Sunday Riley, the cult skincare brand, founded by its namesake, a chemist and proud mom to four kids and two dogs, is caught up in a scandal related to the reviews of its products on Sephora.
In a company email released by a former employee on Reddit, the brand is shown urging its staff to write positive reviews of its products, which are sold on Sephora. The email, written by Sunday Riley’s head of sales, which is entitled “Homework time — Sephora.com Reviews,” asks staff to write reviews of two recently released acne treatment products —”at least 3 reviews for Saturn over the next week, and some for Space Race the week after.”
The former employee says on Reddit that employees “were forced to write fake reviews for our products on an ongoing basis, which came direct from Sunday Riley herself and her Head of Sales.”
The email goes on to say, “When reviewing Saturn please address things like how cooling it felt, the green color, the non-drying mask effect, radiance-boosting, got rid of your acne after a couple uses,” and instructs staff to use a VPN that protects employees’ IP addresses from being traced back to the company.
In an Instagram post, the company admitted the memo was real, but then proceeded to delete the post, apparently in an attempt to distance itself from the controversy and refocus attention on the brand.
On Instagram, Estée Laundry, which is dedicated to “airing out the beauty industry’s dirty laundry” and to providing “a voice to consumers not brands,” posted a side-by-side pic of two reviews of Saturn Sulfur Acne Treatment Mask on different sites. The product receives a 2.8 out of 5 on Makeup Alley, and a 4.4 out of 5 on Sephora. In fairness, on Makeup Alley, the product was reviewed by six people, while on Sephora, it was reviewed by 313. What is not clear is how many of the Sephora reviews were posted by Sunday Riley employees.
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Posting fake reviews is nothing new in the beauty industry. Racked reported last year that the practice of giving away free products to consumers in exchange for good reviews is widespread. This fraudulent system has only been magnified by the growing number of influencers. Last month, the Fashion Law revealed that Instagram beauty influencers are often paid up to $70,000 for posting negative product reviews. Although the Federal Trade Commission (FCC) has ordered influencers to disclose their endorsements, Instagram still hasn’t published an endorsement policy.
