French beauty powerhouse L’Oréal is to remove its Decléor brand from the US market as of next week, despite a year-long strategic focus on boosting the brand in the American market, according to a report by WWD.com. 

Having brought the brand from Shiseido in in 2014, the company had hoped to emulate its success in the professional channel, where it was doing 75 percent of its business by 2016. 

Present in 10,000 locations across 70 countries, the brand was present in just 350 locations across the US, despite the country thought to be a key focus for the brand in terms of its development. Indeed L’Oréal went so far as to update the brand logo, launch new advertising and appoint a new US brand ambassador last year. 

The investments were in vain, however, with the last day of US business cited as 30 June by a company spokesperson, following low brand awareness in the country. 

Speaking of the decision to remove the brand from the US, Martin Okner, Managing Director at SHM Corporate Navigators, told WWD.com, “Companies are becoming more focused on rationalizing products that appear to be underperforming sooner when the lead indicators suggest that the brand is falling sort of expectations.
“It used to be that we would give a brand a year or so to look and see and maybe make a few adjustments to the marketing strategy or the product… to try and make it work. Now I think companies are realizing that that model is a way of the past. They need to be more dynamic in discontinuing products where the metrics suggest they’re not working.”