Ready to gossip about the death of Lime Crime? Hold that obit. Sure, if your makeup bag ran on their wild lipsticks, loss is coming for your favorite shades. But Lime Crime the company isn’t flatlining. It’s pulling a classic tech-world move: shutting down one program to boost another. Beauty lovers, entrepreneurs, and anyone who tracks brand pivots—here’s what’s real, what’s next, and what this reveals about surviving in a market where attention is as rare as a flying unicorn.
What’s Actually Happening—and Why Should You Care?
Forget the Reddit whisper chains and dramatic TikTok farewells. Lime Crime is not going out of business. No bankruptcy, no “liquidation sale” that’s secretly a going-out-of-business ad dressed up in sequins. Here’s the gist: the company is axing its iconic makeup line and going all-in on hair color—specifically, its trend-hugging Unicorn Hair lineup.
Why it matters: Focus wins in crowded markets. When even cult brands like Glossier and Morphe scramble to survive, slashing categories can be the only way forward. For beauty junkies, this pivots the question—from “Where can I snag my next Lime Crime Venus palette?” to “What’s left when the dust settles?”
Makeup, We Hardly Knew Ye: The End of an Era
Remember the 2010s? Pastel hair, velvet lip kits, YouTube mattifying everything with a ring light? Lime Crime was there, leading the charge with color-saturated makeup that dared to be loud, proud, and never boring. But viral doesn’t last forever. Sales fizzled when Gen Z started searching for “skinimalism” and eco-friendly formulas.
Wake-up call: as of mid-2025, Lime Crime is slashing prices on every makeup item in its warehouse. The clearance party’s already started on their site. Lipsticks, palettes, and glitter toppers—once gone, they’re gone. The era of treating your morning like a Lisa Frank page is officially closing.
What’s in it for makeup fans? Last call to stock up. Don’t wait for regret to hit when your favorite pigment pulls a Houdini.
So, Why Hair? The Unicorn Hair Gambit
Pivoting to hair isn’t a random dice roll. The Unicorn Hair collection—think “if a cotton-candy stand and an anime convention had a baby”—has quietly been Lime Crime’s sleeper hit. These semi-permanent colors rode the pastel wave and outlasted it, appealing to TikTokers, festival-goers, and anyone bored with beige locks.
Why it matters: Hair is sticky. Unlike lipstick, which can change with a mood, hair color’s a commitment. Brand loyalty is harder to break. With competition fierce in makeup (hello, Fenty, Rare Beauty, E.L.F., and every celebrity ever), hair is wide open—and, crucially, harder for huge players to dominate overnight.
What’s in it for career-minded founders and marketers? A roadmap for when reinvention is smarter than riding the nostalgia train. Also, watching your old customers age out while you build deeper ties with the new ones? Not easy, but necessary.
Inside the Business Move—Who’s at the Wheel?
Some context: Original founder Doe Deere hopped out after Lime Crime sold to Tengram Capital Partners in 2018. No more fairy tale PR. After the initial acquisition high, the brand slammed into the wall every internet-native company eventually faces—going viral gets hard, TikTok is noisy, and traditional retail is a jungle.
Enter: Refocus. Recent years have seen the company slashing headcount (more on that in a minute), shifting budgets, and investing in social commerce. The glut of indie beauty competitors forced their hand—why run two marathons when you might win one?
Why it matters: This isn’t a “packing up and moving out of the neighborhood” story—it’s a strategic contraction. Think of it like Netflix ditching DVD rentals to bet everything on streaming. Hard? Painful? Sure. But potentially the only way to win long-term.
Let’s Talk Money—How’s the War Chest Looking?
Put away your sad violins. Lime Crime’s not rattling the “support us or we’ll die” tip jar. In fact, in October 2024, they scored $7 million in new credit—hardly what you’d call a sinking ship. Tengram Capital Partners is still majority owner, and while nobody’s parading around with champagne flutes, financial crisis is not on the menu.
Why it matters: Financial backing during a major pivot is a rarity in the beauty world. Investors betting on hair color, not face palettes, tells us two things: (1) There’s solid consumer interest, and (2) the parent company is expecting growth, not just a slow sunset.
What’s in it for competitors? Proof that you can shrink to grow, especially if you’re gutsy (and lucky) enough to bring your investors along for the ride. If Bob Ross can turn happy accidents into art, maybe beauty brands can, too.
Where Did All the People Go?
Staffing has shrunk. Not long ago, Lime Crime was the wild child with a full PR army and influencer whisperers lurking in Slack channels. Now? As of June 2025, there are fewer desks in HQ, and fewer Slack notifications going ping at midnight.
But the lights are still on—just fewer plugged-in devices. Warehouses, fulfillment, digital marketing, and support are still active. Worldwide delivery? Ongoing. That said, Lime Crime’s team is smaller, scrappier, and much less focused on the makeup category.
Why it matters: Right-sizing is brutal but necessary when your sandbox narrows. This isn’t mass layoffs in the “everything must go” sense—it’s pruning for growth in a single field.
What’s in it for retail and DTC operators? A playbook on shrinking smart, not shrinking away. Better 40 strong bets than 100 half-baked ones.
Operations: Still Running on All Cylinders?
While unicorn shades fill packing boxes, Lime Crime’s supply chain and e-commerce trains haven’t skipped a beat. The company serves global markets, and if social media metrics mean anything, their Instagram and TikTok presences are far from ghost towns. Millions still follow for hair content—and yes, to reminisce about makeup gone by.
Insider tip: You can track their business moves straight from corporate press releases, but a peek at their Shopify-powered webstore shows the real strategy—makeup is clearly being gutted, but hair color shipments and new launches continue.
Why it matters: This isn’t the end of the brand, just one of its timelines. Think Marvel multiverse, but with less peril and more hair dye.
What About Those Makeup Leftovers?
If you’re desperate for Lime Crime makeup, here’s your cue: run, don’t stroll, to the clearance bins. The brand’s own site is brimming with markdowns—your last shot to buy cult faves. Can’t find your shade? Prepare to soon see “archival” prices on reselling apps (Depop, Poshmark, and eBay will have a field day).
After the inventory dries up, don’t count on a surprise comeback. There’s no sign that makeup will sneak back into the catalog. When it’s gone, it’s really gone. The only time you’ll see those wild hues again is on someone who stocked up—or on your favorite 2015 Instagram post.
Why it matters: Beauty brands rarely come back from category cuts. This is the “one-shot” sale moment for collectors and old fans alike.
Lime Crime’s Next Chapter—Signal or Cautionary Tale?
So, is Lime Crime going out of business? In a word: no. But if you equate the company with neon eyeshadow palettes and unicorn lipsticks, it might feel like a funeral. In reality, this is a classic pivot: the brand survives, but its heart now beats for hair—not makeup.
Why it matters: Reinvention is survival, especially for brands born on social media. If your category drags you down, cut it loose and double-down where you have the edge. Not every company can—or should—try to be everything for everyone.
What’s in it for the industry? Proof that cult brands don’t need to vanish, but they do need to adapt, often ruthlessly.
Want a deeper look at how commerce brands make (or dodge) these choices? Here’s where smart leaders go for a daily shot of retail strategy caffeine. Keep it close.
Bottom Line: Is the Unicorn Dead?
Lime Crime isn’t disappearing. It’s just growing a new mane—one that’s all about hair color, not cosmetics. The business still ships globally, has fresh capital, and keeps reinventing in the face of TikTok trends and algorithm mood swings.
For diehard makeup users, it’s the end of the rainbow. For unicorn-hued hair obsessives, it’s just the warmup act. The pivot is risky. But in a market this noisy, focus wins the marathon.
So, next time you hear “Lime Crime’s going out of business,” hit pause, smile, and tell them: Not quite. The unicorn just swapped her lipstick for lime-green locks. And in today’s commerce cage match, that’s exactly the hair-raising move we all should watch.
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