Tag: beauty

Distribution Channels

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Three stories, the same message.

How Glen Powell ended up with the role of Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick.

How Estée Lauder ended up in Harrods.

David Senra tells the story in Founders #217. First Lauder goes to Harrods. No one talks to her. So, she thinks a little media attention will help. She does some interviews, goes back to Harrods, no one talks to her. She returns to America.

Lauder returns a year later. She asks. ‘No’. More media, she asks again, ““she talks to the same buyer. This is a year later. She was not as quite as hostile, but she says, let me tell you, I have no room here as I told you before, she said, but perhaps I could take a tiny order and put it in with the general toiletries.”

More media, and the customers started to show up.

How Kind Bars ended up in Walmart.

Daniel Lubetzky’s path to starting Kind was long, wandering, and full of two-steps forward one-step back moments. One was the first time Kind got into Walmart. It wasn’t in the bar section. It wasn’t in the health foods. It was in the candy bar section.

This was disappointing but a blessing in disguise. Kind lacked the organizational structure required for serving large customers. The bars took a long time to take off – which was good. Once they did Walmart and Kind ended their partnership. It was too much too soon – but a lesson in what the company needed next.

Everyone is a genius in a bull market, but is it easier to choose bull markets than be a genius?

Perfume Customers

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“So how do I convince women to buy their own perfume? How could I get the American woman to buy her own perfume? I would not call it perfume,” David Senra quotes from A Success Story by Estée Lauder.

In the 1950s and 60s women didn’t buy themselves perfume. Instead, it was a gift and is an example of JTBD’s customers or consumers dynamic.

In Jobs Theory, producers have to solve the job for both the customer and consumer. No one gets fired for buying IBM articulates the customer angle – but leaves out the consumer. Does IBM serve the job for users (and later, investors)? ymmv

But Lauder did something different. Rather than address the concerns of both groups, she took a page (or inspired one!) from The 22 Immutable Laws of Advertising. Or in the words of Ricky Bobby, if you ain’t first, you’re last.

David again, from A Success Story:

“I would call it Youth-Dew, a bath oil that dubbed as a skin perfume. That would be acceptable to buy because it was feminine, all American, and very girl next door to take baths, wasn’t it? And so think about the difference in size of bath oil, how many ounces you would sell compared to the size of like a perfume or cologne.

We created a mini revolution in the whole world. As I saw it took on a fresher, more stimulating aspect. Instead of using their French perfumes by the drop behind the ear, women were using Youth-Dew by the bottle in their bath water.

It doesn’t take a graduate school of business to figure out that that meant sales, beautiful sales. In 1953, Youth-Dew did about 50,000 worth of business for us. In 1984, that figure was over 150 million dollars.”

Beautiful.