"I have never worked a day in my life without selling."
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.”
This grand dame leaves a tremendous legacy behind. Her son, Leonard, is Chairman of the Board; his son William, now COO, will take over as CEO from the retiring Fred Langhammer on July 1. Estée’s son, Ronald, is Chairman of Estée Lauder International and Clinque Laboratories and Chairman and President of Lauder Investments. Leonard’s wife, Evelyn, is a Senior Corporate Vice President, Head of Fragrance Development Worldwide, and Director of The Lauder Foundation; she established The Breast Cancer Research Foundation in 1993. Three other grandchildren (Aerin, Jane, and Gary) all hold key positions within the company.
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. remain a working woman’s dream, where businesswomen can be mothers, and business meetings take place in conference rooms resembling dining rooms. “Beauty is an attitude,” Estée once said. “There’s no secret. Why are all brides beautiful? Because on their wedding day they care about how they look. There are no ugly women — only women who don’t care or who don’t believe they’re attractive.”
Ambition. Focus. Innovation. Global thinking. Personal attention. Incentives. Quality. Refinement. Success. Estée’s vision was an inspiration to women and marketers everywhere. How did she explain the phenomenon? “I have never worked a day in my life without selling,” she said simply. “If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.”
At the elegant memorial at Lincoln Center for Estée in mid-May, Leonard Lauder told the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser, “If she’d had a chance to talk with God, she would have talked him into letting her live forever.”
Yes, it’s hats off to this innovative woman and her passion for beauty, who carefully followed a dream to start her own business, then marketed it with sophistication and class, personalized it with incentives and individual attention, and catapulted it into history. “If you have a goal, if you want to be successful, if you really want to do it and become another Estée Lauder,” she once said, “you’ve got to work hard, you’ve got to stick to it, you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing.”
Her passion lives on...
