Full Name: Ms. Josephine Esther Menzer
Date of Birth: July 1, 1908
Place of Birth: Corona, Queens, USA
Died: April 24, 2004
Place of Death: New York City, New York, USA
Classification: Builders & Titans
Selling products in her father’s New York City hardware store and concocting lotions and formulas with her chemist uncle gave Estee Lauder all the practice she would need for her future career as America’s most renowned beauty products supplier. Her innovative marketing skills, chosen niche, and quality products lured women into buying her fashionable, sometimes exotic cosmetics.
Estee Lauder believed every woman was beautiful. She also worked to promote her theme by even getting men to buy her lines. In her ‘Tell a Woman’ campaign, she would have appealing sales staff talk to men about her cosmetics, which caused them to buy it for their wives. This sort of audacity and willingness to do whatever it took to have a display in New York’s finest stores caused the Estee Lauder name to spread like wildfire.
Although her birthday is sometimes debated, she married Joseph Lauter in 1930. The two changed their name to Lauder, had a son, and continued marketing their products. They were able to hold through and make sales even through the Great Depression. After Estee and her husband divorced, she moved to Miami, Florida to sell her products to wealthy vacationers. The two were re-married later and had another son. Her products were successful because of her endless work at targeting the top stores in New York. Eventually, she personally opened stores in Texas and California.
One of her biggest successes was the release of her first fragrance in 1953 called Young Dew, with sales toppling $5 million a year within the first ten years of business. As business grew, she expanded her own reach, opening cosmetic lines targeted at men. One highly popular men’s item is the cologne Aramis. She also unveiled Clinique, a cosmetic line that serves both sexes. As revealed in the autobiography of Estee Lauder, entitled Estee, A Success Story, she laments about how much effort and energy it took her to build her empire. She doesn’t claim that her rise to the top wasn’t worth it, but she did wish she had more time for her family. Her family, however, continues to run the business with as much momentum and fervor that Estee was known to possess.
