We can blame Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift for plenty of things – contributing to the demise of pop music, a spike in the already sky-high diva behavior of celebrities and maybe even global warming, if you manipulate the statistics enough. You can now legitimately add economic collapse to their lists, because cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden Inc. is blaming a terrible fourth-quarter drop on the young pop stars’ signature fragrances. According to the Wall Street Journal, “a larger-than-expected drop” in revenue caused the price of the company’s stock to fall by $5.24, instead of the initial projection of 34 cents. Whoops?
“The decline in sales of celebrity fragrances, particularly the Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift fragrances, was steeper than anticipated,” the company admitted, per the New York Post. Steeper is a bit of an understatement, obviously, as the company’s loss this quarter was $155.9 million. Last year at this time, that number was just $5 million on a stock drop of 17 cents per share. Typically, a difference like that would cause both shareholders and executives to respond… well, I’ll just let Bieber explain.
Sorry, that was probably a little too graphic. Here, I’ll let one of Swift’s backup dancers from the “Shake It Off” music video explain how Elizabeth Arden stockholders are feeling right now.
Well said, backup dancer who caused me to have nightmares last night. In all seriousness, though, if I had to register my own guess as to why nobody’s buying Bieber’s fragrances anymore, it’s because teenage girls finally grew up and realized that if they sprayed themselves, they wouldn’t magically wake up in Bieber’s pipe-cleaner arms.
