by Letizia Serranò

VERALAB, the cosmetics brand founded in 2015 by Cristina Fogazzi — better known on social media and among her community as L’Estetista Cinica — has been the subject of considerable attention in recent weeks following the publication of its 2025 financial results. The company reported revenue of around €64 million and a loss of approximately €3 million, compared with revenue of more than €74 million in 2024.

Cristina Fogazzi herself addressed the decline on social media, attributing it to a combination of internal and external factors. Among them, she pointed to growing competition in the sector — particularly the boom in Korean skincare — as well as the investments required to open ten new physical stores, with the significant start-up costs involved.

Is this a setback? The beginning of a crisis? A sign that the business model is struggling? We do not know and, more importantly, that is not what we want to explore in this article. What interests us is how the news is affecting the brand from a reputational perspective and how, for many observers, a single set of results bucking the trend was enough to start talking about the demise of both the brand and its founder.

Within a matter of days, a disappointing set of financial results had become a story about the “crisis of L’Estetista Cinica”. Headlines, comments and analyses began questioning the resilience of the business model, the strength of its community and the future of the brand.

As often happens after a long period of success, the first setback seems almost to trigger an expectation of downfall. And it is precisely the speed with which the narrative shifted from success to supposed crisis that makes this case so interesting from a reputational perspective.

To understand what is happening today, it is useful to look at how VERALAB and Cristina Fogazzi were portrayed during the years of growth.

We are not talking about VERALAB alone, but also — and perhaps above all — about Cristina Fogazzi, because her personal identity is an integral part of the business model she has built, and it is difficult to imagine the brand without her.

Before VERALAB, there was L’Estetista Cinica. Through her blog, social media, direct and ironic tone of voice and skincare advice, Fogazzi built a community that follows her, respects her and trusts her. Over time, that personal credibility was progressively transferred to the brand itself.

Communication alone, of course, would not have been enough. Without quality products capable of meeting consumers’ expectations, VERALAB would have struggled to sustain its growth over the years. Product, communication and community worked together, contributing to the results the brand achieved.

For years, the public narrative mirrored that growth almost perfectly: every new positive figure fitted neatly into the existing story, reinforcing the narrative of a successful Italian entrepreneurial venture. New revenue records, e-commerce growth, physical store openings: each result added another chapter to the same story.

As recently as May 2025 — little more than a year ago — an interview with Fogazzi was published under the headline: “I started from nothing. Now I’m opening another 10 stores and turning over €73 million. We celebrate our employees getting mortgages.”

Revenue was no longer simply a piece of financial information. It had become quantitative proof of a success story.

And this is precisely where a less obvious reputational effect begins to emerge.

The success of Cristina Fogazzi and her brand has not only strengthened their credibility and reputation; it has also created expectations for the future.

You turned over 100 this year? Good. Next year, you need to reach 110. The more closely a company becomes associated with positive results, the more those results become the benchmark against which everything that follows is judged. It is one of the paradoxes of a positive reputation: it generates trust, credibility and attention, while simultaneously raising expectations.

At some point, success itself almost ceases to be newsworthy. The first result that bucks the trend, by contrast, disrupts the story. And what happens when those expectations are not met? The narrative changes: instead of a company experiencing a loss after years of growth, it becomes a company “in crisis” or “on the brink of collapse”.

There is another factor to consider. A success story this visible does not generate consensus alone. The better known a brand and the person behind it become, the more criticism they attract — along with people who do not identify with that model or who, quite simply, have never fully believed in its success.

As long as the results remain positive, however, this alternative interpretation has little concrete evidence to support it. The first negative result changes that. For those who have always regarded VERALAB as a success story, 2025 may simply represent a difficult year. For those who were already sceptical about the phenomenon, the very same figures can become proof that the model has stopped working.

The data are the same. What changes is the story in which they are placed.

And this is how, within a matter of days, the narrative can shift from a growing company to a company in crisis, even when the available evidence is not sufficient to establish whether this is true or not.

This is perhaps the most interesting reputational lesson to emerge from the case.

Companies tend to prepare for crises by focusing primarily on extraordinary events: an accident, litigation, a management failure, a cyberattack or a public controversy. Far less often do they prepare for something much simpler and more ordinary: the moment when, after years of positive results, growth slows or stops.

The more a company has built its public narrative around growth, records and achievements, the more aware it should be that the first deviation from that trajectory will attract disproportionate attention precisely because it contradicts the expectations that its own success has helped to create.

The point is not to prevent people from discussing negative results, nor to try to reframe a difficult period as something positive. Rather, companies need to be reputationally prepared for the moment when the numbers stop — at least temporarily — supporting the story that has been told up to that point.

Because that is precisely when it becomes essential to maintain a distinction between a setback and the company’s broader story.

Today, we cannot yet know what 2025 will ultimately represent in VERALAB’s history. It may prove to have been simply a year of adjustment, the consequence of a period of investment, or the first indication of a deeper difficulty.

From a reputational perspective, however, the case tells us something important: the stronger and more widely told a success story becomes, the more newsworthy its first crack will be. And the greater the risk that a setback becomes complex news to manage.