Product Recall: St. Ives Apricot Scrub

March 3, 2023 Forever 35 Podcast

Doree scrubs up the dirt on St. Ives Apricot Scrub and Kate can still recall the exact texture of this scrub years later. They learn that this brand was not started in the Swiss Alps (as the packaging would have you believe), the power of a cheap product and good word-of-mouth works only until it doesn’t, and how no amount of walnut shells can scrub away an influencer's bad opinion.

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Transcript

Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.

Doree: And I'm Doree Shafrir

Kate: And we are not Experts.

Doree: No. We're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.

Kate: And what's today, Doree?

Doree: It's product Recall Day, T G I F, motherfucker,

Kate: T G I F. Today we are bringing you another episode of Product Recall, which is a weekly episode where we dig deeper into the history of an iconic product and its impact, and we are always open to suggestions for products to cover. If you want to reach us and let us know your thoughts, our voicemail and text number is 7 8 1 5 9 1 0 3 9 0, and our email is Forever35podcast@gmail.com.

Doree: And you can visit our website forever35podcast.com for links to everything we mentioned on the show. And for these episodes in particular, we are also listing all of our sources. We have links to videos like extra bonus content, so do check out the website, there's some fun stuff on there. You can also follow us on Instagram @Forever35podcast and join the Forever 35 Facebook group the password is serums. You can also sign up for our newsletter forever35podcast.com/newsletter and shop our favorite products at shop.My.us/Forever35.

Kate: Doree. What are we talking about today,

Doree: Kate? This has been, I would say, one of the most requested product recalls. And the funny thing is I think the majority of the requests came in right after I had decided to do it. So it was like the listeners and I were on the same wavelength, the same apricot scented wavelength,

Kate: Apricot scented. You say

Doree: <laugh>. Well, to be fair, I don't even know if it really smelled of apricots,

Kate: But does it feel like the crumpled up seeds of an apricot on face?

Doree: Well, it actually feels like the crumpled up seeds of a walnut, which we will get to <laugh>, but today we are talking about St. Ives apricot scrub.

Kate: This is a product that, wow, it had a hold on the youths of the nineties

Doree: And how, I mean, I was using this shit well into the two thousands I think.

Kate: Were you really?

Doree: I I was actually. I remember having this a lot. I feel like this was a part of my skincare regimen for a while.

Kate: For decades. Yeah. Well, I mean, this was an exfoliant that I think a lot of us just used as a face wash every day.

Doree: Yeah. I mean St ive's apricot scrub, for those of you who are not familiar, is a face scrub cleanser that St. Ive's started making in the early eighties. And I would say by the mid nineties, it was in the bathroom of pretty much every middle school and high school girl in America. I mean, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it was extremely popular. It was an exfoliant, so it was meant to slough off the dead skin cells from your face and leave you with a radiant glowing complexion.

Kate: Can I Ask a question?

Doree: Yes.

Kate: Who and what is St Ive's? What else do they make? Why was this brand a brand that we were drawn to? Who, were they really in the mountains of Switzerland or are they just in a warehouse in Delaware?

Doree: Okay, Kate, I'm glad you asked because actually the origins of this company are right here in the greater Los Angeles area.

Kate: So already they've were scamming us.

Doree: So with so many of these products that we have recalled their origins, go back to a man. I regret to inform you

Kate: Always,

Doree: This is no exception. There is a man named Gary H Worth. Now Gary is still alive.

Kate: Really?

Doree: Yes.

Kate: Well, I wasn't expecting that.

Doree: And in 1971, he's 27 years old, he's working for his father's insurance company in Burbank, California. And he comes across a fragrance development firm. There are very few details about this. My assumption is that this is a company that literally develops fragrances and probably private labels them, makes fragrances for a variety of different companies. And Gary buys this company for what is reported to be a few thousand dollars, and he names it Fragrance development. And then he later changes the name to Cosmetic Laboratories and establishes the headquarters in Chatsworth, California. Which for those of you who aren't like maybe not familiar with the history of the porn industry

Kate: Oh yes. In Chatsworth

Doree: Was the headquarters of porn in <laugh>, the heyday of at Home VCR and DVD porn.

Kate: Chatsworth is also deep in the San Fernando Valley, and it's really hot there.

Doree: It's really hot there. So this is where this company, cosmetic Laboratories is established in 1976. He also has this partner named Robert VanDyne, and he starts a company called Mill Creek Natural Products. And then in 1980, he and Robert, who I guess was also known as Bob, form another company

Kate: Called, not Surprisingly,

Doree: not surprising,

Kate: known as the common nickname for Robert - Bob.

Doree: They form another company called Saint Ives.

Kate: Wow, okay. Which I'm rocked already. I really thought this was literally on a Swiss Mountain top.

Doree: So according to an article I read from the late eighties, they did have a small lab in Switzerland, but I've found no reference to this lab anywhere else. I don't think it exists any longer. I think it's fair to say that the connection to Switzerland was tenuous at best. Also, as an aside, Bob VanDyne later buys a single engine plane and names it Spirit of St. Ives and flies it from New York to Paris.

Kate: And does he live like there wasn't anything

Doree: Oh, yeah. He Only died a couple years ago.

Kate: Okay, so he just was like enjoying life made off the backs of our skin

Doree: He was enjoying life. Yes, exactly. So the company they merged St i's with Cosmetic Laboratories, and in 1987, and then the company goes public. So presumably the two of them make a good bit of money at that point. And by 1987, they had launched the St. Ibes Apricot scrub. I was unable to find anything about the origin story of this particular product. And believe me, I tried. But what I can tell you is that Gary and Bob very quickly found a niche in extremely inexpensive drugstore products that nonetheless had the sheen of being natural and botanical and Swiss. And this is something that they would lean into for years and years. And their products were always cheap among the cheapest products at the drugstore. And that was distinctly part of their strategy. They did not do a ton of marketing or advertising. They believed that a lot of people came to the drugstore and then made their decision of what to buy at the drugstore.

And they weren't like a huge, Yeah, they didn't run a ton of ads or anything. What's kind of interesting though is so they're launching a bunch of products at this time but they launched, and most of 'em are pretty successful, but in 1985, they try to go a little upscale. 1985, they launched a new premium shampoo called Pure, and it totally bombs. Oh, okay. Okay. And it loses 3 million and they drop it a year later. And then a few years later they make ano in 1989, they make another goof with shampoo. Actually, they had, I don't know if you remember this, but you used to be able to buy St ive's shampoo and conditioner together as a package. You would buy them together and they came packaged together in kind of wrapped in clear wrapping. Sure. Does this ring a bell at all?

Kate: Oh my God. Oh my God. I just Googled the photos. Oh,

Doree: Right, okay. Yes. And you know exactly what I'm talking about. Now, doesn't that ring a bell?

Kate: These photos are sending me, right. Okay. They have. Yeah, I've just been transported back in time. Yes. I had this and it says on the package of the bottle Swiss formula.

Doree: Yes. No, Swiss Yes, exactly. Swiss formula was something that they put on. Everything was a Swiss formula. So I just bring this up because in 1989, they decided to change the packaging so you couldn't see the product and the sales take a nose dive, and after a few months they have to change it back. But their, they're sales, their overall sales plunge. And I just bring this up, these two examples because I just want to emphasize that this was a pretty small company and one or two products could make or break the company. So they kind of had to be really careful. Anyway, okay. So that's a little bit of corporate background. And I'll just bring up one other thing, which is that at the same time, they're still running cosmetic laboratories. So they're like, they're also making products for companies that would theoretically be competitors. They make Nexus products.

Kate: Oh my God.

Doree: Okay. And Nexus then invests in St. Ives as well. So I dunno, it's just an interesting sort of, I think glimpse into the beauty product industry, I think. Okay. But I think very quickly, the Apricot scrub becomes their, it seems like it becomes their biggest seller. They don't break out the sales figures, but it is the thing that is kind of always mentioned when they talk about this company. Now, they were not the only apricot scrub on the market.

Kate: Really?

Doree: Yes.

Kate: Who else was out there making something like this? Why the obsession with Apricot?

Doree: That I do not know. So in 1981, Gillette introduces an apricot facial scrub called Apri, which is basically the first four layers of Apricot. But they add an A on the beginning. So it's Apri <laugh>.

Kate: Oh no.

Doree: Okay. And for a while, APRI is the biggest apricot facial scrub on the market. If you talk to women who are a few years older than us, they remember Apri, but I had never heard of Apri never. And that is never because by the early 1990s, they had completely seeded to St. Hives. They had discontinued the Ari facial scrub as well as some other toiletries that they had launched, and they decided to just focus on razors and blades. So they were like, all right, we give up.

Kate: You win the apricot Market

Doree: you win. So I found a newspaper ad from November, 1983, and they were already leaning into the whole natural botanicals, blah, blah, blah. This was the description. They had four tubs of product in the ad, cucumber, refreshing toner, collagen, elastin, essential moisturizer, creme cleanser with pure lemon and apricot scrub with elderflower. And the description said there has never been skincare quite so luxurious, so effective St. Ive's new spa treatments combine fine herbs and botanicals with essential moisturizers or other rare ingredients for a whole new way of beauty in the Swiss spa tradition.

Kate: <laugh>. Meanwhile, they're like here in the valley.

Doree: Exactly. And they're selling this very large tub of cleanser for 4 dollars. And actually, I found an ad later that it was even cheaper, I found in 1991 C V S ad that was advertising the shampoo conditioner combo for $2 and 66 cents. So they were definitely very aggressive on price. But it does seem to me, and notice that the description doesn't bring up price. You see the prices on the ad, but you don't see, they're not in the description. It's not buy our cheap products. It's be transported to blah, blah, blah. The Alps be transported to the Alps. Alright, we are going to take a short break, and when we come back, I'm going to play you a couple of their few commercials that they ran, and you'll see these themes come up again.

All right, Kate, first of all, I want to play you this commercial, which is for their hair care. The ad itself is undated, but it looks very nineties. And I want to hear what you think of it too.

Commercial: Bleached burned. Heat damaged colored hair. The entire Swiss formula, intensive conditioning, hair repair, helps restore, replenish, refresh and enrich problem hair past, transforming your hair to its full natural beauty. The entire Swiss formula, intensive conditioning, hair repair. Feel it working.

Doree: Okay, Kate. What is the first thing you notice about this commercial?

Kate: Okay, the first thing I noticed is the accent of the voiceover. It is clearly a person of Swiss Germanic descent. So it's like feel working.

Doree: Yes, exactly. And I was reminded of those commercials that you showed for Kate.

Kate: Oh, interesting. What do you mean?

Doree: Wasn't there one with a French accent?

Kate: No, there was you're thinking of an Noxema Noxema shaving cream. There was a Swedish model.And she does the voiceover.

Doree: Yes. Thank you. That is what I'm thinking of.

Kate: Well, Doree, the other thing that fascinates me about this is that their tag, this is now a recurring theme that we are seeing as we do these product recalls. This idea that you can feel it working. That's the tagline of this ad. They end on feel it working. Across the screen. But you could somehow feel this. You can't. Your hair is, and your hair feel, yeah. <laugh>, what

Doree: I would encourage I everyone to go to our website to watch this ad, because it's a woman with very long blonde hair that in the beginning of the ad is looks really dry and messy. And then she puts the St ive's hair repair on her hair, and it's suddenly silky and luxurious,

Kate: And a white blonde woman

Doree: A white blonde woman. So they're really leaning into this whole idea of them being Swiss from their Chatsworth headquarters. But obviously this was something that sold. Right? People wanted to believe in this myth of the charming Swiss village where elves are producing jars of apricot scrub and hair repair lotion. You know what I mean?

Kate: Yeah. Well, I think there's also this idea of fresh mountain water and fields of wild flowers and all these kinds of elements that they play up. Even their logo is like a mountaintop.

Doree: Yes, yes, yes. Their logo is a mountaintop. And just to be clear, the two ingredients of the apricot scrub, first ingredient is water, and the second ingredient is walnut shell powder. And then there's various glycerin, alcohol, then there's corn kernel meal other chemical things. And then fragrance is one of the ingredients. And then the second to last ingredient is apricot fruit extract. So we don't know the exact proportions, but suffice to say, being the second to last ingredient in a face scrub is usually a good sign that there's very little, this ingredient <laugh> in the actual product.

Kate: And I think also, I really thought that these were ground apricot seats. That's what I think we all thought was the exfoliating granular element in this product. But what I'm hearing is that it was walnut shells.

Doree: It was walnut shells. But by the early nineties, this product has taken off in, there was one quarter, 1994 where their sales were up almost 16%. People are flocking to their products. Now, I want to play you another commercial that also really leans into the Swiss aspect.

Commercial: Once in a Swiss kingdom, there was a maiden who suffered from such a dull complexion. She thought herself an ugly duckling. One day she came upon St Ives apricot scrubs, the one with 100% natural exfoliants, magical little scrubbers, the deep clean to slough off dull dead skin. She gazed upon a reflection, touched her soft, smooth face, and realized she was radiant. The radiance is yours. The secret is Swiss St. ives.

Kate: Wow. How they got a Bjork lookalike to star in one of the weirdest commercials I've ever seen.

Doree: I mean, look, as discussed, they did not spend a lot of money on marketing and advertising. And I think we see that here, <laugh>.

Kate: Holy shit, you'll need to go wash this commercial. It is. It's truly just odd. And they throw in, they never say that it's apricot seeds, number one, no.

Doree: Yeah.

Kate: Natural exfoliants. And then they refer to them as scrubby little things,

Doree: Scrubby Little things.

Kate: Like that's not a thing. That's

Doree: Not, no. What is that? No, that's not a

Kate: Thing. So no one's actually really being upfront about, in terms of the marketing, about what's in the product. Correct. If you turn it over and look at it. Yes. I also want to say this marks the transformation from big Tub when we were

Doree: Teens,

Kate: Aly a tub with a screw top that you would dip your wet hand in, and then water from the shower would get into the tub to squeezy bottle, which is a little bit more like a tube. Makes a little more sense.

Doree: Yeah, for sure.

Now, I also want to mention that they are doing some advertising, and it is mostly in some women's magazines and some teen magazines. So there's a 2002 ad in L Girl, r i p for the Apricot scrub. And then they're New Apricot Cleanser, which is a foaming cleanser. And the The headline on the ad is the perfect Complement, complement with an E. And it says, longtime friend pairs up with Radiant New Companion, new St. Ives. Foaming Apricot Cleanser is the perfect daily compliment to St. Ives Apricot scrub, it's soap free formula won't clog pores or strip skin of its natural moisture. It's a gentle enough, it's gentle enough to use every day for noticeably soft, radiant, healthy looking skin. So what I think was happening here is that people weren't using people. Most people I think were not using the apricot scrub every day.

Kate: I mean, speak for yourself.

Doree: And they decided, well, let's develop a cleanser that maybe people will use every day. The other thing that I also just want to point out is, from what I can tell these other products that were mentioned in the ads from the early eighties, the newspaper ads, we don't see any sign of them by the nineties. So

Kate: Fascinating. Okay.

Doree: So it does seem like they're kind of constantly, what I think is happening is they're constantly trying to recreate the runaway success of the apricot scrub, and they're never quite able to do it. And in sort of bus, some businessy stuff. In 1995, the company is bought by another company called Alberto Culver Company, which is best known for, do you remember Alberto VO5? The shampoo? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that was company. It's also sidebar, really interesting to look at this sort of era of drugstore brands, because it was before the big consolidation. It was before all of these brands were bought by Proctor and Gamble and Unilever.

Kate: Right.

Doree: So you Have all these little companies making one or two iconic products, and then not much else.

Kate: And then they eventually all get bought up by these

Doree: Larger, and they eventually all get Hoovered up by the larger brands. So in 1995, the company's bought BYO Culver Company for $120 million. I did some back of the envelope math, and I think that Gary h Worth and his family made close to 40 million on the sale.

Kate: Not bad,

Doree: Because they owned one third of all shares outstanding. And that's what Alberto Culver bought for $15 a share. So I think that's around what they made. So he cashed out. He also, I saw him quoted maybe twice in newspapers. He was always unavailable for comment, which I, I was like, huh, that's also just sort of interesting.

Kate: Oh, weird. He's just kind of, okay.

Doree: Yeah, he's in the background.

Kate: Just flies under the radar

Doree: A bit. He flies under the radar. Exactly. Huh.

Kate: Interesting.

Doree: Yeah. So they're bought in 1995, and then through the nineties, and then I think into the early two thousands, they're still kind of doing well with the Apricot scrub. But in 2006, they launch a global rebrand, which I thought was interesting because that said to me that things had kind of plateaued a bit.

Kate: Yeah. I'm intrigued. It feels a little bit, if it's not broke, why fix it? But maybe they needed things weren't doing well.

Doree: So they introduced a new line called Mineral Therapy, which included a body wash and a moisturizer. Yeah. So this article says the makeover comes as the brand sales have decelerated in the mass market. St. Ives's sales dropped 12% to 87.2 million across food, drug, and mass stores, excluding Walmart for the 52 week period. Ended August 13th, 1996. Sorry, 2006. So to, again, they're trying to do new things. Does this mineral therapy line still exist? No. So again, I just thought this was interesting. They keep trying all these things that

Kate: They don't stick.

Doree: They don't really stick.

Kate: It's, it's just stick to what you're good at.

Doree: Just stick to what

Kate: You're, but I guess you have to expand in the world of a capitalist market like you.

Doree: Yes.

Kate: You can't just sell one, I mean, or I don't know. The business has to grow, presumably that was the goal.

Doree: Totally. And they get new packaging, and they're buying advertorials in various magazines, and

Kate: My God, that word is such a Trigger word for me. <laugh>. Advertorial. Advertorial. Oh goodness. Anybody who worked in digital media in the Oh yeah. In the oughts to write some advertorials.

Doree: And then even into the S and early teens. It's still mentioned a lot in women's magazines. In 2012, Janice Min recommends it in her book, which has the, I'm sorry, cringing Post aughts title, how to Look Hot in a Minivan, A Real Woman's Guide to Losing Weight, looking Great and Dressing Chic in the Age of the Celebrity Mom.

Kate: Oh my God. Janice, what

Doree: Big, yikes.

Kate: Oh God.

Doree: So in the December, 2016 issue of Allure, there's this big interview with Gigi Hadid, and she says that she uses it and that it's been around because it's the best. And so, you know, have all these people kind of just bringing it up all the time. And I think that that was how it kind of stayed relevant. It wins all of these allure Readers Choice awards for best facial scrub from a drugstore. It's clearly still, people clearly still feel very kind of warm towards this product.

Kate: All right. So wait, we need to take a break,

Doree: We do. Okay. Because then things start to change.

Kate: Oh boy. The tables are going to turn in the oughts.

Doree: The tables Are turning. All right, we'll be right back. Okay, we're back.

Kate: Okay, we're back. Gigi Hadid's scrubbing her face with walnuts,

Doree: Gigi Hadid is scrubbing her face. So the same month, that interview runs in Allure, which was probably reported six months earlier at least. There is a lawsuit, a class action lawsuit is filed by two women who allege that the apricot scrub is damaging to their skin because of the crushed walnut shells. Now,

Kate: The crushed walnut shells have been in there since the beginning.

Doree: They've been in there since the beginning. They quote a few articles. There was a New York magazine article where a dermatologist is quoted as saying that the scrub causes micro tears and the blog post from an aesthetician who says that the tiny tears in the skin caused by walnut shell powder allow bacteria to enter. And the lawsuit gets a ton of publicity. People who had not sought about St ive's Apricot scrub for years are writing about this because it was this kind of iconic product. And now there's this sort of bizarre lawsuit. One of the big points that the two women who bring this lawsuit are making is that they say it's completely worthless. It's unfit to be sold or used. And they allege that the company knows this about their own product and that it's false advertising. So they seek an injunction preventing the company for continuing this alleged false advertising. They also say that the company advertises it as non-comedogenic, but it does clog pores. Okay. They say they never would've bought it if they'd known that it causes skin damage and they want it to become a class action lawsuit. And by this point, St. Ives is owned by Unilever, so they're owned by one of the biggest personal care brands in the world at this point. And again, a ton. This gets a ton of press. The lawsuit gets kind of quietly dismissed in January, 2019. The judge basically, no, you don't get to have a class action.

Kate: Oh, wow. Okay.

Doree: You might says defendant may seek to recover its costs. They might, I don't know if they ended up having to pay or what happened, but yeah, they're like, no. They say yeah, they just say that they find in favor of the defendant.

Kate: So good for St. ives,

Doree: Good for St knives. No one really notes this <laugh>.

Kate: Wait. So the damage is done on the record.

Doree: the damage, the damage is done. And also the way it is presented in the media at the time is there's a big class action lawsuit against Scene Ives. But that actually was not true. It had not been granted class action status, and anyone can file for class action status just filing one of these lawsuits to get class action status. Does that mean you are going to get class action status? But this lawsuit is nothing compared to the bomb that is about to drop in the spring. Well, there's something else in the spring of 2020.

Kate: What?

Doree: Yep. Have you heard of Hyram?

Kate: I Don't think so.

Doree: He's a Gen Z skincare influencer. He goes by skincare by Hyram, and he's on YouTube and TikTok mostly.

Kate: Okay. I've just found him. Okay.

Doree: And he's extremely popular. He's like the Gen Z skincare guru, and he, does he have

Kate: A degree? Is he a dermatologist? No. Or is he's just a,

Doree: No, I think now he's 26 or 27 at the time. He made the videos that I'm about to talk about. I think he was 24. And he has a very strong opinions. And one of the opinions that he has is that scrubs are really bad for your skin. And in particular, St. Ives apricot scrub is really bad for your skin. So you can see where this is going now. I'm going to play a video

Hyram TikTok: You know how in all my videos, I try to find the good in a product and highlight it in addition to the bad. There's no good to talk about for this product. Nada. Absolutely. Zero, zip, zilch. This product is a perfect embodiment and representation of everything that I dislike about skincare. And you may be watching thinking, oh, but hi, room. This product transform my skin. How could you ever think it's bad? I will explain. First, I don't deny the transformative effects that you've seen in your skin or other people have seen in their skin with their product. Those experiences are valid. But I want to voice my concerns and why I don't think this product is beneficial to your skin in any way, shape, or form. So obviously this is a scrub. And the primary ingredient that they use for it, that scrub ability is walnut shell powder.

Now, walnut shell powder is typically used in scrubs because it's able to be ground pretty fine, but it doesn't break down with water like sugar does or a powder exfoliant, which means you can really get some intense scrubbing going on. First off, why do people use this scrub? Well, the scrub is most popular for people who do have a lot of dead skin cells on their breakouts, acne, because when you use it, it's able to remove those dead skin cells from your face. But it also just makes your skin feel really smooth and give it almost like the illusion that it's clearing up. It's a form of exfoliation that I call physical exfoliation. Let me explain why I don't like scrubs, because when I first got into skincare, I loved scrubs. Scrubs feel great because they give a dramatic instant gratification effect to our skin.

Right after you use a scrub and you drag your fingers across your face, you're like, oh, it's so smooth. It feels really nice. But here's the thing, when it comes to skincare, skincare products that give you a dramatic, instantaneous effect that makes your skin feel or look different really quickly, typically those products are not good for your skin or should be used very rarely. A good skinker routine is one that is gentle and helps the skin take care of itself every single day. And products like scrubs that give this instantaneous gratifying effect do not fall in line with that. Now, the reason why I hate hate walnut shell powder is that, like I said before, it doesn't break down with water. And here's the issue. When you use a physical exfoliant or a scrub, yes, you are removing the dead skin cells from your face, but you're not able to tell when you have properly removed the dead skin cells.

And when you are going too deep into your skin and affecting those healthy live skin cells on your face, and the way that walnut shell powder is ground up, they are not even in size. They are typically tiny shards. And when you're dragging shards across the surface of your skin, because they are not even in size, and pointy in certain areas, those dragging motions can almost pale the skin and can cause inflammation, redness, and sensitivity, and contribute to long-term damage. Because here's the thing, when your skin is inflamed, when it's sensitive, when it's really struggling, it's inevitably affecting the health of the skin. And if the skin is not able to be healthy over long term, that shows an increase in aging, more sensitivities, more redness, and just a bunch of other problems that you don't want to deal with.

Kate: Okay. So I want to just tell you my immediate reaction to this video.

Doree: Okay. Hit me.

Kate: I think Hyram is convincing and making some really good points. And I watched this and I was immediately like, wow. Yeah, Hyram's right. The walnut powder doesn't break down. Sugar Hyram says, and I should stop using this product. That was my it. They're making a very convincing argument. I did chuckle when Hyram was like, this is what I call a physical. I'm going to bring that

Doree: Up. Hi. You did not make that up.

Kate: Yeah, everyone we've been saying this for 500 years

Doree: <laugh>, like

Kate: Before you were born. I knew that term. But other than that, Hyram is, it's not like a flip video.

Doree: No, no, no, no, no. He really comes from a place of authority. Yeah. Yeah. So this video and a similar TikTok I mean, what the, let's play this one also.

TikTok: Here are three reasons why I don't like St. Ives at all, and why face scrubs in general are just trash. One, scrubs are too harsh for the face and can cause inflammation, sensitivity, and redness, and you can risk over exfoliating your skin. Two St. Ives also formulates with a lot of fragrance, which can be sensitizing and irritating to the face. And three, the good ingredients that they formulated with are formulated so low on the ingredient list that they basically don't do anything for your skin.

Kate: Okay. So Hyram Hyram makes the same point in a more succinct manner.

Doree: Yes, totally. And these videos are hugely popular. So the TikTok that we just played has about four and a half million views, The truth about St. Ives has, which is an 18 minute long video, by the way, has 1.4 million views an 11,000 comments. And the comments are, the first comment is, "who else has completely reinvented their skincare routine since watching Hyram?" And just people, then people talking about the Apricot scrub, how they used to use it. They're not using it anymore. An article comes out in the New York Times in September of 2020, so a few months after these videos first run. And the headline is the content creator who can make or break a skincare brand. And they talk to a 16 year old girl who says she used the scrub in middle school, but since she discovered Hyram, she stopped.

And she says, the moment Hyram came out and was so adamant about how terrible they are, he just annihilated this brand. And then there start to be all these ancillary videos on TikTok. It kind of becomes a meme how much Hyram hates Scrubs and St. Ives in particular. So people start posting TikToks where they show shelves at drugstores and Target, and the St. Ives Shelf is completely full. Oh my goodness. And the Cerave, he loves Cerave. So the Cerave Shelf is empty, and the St. Ives shelves is completely full. There's like a ton of those TikToks. There's like, there's another meme where people put all the pro products that Hi 'em hates onto a surface, and they mix them together. And St. ives is always one of those there's tons of people going through their old skincare routines, most of which involve St. ives and people talking about how they don't use them anymore.

So it just becomes, it kind of takes on a life of its own and Hyram makes video, multiple videos about this. He makes another video in June where the video is about him telling his friend he'll love them no matter what. And then the friend, this is all in captions over music, which is why I'm not playing it, because you can't really hear anything. But then the friend says that they love the St. Ives Apricot scrub, and then he puts on an N 95 face mask and kind of slunks away. And that video, that video has more than 4 million views.

Kate: Oh my goodness. No wonder brands are beholden to influencers at this point.

Doree: And at the same time, St. I've seems caught completely flatfooted. They have a tiny TikTok presence. They have fewer than 1200 followers. they haven't posted.

Kate: Why do I feel Bad for a brand? , I didn't feel bad for a brand. It's not a human,

Doree: They haven't posted a new video since December, 2021. And the videos that they had posted were these sort of sad pseudo influencer videos, but they just weren't good. They got very little engagement. They have about 200,000 followers on Instagram, but almost no engagement. They start doing these things that I'm just like, who is advising you? They launch a social media contest in October, 2021, where they're giving away $50,000 in money for tuition and books to a college student. But when I searched the hashtag, which was St. Ives Scholarship, I only saw 39 posts. And one of them is the post from the brand announcing the winner. So it's possible that everyone who entered deleted their posts, but it's also possible that only 30 people entered this big expensive contest that they paid this influencer to promote. And <laugh> did a big press release about and all this stuff. And I'm just like, oh, oh, oh.

Yeah. So my analysis of this is that for years, mostly relying on word of mouth and discounts and the enduring appeal of the Apricot scrub, which they didn't have to do a ton of marketing for, because it was constantly getting mentioned. They're a gajillion mentions in women's magazines in the nineties and two thousands where people are, and I also fancy people, it's basically my guilty pleasure, or my skincare secret is the St ive's Apricot scrub and you know, can get for $4 and all this stuff. So they're getting so much free publicity for decades. And then all, from my perspective, my read of the situation, it has kind of all come crashing down. And they either don't have the people in place to adequately respond, or they've tried to respond and it's just falling flat. But I think the double whammy of the lawsuit and the Hyram posts has just been, it's been bad.

Kate: And so they haven't bounced back from this. There's been no kind of,

Doree: So in the New York Times article, they emailed a statement to the Times, which is always a little suss, but they say they didn't want to give an interview. And they say, our St Ive's Scrubs are beloved by millions. While we appreciate Hyrams opinion, we respectfully disagree. We take pride in ensuring that our walnut shell powder exfoliant used in many of our scrubs is finally milled and polished so that each particle has a smooth surface to promote safe and effective exfoliation. Yeah. I mean, you look on TikTok now, and most of the TikToks from Gen Z, every video From Gen Z people is about how scrubs are bad. St ives is bad. Very few. I'm not going to gate keep this for you anymore. You know what I mean? <laugh>, there's no one letting you in on the Secret that is St. Ives anymore because the brand has been tarnished. I think they need someone to come in and completely reinvent this brand, in my opinion.

Kate: I would love to know what their sales, if their sales have actually changed. I would love to know if the financial impact of an influencer saying something like this and kind of changing people's minds if it actually does make a dent in sales. I know there's evidence that does happen all the time but I'd be really curious just to see what they're known.

Doree: It's really hard, especially now that they're owned by Unilever.

Kate: Yeah. It's so hard to find the Stuff,

Doree: because even before all this happened, they wouldn't break out sales figures in that individual brand. I think they just don't break out the individual brands within the company. So yeah, it's really hard to tell it. I mean, it is hard for me to believe that it has not had an impact. But again, I don't know that it's just my analysis of the situation. But if I were St. Ives, I would be shitting a brick right now. And I think I would try to be doing a lot more to stop this.

Kate: Yeah. I mean, they should be working with Hyram. Well, I think this Hyram has their own skincare line.

Doree: I don't Think they can work with Hyram at this point. I think that horse is left the barn.

Kate: Right, right. I love a horse.

Doree: you Love a horse metaphor.

Kate: Metaphor. Yeah.

Doree: I don't want to put the cart before the horse. Oh my God. I'm trying to think of other horse metaphors. So anyway, so Kate, that is the story of St. Ives.

Kate: Now, did you purchase this and try it, or did you skip that? You did not.

Doree: Full Disclosure, I skipped that. I know you've been really good about buying all of the but

Kate: I just love to buy, buy shit.

Doree: I was just like, I'm going to, I'm buy this and use it once and then.

Kate: Right. It's wasteful.

Doree: It's wasteful. I'm not going to do that. Although, as I recall, I do remember little travel size sizes of the scrub. I guess you, and you know what else I used? I also used to buy their body wash, which

Kate: Sounds nice.

Doree: Yeah. I used to buy, yeah, this soothing body wash oatmeal and shea butter. I used to buy that.

Kate: that Sounds familiar actually. I think I did too.

Doree: They've changed the packaging but

Kate: That sounds familiar

Doree: yeah, they've changed the packaging. But I used to buy this all the time. It was ch and partly because it was cheap.

Kate: Of course, cheap is good.

Doree: Cheap is good.

Kate: I guess I'm just wondering how this stuff doesn't really sound that bad. I think they're like, okay, yes, fragrance can irritate some skin, but not all. And it is a physical exfoliant. Physical exfoliants have been around forever, whether it's like a cough, people use coffee ground as an exfoliant.

Doree: Totally.

Kate: This doesn't seem like it's actually really that bad for you. Now, maybe you don't want to be rubbing it into your skin for five minutes, but I Almost feel like the criticism is a little bit overblown.

Doree: Well, I think when you look at someone like Hyram, who, like you said, I think he is great, and I think he's compelling and does seem to speak from a place of knowledge wherever that knowledge was gleaned. But he's also a content creator who needs to make things that go viral. And clearly talking about scrubs and talking about St. Ives in particular has gone very viral for him. And all of his followers are very familiar with the products that he hates and the products that he loves, and they love talking about the products that he hates. And clearly that makes money for him, that gets him more followers. So yeah, I think that that has to be a part of it.

Kate: I think it's also when we were working in digital media, clickbait was the word, right? You write something with an extremely salacious and attention grabbing headline. Yes. And then the story that actually follows is barely what has been set up in the headline. And I think that same thing obviously exists in this kind of video social media,

Doree: totally,

Kate: where The intro line to your TikTok is this product's fucking trash of the earth, burn it all. And then it's like, well, actually, there's just some walnut seeds and they don't really break down. And I think this is not a criticism of this particular content creator that's, I'm a non creator, and I would still make a video that way. It's just how we now all have been almost trained to make content for the internet, whether we do it professionally or not. So I think there's a lot of hyperbole when it comes to talking about products. But on the flip side, they've been marketed to us with lies. So it's not like the brand is doing noble work.

Doree: Right.

Kate: I'm spiraling. That being said, I almost, I kind of want to buy this <laugh>, like I kind of want it

Doree: <laugh>. I'm going to order a box of it shipped to your house.

Kate: Why? I don't know. But I kind of want some st ives, apricot scrub. I can remember the smell. I like the exfoliant. I don't know.

Doree: I mean, I can remember the texture.

Kate: Totally. Yeah. Oh, so grainy, so delicious.

Doree: So grainy.

Kate: Yep. Well, we've been talking for almost an hour.

Doree: Well, there was a lot to say. Oh, well, Kate, this was delightful. Thank you for indulging me.

Kate: You were so excited when you were like, I know the product I want to do for my next product recall.

Doree: I know my g scrub. And then I feel like we literally got five messages about it the next day or something. It was very weird.

Kate: People are onto it. They want to know. They want to know. Well, thank you for this journey. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Doree: You're so welcome. All right. Bye everyone.