The Company I Keep by Leonard A. Lauder

Author:Leonard A. Lauder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Business
Published: 2020-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Part III

The Metamorphosis of Beauty

Chapter 13

The Golden Decade

Outside of The Estée Lauder Companies’ manufacturing facility in Melville, New York, 1974

Eugene Mopsik

It’s been a tradition in this industry,” observed Oscar Kolin, Helena Rubinstein’s nephew, who succeeded her as the head of the company, “that when the founding genius or guiding light of a company dies, the marketing structure of that company falls apart.”1

By the 1970s, the twin dowagers were gone: Madame had died in 1965 at the age of ninety-five and her lifelong rival, Elizabeth Arden, had followed her the next year, at eighty-one. Oscar Kolin’s prescience was, unfortunately, right. He made that remark in 1970, the year that pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly acquired Elizabeth Arden. Just three years later, consumer products giant Colgate-Palmolive snapped up Helena Rubinstein.2 Under their new owners, both brands began concentrating on the mass market, losing the cachet their founders had worked so hard to create.

In 1972, at age thirty-nine, I became President of Estée Lauder. My mother was still very much involved in the company but the torch had been officially passed.

I was well aware of the ghosts of famous beauty companies that had faded without their founders at the helm. Madame and Elizabeth Arden were just two in a queue that included Max Factor, Dorothy Gray, Hazel Bishop, and others. I didn’t want that to happen to Estée Lauder.

Once again, I looked to another industry for inspiration. No one had stopped buying IBM products because Tom Watson wasn’t there. I didn’t want us to be another Elizabeth Arden or Helena Rubinstein. I wanted to be another IBM.

We had passed the milestone of $50 million in annual sales by 1970. To give you an idea of our growth rate, our annual sales in 1960 were just a shade over $1.75 million.

Still, it was no time to rest on our laurels. For us, surviving and thriving wasn’t so much an issue of changing the fundamental precepts that had forged our success. It was more about adapting them to the changing times, codifying them and building on them.

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