“Over the years, it’s been really important for us to talk about and have a lot of transparency and honesty about skincare,” says Kristina Breckon, president of Consonant Skin+Care. “There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the industry.”
For the most part, the Toronto-based skincare brand’s transparency has involved results—its manifesto proclaims there are no quick fixes—and ingredients. Established 2010 by William Baker, who suffered from contact dermatitis caused by fragrance, Consonant’s products skip synthetic preservatives in favor of natural alternatives like lactose peroxidase and glucose oxidase, which give them a shelf life of a year to 18 months, and artificial fragrances.
But when brands promise transparency, they often don’t deliver it at moments of deep discomfort or possible blowback. Not so with Consonant. The brand has approached closing, perhaps the hardest step any business can take, without straying from its principles. It’s been publicly candid about the rationale for the closure—a big culprit was it had two locations that were shuttered for a long duration during the pandemic, and it never fully recovered—and has filled its customers and suppliers in on the closing process.
At a time when a ton of companies are struggling (see recent closures of LOLI, Boscia, Zoe Organics, Fiils and Luxe Botanics), but few fess up to it, consumers are often forced to become armchair investigators to ascertain if their favorite brands are vanishing by piecing together evidence such as social media silence or comments from angry customers demanding to know what’s happened to their purchases. Breckon has encountered Consonant’s business partners ghosting it prior to going belly up, and she vowed not to do that to Consonant’s loyal shoppers and partners.
“We didn’t want anyone to feel off-guard,” she says. “We’ve had wholesale partners that the only reason we know that they have closed is because we’re trying to follow up about not getting paid, but I also feel so much for people who have to close their business. It’s not excusing doing some of those things, but it’s almost an impossible decision.”
Signs started to emerge as early as 2022 that Consonant’s business wasn’t progressing successfully, and burned out from the stress of running it, Baker departed his full-time role helming it that year. Breckon, owner of what she characterizes as a “small stake” in the brand, assumed the position of president in 2023 and has guided the company along with Nina Bhayana, VP of operations, since then. In 2023 and 2024, Consonant’s sales declined.
Heading into the fall this year, Breckon assessed the brand’s capacity to pay its loan obligations while trying to grow its sales, and on Oct. 16, concluded it wasn’t viable long term and had to shutter. The revenue just wasn’t there, and the tough macro environment wasn’t easing, at least not enough. Consonant’s assortment has about 35 stockkeeping units, including bestsellers HydrExtreme and Natural Foaming Face Wash, priced largely from $12 to $78. Roughly 40% of the brand’s sales this year came from wholesale, and the rest from direct-to-consumer distribution.
“We were getting more and more pressure from our wholesale partners to discount. It felt like it was a race to the bottom with pricing, and that’s something that’s been echoed by so many founders,” says Breckon. “It’s a broader industry issue.”
Calling herself “a very logical person,” Breckon dug into sales forecasts to establish an appropriate schedule for Consonant’s wind-down. She recalls she asked herself, “If we closed our doors in two months or in four months, what would that mean from a financial perspective in terms of being able to pay off the obligations?”
“We didn’t want anyone to feel off-guard.”
Breckon continues, “That was the financial side of it, then on the stakeholder side, we thought about who was important to us and how we could do right for them in the best way possible. We’ve been open with our team about what the end looks like and have said, ‘Here’s what we are working on up to the date of the closure, if you find a job before then, please take it, and we will provide references.’”
Breckon settled on Dec. 18, a tad over two months from the determination that Consonant should close, to stop the brand’s e-commerce operations. She plotted a calendar of dates for the brand to communicate to various parties about the closure. On Oct. 31, it informed suppliers, and its amenity and wholesale partners were informed on Nov. 1 and Nov. 3, respectively. In emails to them, Consonant didn’t beat around the bush.
“We worked with a lot of our labs for many years, so we wrote personal notes to them,” she says. “We wanted to reassure them that this didn’t mean they weren’t going to get paid.”
On Nov. 4, Consonant informed customers, and Baker explained the closure on the brand’s website and social media accounts. In advance of going wide with the announcement, Breckon and Bhayana considered questions customers might have about shipping, discounts, returns and replenishment, and Consonant added six questions and answers related to its closure to the FAQ section of its site in an attempt to answer them.
Consonant halted its rewards program on Nov. 8 despite Breckon figuring it could’ve generated 10% greater revenue if it kept it going. The brand didn’t discount products for two weeks after the closure announcement. Today, they’re discounted 50%. On Dec. 8, Consonant held a warehouse sale to clear inventory, furniture and bulk bottles.
Along with questions and answers in the FAQ section, Breckon popped on social media to discuss possible customer inquiries. Her presence on social media has become familiar to Consonant fans in the last two years. She’s delved into mistakes Consonant has made in a series of past posts on Instagram. A mistake she highlighted, for example, is brands getting distracted from their core mission.
“I have been in this business for about 15 years now. I have made so many mistakes, and we as a company have made so many mistakes, and if we can save one person from making these mistakes, it’s amazing,” she says. “We are so used to sharing the wins, but I think there are more benefits in sharing mistakes. We can’t grow without learning from mistakes.”
Speaking about her presence on social media, Breckon expounded, “Presidents, founders and CEOs, we have to be leaders, but we also have to be on social and produce content. Consumer goods these days are driven by personalities. You have to be the face of the brand. People have access they haven’t previously had to leaders and companies, especially ones like us that lead with transparency and honesty.”
Consonant has experienced an outpouring of gratitude and affection in the wake of its closure announcement. On Instagram, a user with the handle laurenamiceli wrote, “I’m actually so sad you have no idea how many things I used to try from Sephora and shoppers and even the dermatologist before I found consonant. It changed my face.” A fellow Canadian skincare brand, Pür-Oils, wrote, “You’ve built such a beautiful community and phenomenal products, we’ve loved seeing your journey and your impact in the skincare community.”
So far, Breckon reports the closure is “going better than we anticipated, which is a funny thing to say about a closure. The amount of positive feedback that we have had is unbelievable, the personal stories the people are sharing and the sales we had at full price. I don’t think there’s anything we would do differently, but I’m definitely looking forward to the future. It’s been quite a whirlwind.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.