If at first you don’t succeed, try try again

If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

Estée Lauder imposed herself on the cosmetics world despite being rebuffed repeatedly when she tried to get her own counter at Saks Fifth Avenue department store.

Born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Queens, New York in 1906, Estée Lauder went on to forge the world’s most successful cosmetics empire. Lauder believed she “was growing a nice, little business.” By 2003 her “little” business was worth $10bn and its product range now sells in 130 countries.

The daughter of Hungarian immigrants got her big break at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1948 through sheer persistence. She prospered thereafter thanks to her uncle, a chemist, whose cosmetics she used, and her now legendary sales expertise.

Unable to advertise, Lauder instead offered free gifts to customers, an innovation since replicated across the industry. Customer service was central to her ethos. Even in her autumn years the doyenne of cosmetics would turn up at Saks on a Saturday afternoon and dispense sales advice to staff. “I have never worked a day in my life without selling, she once said. “If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.”

She also believed in beauty: “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 are attractive.”
Just because she stood up for the everywoman, however, it didn’t mean she wanted to hang out with them. When she held extravagant parties, it was rich, beautiful celebrities she invited round. She could be bitchy about her peers though. She derided Elizabeth Arden’s lack of generosity and called another competitor, Charles Revson, her “arch and implacable enemy”.

Up until the age of 87, when she broke her hip, Lauder continued to play an active role. She died, aged 97, in April 2004. Thus, “a chapter from the American business folklore,” – as Time magazine has called the Estée Lauder story – was closed.

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