Over the weekend, model, actor, and YSE Beauty founder Molly Sims posted a teary-eyed video on her personal Instagram account calling out an unnamed brand and its female founder for stealing the name and marketing for her brand’s best-selling under eye concealer, Wide Awake.
“I don’t normally post stuff like this,” she said, “but over the last few days, I’ve had friends, customers, brand partners, retail partners DM, text, and email me that a brand that I love use and support not only use the exact name of a product I launched two years ago, but also their marketing copy and campaign feels a little too close to home.”
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“I launched Wide Awake two plus years ago,” sims continued. “It’s one of my best-selling products that I worked on for years. Earlier this year, we launched new tints in a big campaign that we have worked on for months. I can’t explain how disappointed — honestly, sad and hurt — I am to see this from another female founder who I’ve known for years and have looked up to in this industry.
“I have the privilege of working with a primarily female team who bust their freaking asses every day to make this dream happen. My marketing team of five. We are small, but we are mighty. We have tiny budgets. We are incredibly scrappy. I mean, you really places we go. There is room for all of us. All of us. There is room for more women to build great brands, create great products, and have great ideas of their own. We should be inspiring each other, not taking from each other.”
The brand to which Sims was referring is Bobbi Brown’s Jones Road Beauty, which recently launched its own, much larger collection of under eye concealers, also under the name Wide Awake.
On Sunday, September 20, Brown addressed the controversy with a post on her own Instagram account, writing that, “We didn’t realize Molly Sims has a product with the same name in her YSE beauty collection. This was a mistake. Prior to our launch, a trademark search showed no other ownership of the name.
“However, we’re changing our product name moving forward, and will no longer call it Wide Awake. I would never knowingly copy another product’s name. To Molly Sims and her team at YSE, I’m sorry this happened, and we’re taking steps to correct it.”
As of the time of this reporting Wide Awake remains available for purchase on the Jones Road Beauty website. YSE Beauty’s version is also available here.
Wide Awake by YSE Beauty