I know – it’s been a while, but somehow writing the BBN became a bit of a sticking point in my head – I just couldn’t put myself in the right frame for it. However, hopefully better late than never, here it is at last, with CEO shuffling dominating.
With Aesop’s CEO, Michael O’Keefe standing down, and ELC President of Global Travel Retail, Israel Assa, gone, the biggest top level shuffle came right at the end of 2024 when Jane Lauder exited her role as Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Enterprise Marketing. Various news outlets reported on this, citing ‘tensions within the Lauder family’ as the cause, but leaked emails seem to show that prior to leaving after being passed over for the CEO role (now held by Stephane de La Faverie who replaces Fabrizio Freda who is headed for retirement), Jane was very keen for the board to divest itself of William Lauder, her cousin. And, they did. So, this year sees Estee Lauder Companies without a family member in a senior position for the first time ever. All this unseemly scuffling sent share prices down and eyebrows up. As something of a back story from the UK side, ELC opened some very swishy offices in central London to grand fanfare, but it wasn’t long before some of the floors were either sold or leased to other companies and redundancies were happening left, right and centre. The ELC approach to social media was poor – they were late to the party and not ready when they finally emerged with presence to embrace it in a way that resonated with consumers. They thought that social media meant they had to find a younger clientele and all their energies went to the youth demographic, horribly neglecting their OG consumers who had been loyal to the core. They invested in China which didn’t go as well as predicted. By downgrading traditional media for social media, not only did they lose their best press officers in favour of digital outreach execs, they lost the favour of the press. What an absolute mess.
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A popular topic for journalists is whether the demise of Goop is imminent or not. Gwynneth has stirred the flames further with her most recent newsletter in which, following a numerology reading, she learned she was in a year of ‘completions and endings’. She also says, ‘I’ve learned to loosen my grip on things and deeply learn to let go. And also to understand that everything is always happening for your highest good, even if it’s super uncomfortable.’ Hmm. Watch this space.
Charlotte Tilbury is due to open (this very day, I think) her new London flagship store which will include a skin spa. At the same time, Puig, majority shareholders of the brand, have announced that their partnership has been renewed to ensure that Puig assumes full owndership of the brand by 2031. Currently, Tilbury is still a minority shareholder and investors who stand to cash out include Samos Investments, Sequoia Capital, and Venrex Investment Management.
You may not have heard of Brand Architekts, but they’re responsible for building (aka inventing) many of the high street brands that you’ll instantly recognize and are valued at £13.88m. Super Facialist, Skinny Tan and Dirty Works are probably the most commonly known. They’ve been bought by Warpaint London who produce budget make-up brands, W7 and Technic. This opens up more distribution channels for SF, ST and DW as well as giving Warpaint a foothold in skincare.
King Charles is not messing about – a recent updated supplier list for the Royal Household saw Boots, Clarins, Elizabeth Arden and Unilever all lose their Royal Warrants. I can’t see any of the brands minding too much in reality, but it carved out some negative press that none of them would have been happy with, especially the notoriously smug brand, Clarins.
In class action fun, L’Oreal has six US lawsuits pending regarding CeraVe, Clinique and assorted acne treatments. The products causing the problem are benzoyl peroxide led acne slayers which can react to form benzene, a carcinogenic. Those bringing the class actions suggest that the benzene levels in the aforementioned brand products are too high to be safe. L’Oreal are not the only company to use benzoyl peroxide so there will be implications for any manufacturer producing acne treatments with this ingredient.
Even more L’Oreal news – they’ve finally sold Decleor after ceasing production back in the autumn of last year. The buyer is a new brand building company called Cospal, headed up by Matthieu Lesieur who has links to the brand as his father bought it in the 1980s before selling it to Shiseido (who sold it to L’Oreal). It is reportedly going to be ‘reinvented from scratch’ and I feel quite excited to see what direction the brand will now take and when it will re-emerge.
And finishing with L’Oreal and their first to market Skin Analysis Tool, Cell BioPrint, which will tell you, via the skin cells taken from a strip of tape ripped from your face, how well (or not) you’re going to age. For more analysis and thoughts on this one, head to my Substack HERE.
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