle, there are all sorts of changes.

As a leader, you've shared a lot about your relationship with Brandon and what it was like to lose him. Grief remains a topic that most people, and especially business leaders, shy away from because they don't want to show that vulnerability. Why have you chosen to share your story publicly?

Nicola: As a society, the more we can do to normalize emotions in conversations the better. What I still struggle with about what we went through with Brandon is that I still have more questions than answers. I'm still in this situation where if it happened again, I don't know what I would do differently. In the five years since he passed, even though there's a more open dialogue about mental health, I don't think there's more understanding yet from a healthcare perspective. As a society, we don't have enough conversations about addictions, about mental health, about substance abuse. With Brandon, many of us were feeling the pain and could see how bad things were and there was nothing we could do. He would get sectioned, he would get released, he would go to another country, and the healthcare systems wouldn't take charge. If someone has cancer, which is also extremely difficult, at least you've got a united front. There's a diagnosis, there's a treatment plan and everyone is aligned on getting better. When it's mental health, the person has opinions, medical professionals have different opinions, but then also the circle of friends and family have different opinions. The path forward can be very confusing.  

Absolutely. It’s less straightforward. Circling back, when you and Brandon launched the business, you set out to launch 10 brands at once, right? 

Nicola: Deciem comes from the Latin word for the number 10. It was all about building 10 brands at once.

Why did you decide to take that approach?

Nicola: When you're coming up with a brand, it's difficult to predict which one consumers will fall in love with. You can research all you want, but until it's actually for sale and a consumer not only buys it once but comes back and buys it a second time, it's very difficult to understand how to succeed. If you build a team and you are just working on one brand, but this brand doesn't work, everything closes down. If you have multiple brands, you're giving yourself more chances of success. It also allows you to be more efficient as you can share resources, people, and partners across brands. 

Strangely, not many industries and companies take this approach. If you're building the rails anyway, you can put any train on it.

Nicola: Exactly. Many entrepreneurs were always destined to succeed, but they had to try different things to get there. If you have the resources to build a team to test, incubate, see what works, and make changes, then it's an amazing approach. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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