As Sephora Scales Back Clinique, Here’s How Beauty Insiders Would Reinvigorate It

TikTok virality may spike sales quickly, but it doesn’t ensure lasting success, at least that appears to be the case with storied brand Clinique.

As reported by the publication Puck News, Sephora is dropping the Estée Lauder-owned brand’s makeup line three years after the iconic 53-year-old Black Honey shade of its Almost Lipstick racked up over 10 million views on the platform and sent a new generation of shoppers scrambling to stores to buy it.

Sephora staff members have also revealed on Reddit that Clinique’s skincare selection has been scaled back at some of the beauty specialty retailer’s stores. The brand is stocked at Ulta Beauty and recently launched on Amazon, making it the first Estée Lauder brand to do so. Clinique is sold in over 100 countries worldwide.

Established in 1968, Clinique pioneered many of the skincare concepts prioritized now, including simple routines and fragrance-free and dermatologist-backed products. Its original three-step skincare system taught untold numbers of young consumers to cleanse, exfoliate and moisturize their skin and birthed classics such as Clarifying Lotion and Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion. Estée Lauder’s website mentions that a bottle of Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion is sold every seven and a half seconds.

Clinique is competing for customers’ dollars with buzzy upstarts and celebrity brands. It was absent from the group of brands that powered Estée Lauder’s 5% sales growth in the third quarter this year. Jo Malone, Le Labo, The Ordinary, La Mer and Estée Lauder were in that group. For over a decade, Clinique’s global sales have surpassed $1 billion, but, according to market research resource Statista, its brand value declined to $4.8 billion last year from nearly $6.1 billion in 2022. 

As Clinique’s presence at Sephora diminishes, we were curious what could help it reverse course. So, we turned to 10 brand founders and consultants for the latest of our ongoing series posing questions relevant to indie beauty to ask the following question: If you were given the opportunity to reenergize a heritage beauty brand like Clinique, what would you do to make it relevant to today’s consumers? 

Rachel Roberts Mattox Brand Developer, Strategist and Member of The Board

Legacy brands are in their revitalization era, and Clinique is ripe for it. The central question is: Can Clinique exist in today’s culture, for today’s consumer, and compete in today’s landscape, while remaining true to its legendary roots? I believe they can.

What made Clinique iconic? They pioneered the three-step, minimalist skincare routine. They were early adopters of dermatologist-led, fragrance-free skincare. They launched hero products like the Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion and hero franchises like Black Honey. They set an industry standard with their strong branded merch and GWP strategy. They defined affordable luxury.

These attributes are what the modern consumer desires. This isn't a question of product-market fit, but product-culture fit. Clinique must reimagine its place in today’s culture, focusing on positioning, brand identity and go-to-market strategy. Here’s how I would lead the brand’s revitalization:

Revisit The Brand Positioning
Clinique has a strong brand DNA. They know who they are, but need to realign with who they are competing against and what the new generation of beauty consumers wants from a clean, clinical, minimalist skincare and color brand. I would refine the positioning to be laser-focused on the target audience, differentiation and competitive landscape.

Refresh The Brand Identity
Clinique should own the minimalist, dermatologist-guided narrative central to its brand, but reimagine its visual articulation. Lab coats, beakers and products shot against sterile backgrounds don’t resonate with today’s consumers. They should revisit archival branding and advertising, reimagining it in today’s cultural context.

Rewrite The Brand Lexicon
Sweeping changes to brand positioning and identity will influence the brand voice. The current language, especially around anti-aging, doesn’t resonate with today’s consumers who focus on skin health and longevity. Updating the lexicon is crucial.

Respect The Product Story
Clinique is a product-led brand. Respecting the brand’s core value proposition—a minimalist routine, safe science and clinical proof—is essential. Balance hero products and franchises with ingredient innovation, introduce biotech more significantly, and take risks with new formats and textures.

Reflect The Customer
Clinique must redefine and reflect its target customer, appealing to the customer who used Clinique in the '90s, as well as her daughter and granddaughter. It’s a multigenerational brand that should reflect diverse experiences, attitudes and aesthetics in its branding, marketing and messaging.

Remember That Beauty Is Fun
Clinique can have a bit more fun. Playfulness can be expressed through limited-edition merch or collaborations with culturally relevant content creators.

Lara Schmoisman Founder and CEO, The Darl  

To reenergize a storied beauty brand like Clinique and make it more relevant to today’s consumers, I would implement several strategic initiatives tailored to appeal to the evolving preferences of the target audience.

First, I would focus on a comprehensive refresh of the packaging. Modernizing the design while preserving Clinique’s classic identity will appeal to both long-time loyalists and new consumers. The refreshed packaging should reflect contemporary aesthetics and sustainability as today’s consumers are increasingly conscious of environmental impact.

I would emphasize the products’ performance and benefits over mere visuals. Today’s consumers are more informed and demand evidence of efficacy. By highlighting each product's actual benefits and results, supported by scientific data and consumer testimonials, we can build credibility and trust. Engaging marketing materials should detail how the products perform in real-world scenarios, ensuring that consumers see the tangible value.

Additionally, education about the ingredients is crucial. Transparency builds trust, so providing clear and accessible information about what’s in the products and why those ingredients are beneficial will resonate well with today’s savvy shoppers. I would use various formats such as interactive content, educational videos and detailed blog posts to explain ingredient benefits and address common consumer concerns.

Tailoring the messaging and approach to align with current beauty trends and values—inclusivity, sustainability and authenticity—will further connect with the target audience. By integrating these elements, Clinique can appeal to a modern audience, demonstrating both a respect for its heritage and a commitment to contemporary standards and preferences.

Stacey Levine Brand Marketing and Communications Consultant

If you think of the buzziest and most successful brands in beauty right now, chances are that E.l.f. Cosmetics comes to mind. But E.l.f. isn’t a new brand, it’s been around for 20 years. That may not be as long as Clinique, which launched in the 1960s, but it does offer a masterclass in reenergizing a decades-old beauty brand and relating to its customers today.

I’ve worked on many heritage brands throughout my career—L’Oréal Paris, CoverGirl, Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences—and what they all have in common is the drive to re-excite their core demo, reach new consumers, and engage younger generations so they can survive and thrive for decades to come.

A few things I’d do to reenergize a storied brand like Clinique:

• Engage our existing community, gaining a deep understanding of what’s meaningful to them, to reward our long-time fans and keep them loyal.
• Understanding that beauty consumers are not only interested in beauty, but involved in other diverse communities as well, I would look to engage our community and target new audiences around other things they love: their favorite activities, travel destinations, games, role models, etc.
• Look to what’s trending to provide inspiration, but keep a laser focus on our consumer over our competitors, eschewing the “tried and true” for what hasn’t been done before.
• Embrace partnerships and co-creation with other brands and influencers, aiming to surprise the industry with unexpected collaborations (think Kate Spade x Heinz, E.l.f. x Dunkin’, ColourPop x Sailor Moon).
• Explore emerging channels, social commerce and the metaverse as well as seeking out what’s coming next, and pushing to be the first beauty brand there.

Stephen Letourneau Chief Brand Officer, BFYW

The first step in reviving any heritage brand is modernizing the outdated formulations while leaning into the cult classics. Who doesn't remember the small squared off bottle of yellow gooey promise famously dubbed "Dramatically over-priced moisturizer"? Lean into it.

Given men's grooming is the fastest segment, I would start there for a modern take on the brand. No celebrities, no influencers. Pure old-school ad campaign. Sleek sage green refillable aluminum bottles as a nod to the old look and feel. Reset the line with a back to basics system approach. Step into the shower with Clinique to add some fresh SKUs and make it an everyday ritual.

After the successful relaunch of men's, then you can dip your toe into the world of women with five signature SKUs in a kit with a classic box partner like Ipsy or Allure. Keep the selection small and the system simple. Bring back the joy in getting ready.

Campaign around parallel play with friends getting ready over FaceTime, poking fun at the countless get ready with me style of TikToks and Reels. Quiet all of the noise, and show consumers that skincare doesn't have to be complicated to be effective. Be smart in both product and packaging choices. Evolve into what's going to be trending for the next five years.

Make your Amazon store a digital experience. This is a constant miss for brands who design it like a retail shelf and miss out on updating content. Pick one major retail partnership—Nordstrom would be the clear choice—and above all else, make it fun again.

April Uchitel Founder and CEO, The Board

In a world of noisy, oversaturated and rapidly changing skincare trends, the consumer appetite for simple, trusted, effective and time-tested commitment to quality is real. The legacy and heritage of the Clinique brand is its biggest strength. Think Chanel N°5, Dove soap, Vaseline, Maybelline mascara, Benefit’s Benetint.

Clinique needs to continue to connect its past to both the present and the future through the lens of modern nostalgia and safety. The memory of my mother’s yellow bar of Clinique facial soap is both sentimental yet still strangely aspirational. Getting new generations to see the brand as a rite of passage versus "that's my mother's or grandmother’s brand" is key.

Launching on Amazon was super smart move, in my opinion. So many luxury beauty brands have been hesitant to go there for fear of brand dilution, but access and speed is one modern way of making old new again.

Rebecca Bartlett Founder & CEO, Bartlett Brands

Generational brands are dying. Here’s why, and what can be done about it.

Clinique was everyone’s first skincare brand. Your beauty-savvy mom introduced it to you when you needed to start washing your face at age 8. With 100% global brand recognition and trusted dermatological heritage, Clinique’s brand survived unchanged for decades.

Until suddenly…tweens and teens decided they don't want their mom’s brand—they want their own. And they found it on Tiktok. The era of needing your mom to help you discover skincare has officially ended.

One of the top rules of branding is that if you are for everyone, you are for no one.

While some brands find success in selling products to gen alpha and boomers alike, Clinique needs to define and tighten their focus to a core target consumer—both in psychographics & demographics—then rebrand to be 'the brand' for this consumer.

If we were working on this branding project at Bartlett Brands, we might find that the most viable target core consumer is 'your mom' (whose skin looks amazing because she’s been using Clinique since she was 8 years old). 'Your mom' is over 40 and therefore she’s not the coveted target of most of the beauty industry. She’s loyal, engaged and she’s ready to spend to look good.

We’d tap into the mindset and motivations of 'your mom,' aligning the Clinique brand with her aspirations from the top down. We’d push for a narrowed assortment and renewed innovation that meets her specific needs, re-establishing Clinique as a credible authority.

Then, we’d roll out an unapologetic rebrand to deliver on this new, tighter focus. With modern visuals, packaging and communications, Clinique may find that their broader audience (beyond 'your mom') is once again interested when authenticity has been restored.

Jamie Rosen Founder and Member, Office of the Surface and The Board

Clinique's steadfastness can be its biggest strength. There is power in shifting the narrative away from viral and trend and to the steps that have worked for decades, the makeup that doesn't irritate, the simplicity of appealing to a consumer that is not beauty obsessed, but wants dependable products that are easy to access and use.

I can also see so many experiential ways to interact with the brand that take it out of its usual points of sale and bring it to a fun but not necessarily super young audience. There are so many consumers who are willing to spend outside of the drugstore, but want that trust and sense of inclusion, and there are individuals who could represent the brand in that same way. Clinique is foundational.

On a personal note, the only moisturizer my mom has ever used is Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion (or DDML, as she calls it), and I can report that she has beautiful skin.

Chelsea Grayson Board Member and Former Board Member, Xponential Fitness and Morphe

Clinique has numerous advantages in today's crowded skincare and cosmetic sector. Truly, all it really needs to do is to leverage those advantages to maximize its success. Clinique, which means "clinic" in French, was one of the first brands to focus on the dermatological science of skincare, but it managed to do so in an incredibly elegant and simple way, enticing the consumer to feel as if he or she had been thoughtful in choosing a regimen that was tailored just for them.

Clinique's signature light green packaging was a marker for having spent a lot of money, but in an intelligent way. And it convinced generations of men to pay more attention to their skin than any brand before it, with the iconic three-step skincare program that taught men all about exfoliation and aging for the first time. (I remember male friends of mine actually talking to me about using Clinique, almost as a status symbol.) 

Clinique was also among the first brands to enter an early version of the clean category, touting its products as fragrance-free and allergy-tested. Clinique has the powerful Estée Lauder machine behind it, and if I were advising the brand, I'd use that machine to stay above the fray and just continue to pull in the younger generations with the trusted and reliable skincare line, which can then take a consumer throughout his or her journey for decades.

In fact, I believe that is what Clinique is truly focused on behind the scenes, as evidenced by its strategic move out of Sephora, which has traditionally paid some lip service (pun intended!) to skincare, but has mostly focused on cosmetics. 

Clinique has iconic cosmetics, not the least of which is the Almost Lipstick. I started wearing Black Honey back in college, and it remains my go-to to this day. It doesn't need the crowded shelves of Sephora to grab eyeballs in the way that many newer brands do. It can grab those eyeballs by remaining strategic and focused on marketing technologies, so that once it brings a consumer into the skincare funnel, it develops a relationship with that consumer across product lines.

Clinique is the rare brand that has the long-term trust of the market. It has managed to maintain that halo since the '60s. Remember the disastrous "not your Father's Oldsmobile" marketing campaign? Clinique needs to guard its legacy carefully and simply continue to do what it's doing so as not to alienate the market across generations that way that campaign did.

Karen Hayes Founder, Indie Global Strategies

Clinique has a special place in my heart. When I was a young teen and finally got permission to wear makeup, my mom took me to the Clinique counter at Bullock’s at the Thousand Oaks Mall. It was also my introduction to real skincare, the infamous “Computer” and the 3-Step regimen. Years later, Clinique was my first beauty industry internship.

In our crowded industry, Clinique endures because it has world-class formulations at a fantastic price for value and high trust with consumers. Now, we see skincare consumers voting for brands with true authority and clinical credibility.

The brand has proven its enduring cult status of hero products, à la the Black Honey moment. This shows that the brand does have resonance and can be relevant to a wide audience, multicultural and multigenerational.

Based on that and because Clinique has historically been an entry point to the category for young consumers, I would lean in heavily to the gen alpha and young gen Z opportunity, which means reaching them in the places and ways that resonate with this audience.

If Sephora does phase out, I believe Clinique can recover that business by connecting with the customer in the other channels where she’s shopping, including Ulta, Amazon and TikTok Shop. Social selling could be a significant opportunity for the brand.

Clinique has done a great job of creating digital tools on their website, such as the AI Skincare Diagnostic, and carrying an element of that over to Amazon. I would keep going deeper on Amazon to create a more immersive, brand-building experience.

I would prioritize EMV (earned media value), shifting my spend heavily into TikTok and creator marketing. Clinique was in CreatorIQ’s Top 10 not so long ago, and it can get back there.

There’s something about the inter-generational dynamic, not just moms and daughters, but moms (millennial), daughters (gen Z or alpha) and grandmothers (gen X) that I think could make for great TikTok moments.  I would even think about influencer or community trips with such a mix. Think of the content and reach.

And, finally, a controversial take: I would look at developing a blockbuster new, clean fragrance plus maybe companion body sprays, as not every girl is a Sol de Janeiro girl. That would be relevant to a new and young audience  the way that Happy was my first beloved fragrance when I was a teen.

Tamar Kamen Product Development Consultant

Younger consumers don’t realize that Clinique was the original clinical skincare brand. I think that heritage gives credibility. I think they should reiterate their product non-negotiables such as fragrance-free, developed by doctors, for sensitive skin and next-level clinical testing to build confidence in younger consumers who don’t realize the brand has been standing by this mission for decades.