Estee Lauder, the cosmetics industry pioneer, died over the weekend at her home in New York. Her family said she was 97.
The company she established was estimated to be worth about $5 billion when it went public in 1995 (and she was given the title of founding chairwoman). In 2003, it had 21,500 employees and an estimated worth of about $10 billion. Its products are sold in more than 130 countries across five continents.
The company began in 1946, but the roots of the empire go back to the 1920s, with facial creams concocted over a gas stove in a modest kitchen by Lauder’s uncle, John Schotz. Later, with financial and technical development from Dutch industrialist Arnold van Ameringen, the company grew exponentially.
In the 1950s, Lauder and van Ameringen introduced a bath oil called Youth-Dew. Over the years, Lauder marketed a variety of other beauty aids, among them Super-Rich All Purpose Creme, Cleaning Oil, Creme Pack and a skin lotion (all of them the creations of Schotz). In all, she marketed some 2000 individual shades and items produced by five Lauder companies: Estee Lauder, Clinique, Origins, Prescriptives and (for men) Aramis. Among the fragrances she introduced were Estee (1968), Azuree (1969), Aliage (1972), Private Collection (1973), Beautiful (1985) and Pleasures (1995).
In 1995 the company also entered into a licensing agreement with the Tommy Hilfiger Corp. (Hong Kong) to market Tommy, a line of fragrances, and with Make-Up Artists Cosmetics (Toronto) to distribute its MAC products outside North America.
Josephine Esther Mentzer — called Estee — was born in Corona, N.Y. Several biographies give the date as July 1, 1908, although her family believes it may have been two years earlier. She was the daughter of Max Mentzer, a hardware man who was the proprietor of a hay and seed store, and Rose Schotz Rosenthal Mentzer, a woman who was much interested in beauty regimens.
In her 1985 autobiography, “Estee, A Success Story,” Lauder recalled her mother as “a Hungarian beauty whose mother was a French Catholic and whose father was a Hungarian Jew.” She described her father as “an elegant, dapper monarchist in Europe, who, when transported to a new country, still carried a cane and gloves on Sundays.”
As a young girl, Estee, a petite blonde, was known for her lovely skin and her determination to always look good. This determination was heightened when, as a student at Newtown High School in Queens, she became interested in the work of her uncle, John Schotz. He had come to the United States from Hungary in 1900 with considerable training in chemistry. People referred to him as Dr. Schotz, although it is not clear that he had a doctorate. Whatever his background, he created a number of beauty products, including Six-in-One Cold Cream, Dr. Schotz Viennese Cream and a number of fragrances.
Lauder studied her uncle’s homemade products closely and, since Schotz was no businessman, helped him to sell them. She was still promoting them in 1930 when she married Joseph Lauter. (The name was changed to “Lauder” later in the decade.) They were divorced in 1939, but remarried in 1942 and remained together until his death in 1982.
She is survived by her sons, Leonard A., the chairman of the company, and Ronald S., chairman of Clinique Laboratories; four grandchildren, including William, who will become ceo of the Estee Lauder Companies on July 1; and six great-grandchildren.
In 1944, the Lauders opened concessions in beauty salons in New York and sold products to out-of-town salons through jobbers. The concessions were closed in 1946 and gradually the company sold to stores like Saks Fifth Avenue. That helped to give her products the prestigious aura they needed for more aggressive marketing. The introduction of Youth-Dew and Lauder’s sales expertise combined to take the company from a sales volume of around $400 a week to around $5000 in the early 1950s. By 1958, when Leonard joined the company, sales had soared to about $800,000 a year.