Lime Crime's founder has officially responded to the #BoycottLimeCrime scandal.

If you’re not a makeup junkie or a regular Instagram user, you’re probably blissfully unaware of the huge scandal that’s rocked the beauty world in recent months.

Right in the epicentre of this Insta-drama is a Los Angeles-based makeup company called Lime Crime. Known for its brightly coloured products and distinctive unicorn logo, Lime Crime prides itself on “producing the most kick-ass, true-to-colour, cruelty-free cosmetics.”

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Despite this promise, a movement to boycott the company has swept across social media — petitions have been signed by thousands of angry customers, while the hashtags #BoycottLimeCrime and #Throwyourglitterdowntheshitter have attracted waves of Instagram and Tumblr posts. (Post continues after gallery.)

Many of the customers calling for the boycott were victims of security breaches and alleged credit card theft that recently affected Lime Crime’s website, but these weren’t the only issues that spawned the backlash. In fact, the company has been surrounded by controversy since it launched.

As this Tumblr post comprehensively details, Lime Crime customers have reported issues with faulty and repackaged products, cultural appropriation, use of uncredited images, and perhaps most damning of all, founder Doe Deere’s approach to customer service. Screenshots of nasty comments and responses from Deere are circulating online; in one, she refers to her customers as “imbeciles”:

“If you wanna spend your money on low quality, mass produced pigments from M.A.C,” she says, “go right ahead. It’s no skin off my nose. I’ll still be making more cash than most of you imbeciles.

You can read more in our report here.

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Having remained relatively silent until now, Deere has now posted an official response to the scandal, reassuring customers that her company’s data security issues have been addressed. Here’s her lengthy update in full:

“Like most businesses, ours isn’t perfect. But we never give up and always strive to improve! As the founder and CEO, the data breach we suffered was, without a doubt, the most challenging time of my life. Criminals stole from us and our customers. Our world was upended. Many of our customers’ worlds were upended. We felt the pain for ourselves and all the innocent people who were affected. (Post continues after gallery.)

“There have been NO security breaches on our site since the problem was fixed on February 15th. They say, ‘the safest place to eat is a restaurant that just had a food poisoning scare’ – I think that describes the situation perfectly. We brought in a new team of Security Experts and partnered with Trustwave and Norton to make limecrime.com the makeup equivalent of Fort Knox! (Click the certificates, located on the bottom of the site, to see how they work.) In addition, when you sign in to your account, you should see a snazzy little green icon next to our URL that says “Lime Crime, Inc.: Identity verified” – I personally think it’s pretty cool.

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“This cyberattack was a wake-up call. It caused us to reevaluate every aspect of our business – and fueled all of us to make it better. New internal Management was brought in to make some strategic changes so that we can immediately provide you with a better, safer brand experience. For the next six months, we will be focused on creating a steady stream of new products, extraordinary digital interfaces and the best customer service you could possibly imagine. Thank you for being our customer and our forever inspiration! ?? Sincerely – @DoeDeere.”

Although many of Lime Crime and Deere's Instagram followers were pleased with this update and pledged loyalty to the brand, others were less willing to forget and forgive its history of 'sins' and called out Deere's lack of a sincere apology.

"Your company is nothing without its customers... Just remember that next time you feel like you want to talk down to them," one poster wrote.

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"It's the straw that broke the camels back to all of your previous bad business practices, lying about product authenticity, disgusting customer service, and just proving to be an all round unreliable and untrustworthy company," another said.

Judging by this response, Lime Crime's troubles are far from over.

Have you ever bought from Lime Crime? How was your experience?