Park Avenue, Wall Street, Worth Avenue, “ladies who lunch” and women who work, teens who aspire, and men who hire: Hats off, everyone, to a great woman who came our way, influenced our lives, and will not be forgotten.
This past April, Estée Lauder, passed away from cardiopulmonary arrest at the age of 97 (an age that she, herself, would not admit to, even in her own 1985 autobiography). She grew up living above her father’s hardware store in Corona, Queens, and rose to be the inspiration and matriarch of an international beauty and cosmetics empire. Her success would eventually support a lifestyle including an Upper East Side townhouse, an oceanfront home in Palm Beach, a London flat, and a villa in the south of France. In 1998, Lauder was the only woman in Time’s special issue “Builders and Titans: Twenty innovators who changed how the world works,” one of five fields of endeavor included in “The Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century.” And she was one of the first women included on the “Forbes 400” list of richest Americans.
The business began like most in the first half of the 20th century, in her home, in her kitchen. There the young Josephine Esther Mentzer, one of six children of Eastern European immigrants, began “cooking up” recipes for skin creams and lotions while still in high school. Sometimes she collaborated with her uncle, John Schotz, a chemist, who had set up a lab in a stable behind their home. The young entrepreneur would try these products out on her friends and began demonstrating and selling them to the women “held captive” under the dryers at local beauty salons. Soon Esther was dabbing creams on the fashionable women as they strolled Fifth Avenue. “If you put the products into the customer’s hands, it will speak for itself if it’s something of quality,” she maintained.
"Beauty is an attitude."
After a public school teacher began spelling her name “Estée,” the name just stuck. In 1930, she married Joseph Lauter (who later changed his name to Lauder), a young accountant from the garment center. They had a son, Leonard, in 1933, divorced in 1939, then remarried in 1942 and had a second son, Ronald, two years later. “I was married very young,” Estée explained. “You think you missed something out of life. But I found out that I had the sweetest husband in the world.”
Soon the “re-marrieds” were partners, founded their company, Estée Lauder, in 1946, and switched their production to a converted restaurant/factory, where they bottled their lotions. Estée proved to be an innovative and persistent sales person, convincing Saks Fifth Avenue executives in 1948 to give her shelf space; her line sold out in two days. Soon stores like Bloomingdale’s, Marshall Field’s, Neiman-Marcus, Harrods in London, and Galeries Lafayette in Paris opened their doors to her, as well. She tirelessly traveled to each new venue, hiring and training her own saleswomen in the technique of providing “personal attention.”
Estée’s marketing strategies were brilliant and still impact the industry today. She was the first to offer a free gift (or incentive) with a purchase in a department store, initially directing a $50,000 nest egg (not large enough to attract an advertising agency) toward financing these giveaways. Sales rose, and soon her competitors were embracing the very policy which they had denounced as something that would put her out of business. She competed fiercely and successfully against cosmetic industry giant Charles Revson, founder of the Revlon empire.
Estée continuously mailed and gave samples to well-known women because she knew that when they pulled them out of their purses, in elegant, smooth, love-to-be-held containers that bespoke excellence, the products would advertise themselves. It was class through association. “I don’t know her very well, but she keeps sending all these things,” said Princess Grace of Monaco, who later became her friend.
Estée Lauder spun dreams—for herself and her consumers. Through luxurious thank-you gifts and incentives (the forerunner of today’s goodie bags), she was the first to lure celebrities, such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, to events, providing them with a stage on which to be seen, and offering guests a brush with greatness — all part of her belief that consumers want to be associated with quality. She courted the women in the upper reaches of society, entertaining them in the grand style at her various homes, befriending them, and gradually slipping into their ranks.
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