Estée Lauder was long celebrated as a pioneer in prestige beauty, building a global empire on the strength of family legacy, innovative product lines, smart acquisitions and a high-touch in-store experience. However in recent years, the company has lost its wat on each of those strategies, leaving it poorly equipped to stay on top of rapidly shifting consumer tastes.

In its latest earnings call, new CEO Stéphane de La Faverie candidly acknowledged that the company had “lost its agility,” and promised to quickly implement an ambitious modernisation plan. The Debrief explores how Estée Lauder’s legacy is now proving to be a burden, and how it can still overcome its challenges.

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Holding around 86% of the voting rights, Estée Lauder’s tight family control helped maintain a tight focus on prestige beauty, but has contributed to a risk-averse culture that caused the company to miss out on important trends. “A lot of their beliefs are around beauty being a prestige category and a prestige experience and that being the way to win,” says Morosini. “That message in the wider beauty consumer base has been diluted a little bit. People are much more open to shopping for products in different ways and from different kinds of founders. They didn't really let go of their values.”

Estée Lauder also made a big bet on China, at one point deriving 25 percent of its sales from the market. However, when demand cooled post-COVID, it exposed weaknesses in its home market strategy. "Not only did the China business really, really sharply decline, but when the Chinese market took a really big hit, it exposed just how much they had neglected their home market of the US and just how much market share they had ceded without anyone really realising,” says Morosini.

The company’s new CEO, Stéphane de La Faverie, is spearheading a major strategic overhaul with his "Beauty Reimagined" plan. This vision aims to reinvigorate the brand by streamlining the corporate structure, tripling the pace of innovation, and placing an obsessive focus on the consumer. "They've created more of a skincare brand cluster, a makeup brand cluster, and they've also really simplified the geographic way that they're dividing up the markets and who's overseeing them. I think that could lead to greater agility and better sort of more targeted marketing for each region," says Morosini.

Estée Lauder’s model of fuelling growth through brand acquisitions is increasingly unsustainable in today’s volatile market. The company's ability to innovate and adapt has been hampered by heightened domestic competition and an unpredictable economic climate. "I think as time has gone on, it's just got harder and harder because the competition, especially in the US in their domestic market has really, really ramped up. And they don't seem able to accurately forecast what's gonna happen next,” says Morosini. “It's really hard to convince people that something that's been around for a long time is actually cool."

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