Home»» Max Factor cosmetics, a brand founded more than 100 years ago by a Polish-Jewish makeup artist for the Russian royal ballet, will no longer be sold in the United States. It’s going fast, so load up while supplies last.
Mac Factor was up until recently one of America’s best known, best made, cosmetics brand. Yeah well, looked what happened to GM and Chrysler, too.
Procter & Gamble, who has owned the brand since 1991, is dropping the glamorous Hollywood-associated Max Factor to focus its efforts elsewhere, primarily on its more successful Cover Girl brand. (P&G bought the brand in 1991 from Revlon for $1.5 billion.)
The brand will continue to be sold in other countries around the world, but will cease distribution to U.S. drugstores and Wal-Mart stores, where P&G has been concentrating its efforts. The brand is reportedly sold in only an estimated 8,000 U.S. stores, compared to Cover Girl, which is sold in more than 50,000 stores.
I just don’t get it. How is it possible that P&G can’t sell a tube of mascara?
Max Factor (the founder of the company) coined the term "make-up," based on the verb "to make up" (one's face) and worked with the likes of Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Judy Garland out of the Factor beauty salon near Hollywood Boulevard. The man and his company were behind a number of innovations including lip gloss in 1930, Pan-Cake Makeup, forerunner of all modern cake makeup’s in 1937, and the first "waterproof" makeup in 1971.
If I were Max Factor, I’d call up Adam Lambert’s people and broker a deal so fast that Cover Girl wouldn’t know what hit them. And it wouldn’t be a powder puff!
--Ron Knoth, Guest Blogger
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