Well, I used one of their foundations years ago. Perfect color for me and I really liked the formula. They discontinued it. Also the lipstick I liked. I just quit using any make up and switched to lip gloss for dry lips in the winter. So I am not surprised they went under.

The new stuff they came out with was ten times the price of mine.

They haven't "gone under", it's a bankruptcy filing to provide a moratorium on payments to and claims of creditors. The company will continue to operate.

Bankruptcy filings are usually a result of unprofitable operations and/or more debt than the business can support. Debt will be haircut to give the company a bit of a second chance (that's what Chapter 12 filings do) and the company will attempt to do better going forward.

No telling how competent or incompetent the company's management is.

The last item I bought from Revlon was a curling iron and it was a worthless piece of junk. Never bought anything else with their name on it.

I'm thinking the pandemic has been seriously hard on them, at least as far as makeup is concerned. They might be selling eye makeup, but surely not many lipsticks. It's also not likely any woman who wears a mask regularly is bothering with foundation.

That would be chapter 11 Elmer. They just want to dump prior debt and usually is done screwing over unsecured debt and stock holders, and end up securing new debt from lenders with a boat load of new stock in the reorganized company. Chapter 12 is for family farmers and fishermen.

Could be, alisande. Though if so, one would expect to see similar hard times (though not necessarily bankruptcies) experienced by Revlon's competitors over the same period it's apparently been struggling. Has that been the case?

Or, as jasdip said above, it couldn't survive in a saturated market OR it's the weakest of the bunch and unable to keep up?

For an fascinating look at the creation of the Revlon empire, read Fire and Ice by Andrew Tobias. Well written and very entertaining if you're interested in business and marketing. A fun respite to read about what the world of advertising was like before all the current "woke" atmosphere.

One of the industries hit hard by Covid, I think.

Estee Lauder, one of the biggest cosmetics companies owning everything from Clinique to Kiehl's and MAC, reports the following results below. If this is what getting hit hard by Covid looks like for an industry, well, May I have seconds, please?

(NYSE: EL) today reported net sales of $4.39 billion for its first quarter ended September 30, 2021, an increase of 23% from $3.56 billion in the prior-year period. Net sales grew in every region and product category, reflecting the recovery in brick-and-mortar retail stores, primarily in western markets.

Sephora's numbers are harder to tease out since they are a part of LVMH. My guess is that they are even better. Amazon beauty sales are up as well.

Think of Zoom meetings, not nights at the opera.

Here is LVMH's reporting on Sephora from the first half of 2021:

LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton this week posted sales of €28.7bn (£24.5bn) in the first half of 2021. That’s 56% up on the same time last year. LVMH profits from recurring operations came in at €7.6bn (£6.4bn), some 357% up on the 2020 figure. The retailer said that sales direct to customers were growing quickly, both in-store and online.

No problems here, folks. Revlon has a problem. The industry does not.

From what I've read, this bankruptcy is a product of a number of factors: high debt levels, competition from non-traditional sources (ie celebrity beauty lines), changing purchasing  patterns (the shift away from brick and mortar stores to on line buying) and, most definitely, supply chain issues brought on by Covid.

How did the supply chain issues skip over Estee Lauder, LVMH, and Amazon?

Revlon is a poorly managed dinosaur. Who on Earth buys their products? Probably mostly people who cannot affort Lauder, Sephora, et al, which would be people who were not in Zoom meetings, continuing to earn their living. So Covid did affect their target market. That is no excuse for not adapting and finding a new niche.

"From what I've read, this bankruptcy is a product of a number of factors...."

In that this just happened today, I wouldn't put too much belief into the completeness or veracity of "analyses" you'll find anytime soon.

Wasn’t Revlon’s Fire and Ice the best selling lipstick color for years?

Leonard Lauder's book, The Company I Keep, is a fantastic history of the company his mother built out of nothing but hard work and determination.

The book illustrates the importance of innovation in the beauty market, which is closely tied to the fashion one on many levels. Fashion is ephemeral. Innovation is key. Revlon did all they could to bury Lauder from her first successes onwards.

And not incidentaly if you ask me, the Lauders are an admirable family who do much good in the world and who have the universal appreciation of their employees.

"In that this just happened today, I wouldn't put too much belief into the completeness or veracity of "analyses" you'll find anytime soon."

Given that Revlon has been in well-documented troubles for years, and that rumours of a bankruptcy filing have been circulating for days, any competent financial analyst should have been able to put up a competent analyses within hours. And in fact, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg,  among many, many others, have done so. If you have an issue with their analyses, point out their errors.

"How did the supply chain issues skip over Estee Lauder, LVMH, and Amazon?"

It was just one of the issues, but it was a real one, not, as Elmer implied in a since-deleted comment, the invention of another commenter.

I don't delete comments.

I won't argue with you. Even when you're talking about things I have professional expertise with that you put up random internet search findings to dispute (which has happened), you're always right.

That's a shame, there are a few Revlon items that I do like. Mostly though, my experience with their cosmetics has been to find something I really like only to have it discontinued when I go to repurchase.

"I won't argue with you"

I'm not asking you to argue with me. I'm asking you to point out where all the journalists (and Revlon itself) are wrong about the multiple causes of the company's problems. 

Frankly, I place the expertise of the analyses I've referred to well ahead of that of someone who is seems to think Revlon's problems just emerged today with the bankruptcy filing.

I don't think I've ever bought their products because they are always too high.

Jmm, who thinks Revlon's problems just emerged today? You and others brought up Covid, which for Revlon is risible in light if their long standing debt problems going all the way back to Perman's acquisition.

Favorite lipstick, long wearing, doesn't rub off, prevents chapped lips in winter, will stock up.

Jmm, most mainstream reporting on this issue has been a cut, copy and paste of Revlon's attempt at a face-saving press release. You want to read financial journalism, here is the FT's take. The issue is an overleveraged company, which is horribly managed to boot. Just like the OP did not understand the concept of restructuring, most posters are not grasping the underlying issues, nbd, they are not finance or business people. But the facts are pretty straight forward if you bother to go past your initial misapprehention.

TL;DR Perlman paid himself a fortune for the Revlon deal in the 80's. He never had the desire to manage the company. He stripped its assets, pocketed the cash and left the company with the debt. The dinosaur limped along, slowly losing appendages.

From today's FT, no link available, I view itnas an App, and there is no way around the paywall that I know of:

Wall Street can only apply so much cover-up and blush to a broken capital structure. US cosmetics maker Revlon, long backed by financier Ron Perelman, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The tumble, as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates 0.75 per cent, marks the switch from an easy money era to a time of slender means. Ongoing inflation and supply chain blockages forced Revlon to succumb to liquidity and leverage problems common to financially over-engineered businesses.

The company generated $58mn of ebitda in the first quarter, its highest profitability in years. Still, Revlon has total debt of more than $3bn. It must reduce its enterprise value by slashing leverage, likely wiping out public shareholders. Perelman owns about 80 per cent.

The company has not kept up with beauty trends. Upstart brands have won over younger generations. Revlon’s reckoning was delayed by acquiescent capital markets. These have allowed the company to raise more cash, exchange existing paper and extend maturities.

Numerous US companies have followed the same path. Some used that breathing room to grow and prosper. Many will now continue in Revlon’s footsteps, asking a bankruptcy court judge to oversee a messy fight between creditors.

Revlon is best known at present for a bizarre banking snafu. Citigroup, which oversaw a large term loan for the company, accidentally repaid $900mn of principal balance in 2020 when it meant to just make an interest payment. Whether the repayment is to be unwound remains a matter for the courts.

A preceding episode matters more as an emblem of the financialisation of US business. Revlon, desperate for cash, had issued a new $1.8bn loan. Buyers of that loan received as collateral Revlon intellectual property that had already been pledged to senior creditors.

Such collateral-stripping has become commonplace in recent years, with varying legal success. Such deals gave companies like Revlon a long shot chance of a turnround. However, with a contentious bankruptcy ahead, the cosmetic group and its peers would have been better off taking a hard look in the mirror years ago.

The Lex team is interested in hearing more from readers. Please tell us what you think of the Revlon Chapter 11 in the comments section below.

Favorite lipstick, long wearing, doesn't rub off, prevents chapped lips in winter, will stock up.

Coming from someone in Chicago, that bit about preventing chapped lips is saying something!

"One of the industries hit hard by Covid, I think."

Nope, not even remotely true. Their sales have seen a steady decline since before 2018 and they're annual debt load has increased nearly equivalent to the sales decline. It's been a slow motion train wreck for many years. Poor management.

When I read the comment about having professional expertise the laughing made me dizzy.

Why anyone would put this stuff on their face is beyond me.

10 common ingredients they're all gross. Any of you men want to kiss a face covered in crushed cochineal beetles?

Top 4 executives at Relvon aren't men by the way. Just saying.......

Zalco - I'm not sure what your point is, since we're essentially saying the same thing. Revlon has been in trouble for years: high debt levels, poor management, inability to adapt to a changing marketplace. No one is saying the supply chain issue is the cause of its downfall, just that it may have been the proverbial last straw for a company already at breaking point. None of the articles I've read is ignoring or downplaying the long-standing problems at the company.

I simply took issue with the implication in Elmer's comment that it was too soon for any credible reporting: given that the company has a long and very public history of financial and management issues, anyone who follows the industry at all would be able to explain why this happened. In fact, the WSJ reported on many of these issues, and rumours of the impending bankruptcy filing several days before it actually took place.

Zalco, don't waste your time. I forgot.

Jmm, I apologize, I understood you to cite supply chain issues as a leading factor in the bankruptcy. I do not believe they figured into the problem. If you have cancer and catch a cold, the cause of death is still cancer.

Zalco  - no, I didn't mean to imply supply chain issues were a principal factor, just that they were one/one factor. It wouldn't have taken much to push that company over the edge. 

As it happens, when my grandfather died, his death certificate listed 5 causes, one of which was cancer. It was the combination of the 5 that killed him, not the cancer alone.

‘Crushed cochineal beetles....’

Cochineal is a completely natural organic product used for centuries to create the colour carmine, including in food. I’d much rather have that on my face, or in my food, than some of the artificial alternatives.

It seems ”supply chain issues” has become big business’ version of everyone else’s ”because covid”: An easy excuse that may or may be grounded in some truth, likely to fly unchallenged.

I like Revlon but no longer wear make-up to work. I only wear make-up for top-notch going out social occasions.