TORONTO – In a remodelled former textile factory in downtown Toronto, scientists in white coats fuss over beakers of opaque liquids.
The concoctions are rigorously studied, documented and measured before being loaded into sleek, futuristic machines that shake, heat and ultimately test how the creations will hold up in cupboards and on faces.
The goal of the operation is to develop the latest beauty product for Deciem, the Canadian cosmetic darling behind the Ordinary, an affordable skin care brand known for putting science before sales tactics.
While the company has been around since 2013 and its crown jewel brand since 2016, both are now in uncharted territory. Their founders are no longer at the helm, the firms are now owned by global beauty behemoth Estée Lauder Cos. and tariff threats loom large.
Yet global brand president Jesper Rasmussen is at ease.
“It’s an exciting, inspiring time,” he said as he recently hosted The Canadian Press for a tour through a series of gleaming labs laden with stainless steel equipment, white walls and fluorescent lighting.
The Dane arrived at Deciem with about 20 years of cosmetics experience across brands as venerable as L’Oréal, Clinique and Origins and markets as revered as Paris and New York.
He became general manager and senior vice-president in 2022 before being elevated to the top job in late 2024, around the time his previous employer Estée Lauder bought the remaining stake in Deciem.
While Deciem had a cult following and celebrity fans included Kim Kardashian and Hailey Bieber, it was unlike anywhere Rasmussen had worked before. The company markets itself as the Abnormal Beauty Company and has never felt the need to follow typical cosmetics market conventions.
For example, rather than mix up a cocktail of ingredients under generic names like moisturizer or serum and sell them for high prices, the Ordinary has a simple look and formulations. Most of its products are named exactly what they are — hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and squalane — and are labelled as such. They are priced at less than $25.
Estée Lauder isn’t planning to mess with that formula.
“We never hear from Estée Lauder Companies or (CEO Stéphane de La Faverie), ‘you cannot do this.’ It’s very unusual,” Rasmussen said. “I’m not saying I’m twisting his arm, but he’s very open-minded to the ideas we’re doing and very supportive.”
It’s also not itching to erase a sordid chapter in Deciem history — the demise of Brandon Truaxe.
The Iranian immigrant founded Deciem, which takes its name from the Latin word for the number 10, in 2013 with Nicola Kilner, a buying manager at U.K. pharmacy Boots. They planned to develop 10 brands at once, but the real hit was their eleventh, the Ordinary.
Just as the company was taking off and attracting investments from Estée Lauder, Truaxe took over the its marketing, replacing its slick social media posts with first-person videos. At first, the clips mostly showed him applying products but as time went on, his demeanour became incoherent and he started lobbing vulgar language at commenters.
Eventually, he fired Kilner, dropped his CEO title and asked to instead be referred to as a worker. Staff were given no notice for the changes, which crescendoed with his October 2018 announcement that Deciem was shutting down.
A documentary Deciem made detailing his spiral — “The Abnormal Beauty Company” premieres on Crave on Jan. 19 — shows some employees attributed the volatility to Truaxe experimenting with drugs. Others suspected a mental health condition. He was involuntarily committed to hospitals in Canada, the U.S. and Europe as Deciem staff tried to get him help.
Meanwhile, Estée Lauder pushed a court to remove Truaxe from Deciem. About three months later, he died at age 40, when he fell from the balcony of his Toronto condo in January 2019.
Deciem staff learned about his death from media and while they were still reeling, Kilner, then seven months pregnant, was named Deciem’s CEO. Before stepping down at the end of 2024, she culled HIF, Hylamide, Abnomaly and the Chemistry Brand from the company’s portfolio and created body care brand Loopha.
By the time Rasmussen, who had never met Truaxe, joined, he could tell Deciem was healing.
Staff had decorated the office with towers of his books, made donations to mental health organizations, revived Truaxe’s fragrance brand Avestan and ultimately decided to keep his penchant for doing things differently.
“My thinking was how do I make this bigger?” Rasmussen said. “How can I share this with the world?”
Under his watch, Deciem brand NIOD released its first new products in three years and the Ordinary expanded to Brazil.
That was all happening as U.S. president Donald Trump returned to power and put in his crosshairs Canada, the country where Deciem is based and makes 95 per cent of its products.
The Deciem team didn’t know whether it would get more expensive to procure ingredients it needs to make the 400,000 products it pumps out each day or send them across borders to customers as frequent policy changes made it difficult to plan.
The company could have raised prices to soften the effects but nixed that notion because affordability has always been Deciem’s ethos.
It calculated how much it would cost to open another factory elsewhere but ruled that out, too.
“It just wasn’t feasible or wasn’t worth it,” Rasmussen said. “It was very expensive.”
So far, the do-nothing approach has worked. The company has been largely unscathed by Trump’s whipsawing whims and though some question Deciem’s patriotism because of its U.S. parent company, most realize it has deep roots in Canada.
Their good fortune has meant they can keep their focus on the lab and new brands Rasmussen said will launch later this year.
He won’t share anything about them but is confident they and Deciem will be able to survive anything that’s thrown at them.
After all, he said, “We are used to it, the ups and downs.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 13, 2026.
