Credo, Thirteen Lune and Revolve have dropped makeup brand Youthforia as fallout mounts from influencer Golloria George comparing the darkest shade of its Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation to “minstrel show black” and calling for it to be pulled from shelves in a TikTok video posted last week that’s garnered over 30.7 million views and 2.5 million likes.
Ulta Beauty, where Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation entered 525 doors when Youthforia added 10 shades in March to bring the product’s range to 25 shades, and Credo were the only retailers to carry the expanded shade range at its launch, but the clean beauty chain removed the brand from its website and stores subsequent to George’s censure of the foundation’s shade 600 for being “tar in a bottle” and “literally jet black.” Revolve and Thirteen Lune have removed the brand from their online assortments.
A member of Reddit’s Subreddit forum r/BeautyGuruChatter noticed first that Credo expunged Youthforia from its e-commerce lineup. On Saturday, a store associate at Credo’s location on Larchmont Boulevard in Los Angeles said the retailer doesn’t sell the brand. There was an empty makeup display in the store, indicating a brand, possibly Youthforia, had recently been eliminated.
Although there’s speculation on Reddit about Ulta kicking out Youthforia—one user mentioned a friend reporting that an Ulta store on the East Coast took down the brand’s setup—the retailer hasn’t confirmed it’s cutting ties with the brand, and Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation, including shade 600, was available on its site as of Sunday. Beauty Independent reached out to Ulta, Credo, Revolve, Thirteen Lune and Youthforia to learn more, but hasn’t received responses.
Youthforia remains at retailers and e-tailers that don’t stock Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation, among them Amazon, Soko Glam and J.C. Penney. Critics of Youthforia on social media are demanding the rest of the brand’s retail and e-tail partners drop it.
The backlash to shade 600 is evident on Ulta’s site in reviews of Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation. A sarcastic reviewer jested, “Had a minstrel show the other day and wow! This really stayed on better than the tar I was previously using. It was so good, I decided to keep it on for a rally I had later that day! It was a huge hit and I got so many compliments. I recommend this to all my fellow performers.”
Retailers have been hesitant to exit brands embroiled in controversies, particularly big brands responsible for considerable sales, but exits aren’t unheard of if they deem the reputational and business damage from keeping embattled brands too great to bear. As chronicled by the now-defunct publication Racked, Sephora pulled the plug on Lime Crime after founder Doe Deere dressed up as Hitler for Halloween. In 2020, Deere departed the brand, and it’s currently owned by investment firm Tengram Capital Partners and carried by J.C. Penney, Ulta, Target and Sally Beauty.
Beauty brand founders, product developers and cosmetic chemists have been vocal in condemning Youthforia. On LinkedIn, makeup artist, brand consultant and product developer Kevin James Bennett wrote, “If you don’t want to serve dark skin tones, don’t (lots of brands practice this f*ckery). But don’t dare do the bare minimum – POORLY – and expect people to thank you for crumbs. This bottle of pure black pigment posing as a foundation shade needs to be recalled – immediately.”
Founders of the brands Marie Ernst, Melyon, Prados Beauty, People of Color, Tiny Derm and Mora Cosmetics agreed with Bennett. Minara El-Rahman, founder and CEO of Mora Cosmetics, replied on LinkedIn, “As a brand founder, I can’t imagine creating a shade that absolutely no one will buy or use. Isn’t that such a waste of time, money and resources just to launch?”
“It’s one thing to make a mistake once, but once you make it twice, it’s just a slap in the face.”
In order for Youthforia to potentially survive, cosmetic chemist Jane Tsui, creator of content under the handle janethechemist, advises the brand to identify consumer needs prior to making a product and conduct wide panel testing in advance of manufacturing it, a process she acknowledged can be costly for a small startup.
“What Youthforia did was the complete opposite. They made a product and then tried to find someone that would match it. That doesn’t work,” she says in a TikTok video. “Nobody asked for a foundation shade that dark, and it doesn’t have any undertones.” Tsui adds, “I highly recommend Youthforia to hire a seasoned product developer to go in and revamp the product development process.”
While not diminishing the role Youthforia played in developing shade 600, brand founders point out that brands are under pressure from retailers and investors. Youthforia’s BYO Tinted Blush Oil has a full-chain presence at Ulta in roughly 1,400 stores. In 2023, the brand secured funding from the investment firms True Beauty Ventures and Willow Growth Partners. Mark Cuban, a “shark” on the ABC program “Shark Tank,” has invested in Youthforia as well. The brand was on “Shark Tank” last year.
Sal Ali, co-founder and CEO of Farsáli, a skincare brand previously in over 2,500 retail doors, says in a TikTok video, “Who are Youthforia’s customers? When we were in retail, I always viewed the retailer as our core customer. The retailer makes the orders and puts money in our banks, so our job was to make the retailer happy, and they have very specific needs…In Youthforia’s case, they also have another set of customers, which are their investors that give them money, and they have a different set of needs.”
Discussing Youthforia’s Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation shade expansion, founder Fiona Co Chan told Beauty Independent in March that the brand slashed the timeline for the expansion’s rollout from 24 months to four months following George posting a TikTok video in September last year slamming the darkest shade of Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation before the shade expansion for not matching her skin tone and appearing differently on Youthforia’s model than on her face. “I feel like I’ve been lied to so bad…It’s not tone inclusive,” George says in the video.
With the shade expansion, Co Chan sounded confident that Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation’s selection would quiet detractors. “I’m always looking to see where there are gaps,” she said in March. “If I see a gap, I’m definitely going to go back into the lab and expand, but, in terms of the deepest of deep, I think we do have several options.”
To build awareness for Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation’s shade expansion, the brand ramped up its recruitment of influencers to generate posts about it, and Co Chan informed Beauty Independent it had achieved “equal distribution in terms of shade representation across the influencers that we work with on a paid basis, especially for this launch.” Tina Shim, VP of marketing at Youthforia, disclosed on LinkedIn three weeks ago that the brand had enlisted 700-plus ambassadors in its ambassador program.
Similar to retailers, influencers have been fleeing the brand in the wake of George’s evisceration of shade 600. In a TikTok video showing an email asking that she be taken off Youthforia’s public relations list, influencer Anayka She says, “There is not one person on this earth that is black, that is just the color black, and you don’t even understand that the other racial equivalent is if somebody put out a white foundation, no undertones, no nothing, just straight white.”
Influencer and model Awuoi Matiop, who declined four months ago to be an ambassador for Youthforia, says in a TikTok video, “It’s one thing to make a mistake once, but once you make it twice, it’s just a slap in the face.”
This article was updated on Friday, May 10 to reflect Thirteen Lune dropping Youthforia along with Credo and Revolve.
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