Jo Malone by Jo Malone

Author:Jo Malone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

EIGHTEEN

Informal discussions had actually been taking place in the background since 1995, twelve months after opening Walton Street and before Bergdorf Goodman’s approach. We hadn’t told a soul because Estée Lauder had recently become a public company, so confidentiality was imperative. And, as someone who likes to keep her cards close to her chest until there is something to say, that suited me, too.

One journalist would later note that the cosmetic titan entered our lives under the radar, ‘slowly but quietly’ – and that aptly describes the tempo of our unhurried dance as they courted us and we weighed their intentions, long before active negotiations began.

Acquisitions are a bit like marriages: regardless of the instant attraction, you need to think with your head as well as the heart. You need to feel a synergy and you need to trust the other party implicitly, because the union is supposed to be for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Estée Lauder looked attractive and promised an exciting future, but Gary and I were in no mood to rush in; we wanted to explore every detail to the nth degree, which was why, with everything else going on, it turned into such an elongated process.

Our dance had started as most interactions do – with a business card.

Four suited executives entered the shop towards the end of business one day in the winter of 1995. One of them, a tall, bespectacled, grey-haired gentleman, did all the talking but didn’t exactly make the purpose of his visit explicit. They, too, were checking us out, placing a toe in the water. The most he said was how they had been watching our growth with interest, and how they would be ‘interested in having a conversation at your convenience’. With that, he slid his business card, face down, across the desk.

I didn’t turn it over in front of him. After all, this wasn’t the first confident suit that had wandered in – we’d had buyers and venture capitalists in before, not to mention the mystery man with the million-dollar offer on day one. But once they had left, I looked at the card: Bob Nielsen, Head of Prescriptives Division, Estée Lauder Corporation.

My heart went boomph!

I rang Gary. The next day, he made the phone call. Within a week or two, Bob returned with another of the executives from that first visit – Pamela Baxter. When you think of the humanness behind a corporation, you think of someone like Pamela, a bob-haired, Coco Chanel look-a-like, who I loved the second we were introduced. She had recently overseen the launch of two Tommy Hilfiger fragrances – Tommy and Tommy Girl – so it was clear that Lauder was exploring different avenues in fragrance. I assumed Walton Street to be one such avenue, but both Pamela and Bob, and various other executives who came through our doors over the coming months, never went beyond expressing an interest in ‘ways we could work together’. They made all the right noises but we remained none the wiser.

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