US. 2003 will go down as one of the most dramatic years in the history of the Estée Lauder Companies, driven by an at times frenetic pace of new product development, including three of its biggest launches in years – Beyond Paradise, Clinique Simply and Aramis Life.
But Evelyn Lauder, senior corporate vice-president, is surprisingly phlegmatic about all the hype, saying the much talked-about company reinvention is “not so different from cutting my long hair to short hair”.
She explains: “Every two years we reinvent ourselves. Twelve years ago we began to reinvent ourselves at the counter, moving towards more self-service. So we’ve been doing this for many years and it’s part of our success.”
Talking about the group’s mega fragrance launch of 2003, Beyond Paradise, Evelyn Lauder is similarly laid back about the line’s supposedly radical imagery and advertising. “Look at what we did with [late 1990s launch] Intuition. Or go back to 1959 and Youth Dew Bath Oil, which featured a naked woman in a bath”¦ to feature a nude at that time was very radical.”
Nevertheless Beyond Paradise has “accelerated the renewal of the Estée Lauder brand,” in the words of Estée Lauder Companies group president Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne. But Evelyn Lauder says there is no danger of alienating the brand’s traditional more mature consumer base. It’s a case of catering to the “grand-mother, mother and daughter” with different lines and different approaches – and also encouraging each generation to wear more than one line, she argues.
“I always say: “˜Don’t wear the same fragrance all the time, or you’ll get nasal fatigue’,” she laughs.
But whether it represents a re-invention or not, one thing Evelyn Lauder isn’t disputing is Beyond Paradise’s meteoric take-off. Astoundingly, it shot to the top of the NPD select distribution fragrance ratings in the US in September after just one month’s release – a performance unprecedented in the first month of a brand’s launch.
“We never had a hit like this,” she says. “It was exclusive to Saks in August for two weeks and then we rolled it out to all stores in September and sales just leapfrogged. And the most wonderful thing is that it has not cannibalised our other business.”
Then again, no-one has ever doubted the group’s capacity to produce barnstorming domestic launches. But will Beyond Paradise cut it on the international scene, so often a disappointment for Lauder fragrance launches down the years?
Evelyn Lauder, who one suspects does not permit the word “˜pessimistic’ to enter her personal vocabulary, replies: “It’s going to be a knockout everywhere. We have every ethnic group in the world working for us and I think we can’t miss. It can’t not become a true Lauder classic.”
Certainly the line has enjoyed a strong lift-off in travel retail. That’s a channel in which she takes a close interest, both as a consumer and from an executive perspective.
“I buy things that we make in travel retail,” she says, “because you can buy things I can’t find in America, for example combination packs. The quality of the stores is also much better than it used to be and the attitude of our customers [retailers] is also much more interested in co-operation.”
