Estée Lauder- the story and philosophy behind the success of a leading beauty brand

The Estée Lauder Companies Inc
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. is one of the world’s leading manufacturers, marketers, and sellers of quality skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products. The company’s products are sold in approximately 150 countries and territories under brand names including: Estée Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Lab Series, Origins, M·A·C, La Mer, Bobbi Brown, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Bumble and bumble, Darphin Paris, TOM FORD, Smashbox, AERIN Beauty, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, GLAMGLOW, KILIAN PARIS, Too Faced, Dr.Jart+, and the DECIEM family of brands, including The Ordinary and NIOD.

The founder and the company’s development history

You have probably heard once or twice this saying: “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” Yes, that was the author of that famous saying is Estée Lauder- the founder and owner of the Estée company.

Estée Lauder is not only a successful entrepreneur but also a happy wife with a full family. Lauder was the only woman on Time magazine’s 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century.

Josephine Esther Mentzer was Estée Lauder’s birthname when she was born in 1908.

She was raised by her Hungarian mother, Rose, and Czech father, Max in Queens, New York. The name Estée was a variation of her nickname, Esty. When she was in high school, her Hungarian uncle came to live with her family and created velvety skin creams, first in the kitchen, then in a laboratory in a stable out back. This awakened her passion in beauty products. From her uncle, Estée learned how to make the exquisite creams and also how to apply them on women’s faces.

Estée met Joseph Lauter in the late 1920s. In 1930, they were married and moved to Manhattan. Shortly after, the couple corrected a typo that had existed since Joseph’s father had immigrated from Austria to the US by taking the surname Lauder.

Estée began her career as a skin care and makeup saleswoman in salons, where she would demonstrate her products women as they sat under hair dryers. She and Joseph Lauder officially established the company in 1946, and a year later they received their first major order from Saks Fifth Avenue for products valued $800.

Until the 1950s, most women saved fragrance for special occasions. A woman would wait for her husband to give her perfume on her birthday or anniversary. Estée wanted to make it possible for women to purchase their own perfume, so in 1953 she developed Youth-Dew, a bath oil that also served as a skin perfume. The cosmetics industry was sharply changed by this innovation, which also changed the way fragrance was sold and made the small start-up company into a multimillion-dollar business.

The business’s annual income peaked in 1957 at $800,000.

In 1960, the company opened its first international account with London’s Harrods department store. It established a Hong Kong office the following year.
In 1964, Aramis, the first prestige men’s fragrance and treatment brand was created.

In 1968, the company expanded again, opening Clinique, a dermatologist-guided (Dr. Norman Orentreich), allergy-tested, fragrance-free cosmetic brand. Later, the company developed a few other brands, including Origins, Prescriptives, and Lab Series.

In 1976, Estée Lauder’s Clinique brand launched a separate line for males called “Skin Supplies for Men,” which is still offered at Clinique counters all around the world. This made them the first women’s cosmetic company to do so. The company’s products started to be sold in the Soviet Union in 1981.

November 17, in 1995, the Estée Lauder company went public and saw the stock increase 33% by the end of the day.

In the 1990s, brand acquisitions and licensing agreements contributed to explosive growth as the company transformed from a family-owned business to a publicly traded, family-controlled organization. Some of those are the acquisitions of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics in 1995, MAC Cosmetics in 1998, Jo Malone London (1999).