Revlon’s Turnaround Plan Starts With Its Oldest Brand

To fuel its future, Revlon is looking to the past.

On Friday, in New York’s buzzing SoHo shopping district, it will open a pop-up for the premium skincare brand Elizabeth Arden featuring Instagrammable backdrops, a candy-land style sculpture featuring its new peptide-enriched Ceramide Capsules, from $56, and immersive spaces for visitors to learn about the brand’s ingredients and unique formats. While the pop-up has modern trappings, its debut also coincides with the label’s 115th anniversary — in 1910, the first Elizabeth Arden spa opened on Fifth Avenue, with a product line following some six years later. (The original “Red Door” spa closed in 2020 during the pandemic.)

But Revlon is trying to revive more than just Elizabeth Arden. Having emerged from bankruptcy in 2023 (it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a year prior and ceased to be publicly traded after racking up $3.7 billion in debt), the conglomerate is now owned by its lenders, including Glendon Capital Management and King Street Capital. Analysts at the time observed that the bloated nature of the company and its high leverage had prevented it from being able to snap up new brands or invest in digital campaigns.

With a new chief executive, Michelle Peluso, at the helm, it’s forging an ambitious path to reinvent itself and its 12 owned brands which include its hero cosmetics line and the likes of Almay and Cutex. Part of that strategy will involve learning from other markets: the Revlon Professional line is well established in Europe, and Peluso thinks it could be a big hit in the US, too, while Elizabeth Arden is enduringly popular in China.

It’s also planning a 2026 revival for both Revlon and Almay, the former of which will be focussed on bold glamour and colourful makeup.

Appeals to historical legacy, name recognition and the company’s well-established distribution network are reliable levers and ensure that none of its brands are starting from scratch. But Peluso is aware that success is not guaranteed.

“That has to be coupled with a really nice drumbeat of consumer-driven innovation and bold storytelling… We can’t stay still.”

Making The Old New Again

Many customers are still familiar with Elizabeth Arden’s signature products, including the Eight Hour Cream and its range of capsule-based skincare. While the brand might not have youth appeal, Peluso said it’s still focussed on its historical demographic of customers between the ages 30 to 45.

“I don’t think it’s our right with the brand to go all the way into Gen-Z and the 20s,” she said. Not trying to compete with more agile and trendy brands like Rhode and Beauty of Joseon is smart, and Millennial and Gen-X women represent a large cohort of beauty shoppers. They are also perhaps more loyal than their younger counterparts. Its formula is especially proven in China, where it continues to gain market share. Peluso said “[China] is a “blueprint of what can happen when [you] treat the brand in the right way.”

“If [Elizabeth Arden] can communicate the efficacy and the innovation to the customer, there’s a lot of opportunity there,” said Marissa Lepor, a managing director at investment bank The Sage Group. Peluso said the focus would be on storytelling to try and reinvent and modernise the brand through marketing and education versus rapid-fire new product development.

But to focus too firmly on a single customer is also not a sustainable plan. As more teens and twentysomethings are more interested in beauty and engage with preventative tweakments and treatments earlier than ever, not speaking to them could be a missed opportunity.

“The biggest thing to accomplish [is] to capture the next generation of customers who didn’t grow up with Elizabeth Arden, while still maintaining their original cohort,” said Lepor.

What is the Future of Revlon?

Getting Revlon back to a fighting weight will take more than success at Elizabeth Arden.

Much like peers Estée Lauder Companies and Coty, the company is unlikely to make acquisitions in the near-term, but one thing to provide newness is adding fragrance licenses to its portfolio. Earlier this year, it announced lines with the rapper Ice Spice and streetwear brand Palm Angels.

The jewel in its crown is surely its namesake line. It’s found in drugstores and specialty retailers like Ulta Beauty, and still has popular franchises, priced accessibly for younger shoppers. But in cosmetics, consistent newness is required to succeed, as well as social virality, which require rapid decision-making and responsiveness to trends — both of which can strain margins. Heavy discounts found on TikTok Shop and Amazon have made pricing even more competitive, increasing the pressure on already lower-priced brands.

Revlon makes some of the most iconic beauty products, like its ColorStay Lipstick. But today’s customer has been trained to look for innovation. In the world of E.l.f. viral jelly primers and Summer Fridays’ sell-out lip butter balms, Revlon’s core offering has dragged. According to analytics firm YipitData, at Ulta Beauty, Revlon has been losing share since the end of 2024, and it comprises less than 0.5 percent of the cosmetics category. But the business remains big, largely due to name recognition and a broad distribution network. According to Nielsen, the brand is ranked sixth in eyes, lips and face; below competitors like Maybelline, E.l.f. and CoverGirl; sales have declined 10 percent in the last year.

Peluso thinks that the brand’s more-is-more aesthetic can speak to the modern customer, and says its recent Glimmer, Shimmer, Shine launch has been a hit. In time for New York Fashion Week, it will stage a pop-up outside Bloomingdale’s to promote its foundation range and gift samples of its top-selling lip products.

“We lost our roots a little bit [on Revlon Cosmetics] trying to chase the no-makeup-makeup look,” she said. “Now, you’ll see us leaning in much harder to that bold look of colour, our original high-glamour proposition.”

But whether its push to nostalgia will resonate is up to the customer. Lepor noted that it’s the beginning of a longer-term play.

“Going back to their roots and working on these things that are very authentic to the brand could be a winning strategy,” said Lepor.

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