John Masters Organics, a staple of clean haircare selections at chains such as Whole Foods and Natural Grocers, is closing its operations in the United States and Canada.
The brand, which celebrated its 30-year anniversary in 2024, sent an email to its wholesale partners in the countries on Thursday informing them it’s no longer processing or shipping orders. On its website and social media, it notified customers that it’s stopping e-commerce on Jan. 15 and conducting a 50% liquidation sale until then. However, its products will continue to be available on Amazon.
Jennifer Freitas, founder of The Truth Beauty Company, a Canadian clean beauty retailer with a location in Waterloo, Ontario that carries John Masters Organics, calls its shuttering in North America “a huge loss for the industry and for shops like mine.” She says, “I loved the brand. Clean, efficacious haircare is a category with a lot of white space, and John Masters was a brand that used great ingredients, was not too expensive and offered a very robust lineup of products. Personally, this is the brand of shampoo that is my own shower.”
John Masters Organics is the latest legacy player in the clean and natural beauty space that’s struggled to stay relevant as the space has matured and the number of brands exploded. In 2022, Aubrey Organics and H2O+ closed. Boscia closed in June last year, but recently teased it’s making a “short comeback” this month.
John Masters Organics has the added pressure of private equity profitability expectations. In 2016, Permira, the British private equity firm with Dr. Martens, Reformation and Golden Goose in its portfolio, purchased the brand and Styla, its distributor in Japan and East Asia, for an enterprise value of $336 million. Permira sold John Masters Organics to Japanese private equity firm Aspirant in 2022. At the time, it was sold in more than 40 countries. The brand’s global headquarters is in Tokyo, and it’s been headquartered in San Francisco in the U.S.
John Masters Organics was previously stocked in the large chains Ulta Beauty, Neiman Marcus and Macy’s. Since 2020, though, its retail broker in the U.S., Indie Beauty Brokers, shares that its retail footprint experienced growth and reports retailers ordering through John Masters Organics’ distribution partners can place orders currently provided the distributor has inventory. Still, in the American retail landscape, the brand faced stiff competition from emerging clean haircare brands like Monday Haircare, Innersense, Odele and Verb, and Aspirant appears to have decided continuing its North American retail operations wasn’t a fruitful proposition.
Early on the clean beauty scene, John Masters Organics distinguished itself by having roots in the hairstyling world, giving its clean products performance credibility. New York City hairstylist John Masters launched it in 1994 after whipping up handmade products in his Manhattan apartment. According to John Masters Organics’ site, a year later he opened what the brand describes as the “first clean air salon” free from harsh chemicals. In 2005, John Masters Organics entered Whole Foods.
Certified organic by the United States Food and Drug Administration, John Masters Organics’ products contain at least 95% organically produced ingredients. A signature of the clean beauty movement that gained steam in the last decade, the brand excludes 1,000-plus ingredients, including parabens and phthalates, that it characterizes as potential carcinogens and endocrine disrupters. In the years since banned ingredient lists spread in clean beauty, many cosmetic chemists have criticized them for fearmongering and preventing effective ingredients from being used in formulations.
Although John Masters Organics is primarily known as a haircare brand, its assortment extends to body care and skincare. Among its bestsellers are Hydrate & Protect Hair Milk with Rose & Apricot, Leave-in Conditioning Mist with Green Tea & Calendula and Lip Calm. Positioned as masstige, its prices range from $8 to $39.
“Haircare is a challenging category to get clean and get right.”
John Masters Organics has been attempting to innovate. In 2024, it released a baby care line, and it ventured into the keratin realm the year before by introducing Overnight Hair Mask with Plant Based Keratin & Crambe Abyssinica. Within the last year, posts on LinkedIn show it was hiring for digital roles in the U.S.
Rachel Cook Northway, founder of beauty consultation service The Northway Edit and former channel sales lead at EC Scott Group, wholesale manager at CAP Beauty and pop-up store director at Follain, a now-defunct clean beauty retailer where she recalls John Masters Organics shampoo and conditioner were popular, believes the brand’s station in the market is tricky. It’s too expensive for mass-market shoppers, who have plenty of choices of shampoos for under $10 at big-box chains, but not coveted by prestige beauty shoppers gravitating to newer higher end clean haircare brands like Roz, Crown Affair, Gisou and Dae.
“It’s a hollowing out of the middle,” says Cook Northway. “You are going to have your drugstore brands, and you are going to have your luxury prestige brands.”
Despite John Masters Organics’ closure in the U.S. and Canada, she thinks there remains room in the clean haircare category for brands pushing the needle with performance, particularly in the styling arena and for diverse customer bases. “I still feel like there is a really long way to go,” says Cook Northway. “Haircare is a challenging category to get clean and get right.”
This article was edited on Jan. 7 to reflect updated information on John Masters Organics’ retail footprint from retail broker Indie Beauty Brokers.
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