When Maggie first posted her video last year titled “The biggest celebrity beauty brand failure I’ve ever seen”, she wasn’t wrong to ask questions.
At the time, JVN Hair, a clean, sustainability-driven haircare brand loved by Sephora shoppers and stylists alike, had just been sold out of bankruptcy for $1.25 million. For a brand with multi-million-dollar sales, cult-favorite products, and a founder as beloved as Jonathan Van Ness, it didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t that the brand failed.
It was that its parent company, Amyris, did. When Amyris collapsed under nearly $1 billion in debt, JVN Hair became collateral damage.
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