The secret of Estee Lauder's success
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An Estee Lauder store in Raffles City shopping mall in Shanghai in 2017. A new book by Mr Leonard Lauder details how his mother Estee started the cosmetics firm with nothing but chutzpah and a "super rich all-purpose creme", and how he then built it into a roughly US$89 billion (S$120 billion) company.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
In the midst of taking Estee Lauder public in 1995, Mr Leonard Lauder, the company's then chairman and chief executive, fielded a question from an investment banker during the roadshow.
"If your products are so good," the banker asked Mr Lauder, then in his 60s, "why do you have so many lines on your face?"
