The day Bobbi Brown (Chicago, 66 years old) was put on the table the non-competition contract, she did not have too many doubts. He had just given the ball of his life, he was 38 years old and he thought that, by the time he expired, he would have already turned 60 and would not want to continue working. So he signed. In October 2020, just after the draconian agreement that prevented him from putting his knowledge at the service of a cosmetic firm other than the one that bore his name for a quarter of a century had expired, he had a pendant made with the date 10/20, which looks around his neck ever since to remind him what it means to be free.
“First there is the feeling of loss. Later, comes the rage”, has recognized the one who was once acclaimed as “the make-up artist of the people”. Brown, who in 1995 sold his eponymous beauty brand to the giant Estée Lauder for about 68 million euros – almost 145 million at the current exchange rate according to accumulated inflation -, returned to his own rights three years ago, at 63, with a new cosmetic company that has more than compensated her for corporate hardships. jones road, is called the weapon made up of his revenge. In 2021, she was earning around 20 million euros, multiplying by 10 the just two invested in launching the company with her partner and her husband, real estate lawyer Steven Plofker. Today it is news because it is estimated that the benefits obtained at the end of this fiscal year will reach 100 million, according to figures from the Beauty Matters consultancy. “I had promised myself never to get involved in a multi-billion dollar company again, but it seems that’s the way to go.” assured in a recent interview for Financial Times about his brilliant success.
The fact is that with Brown it has always been the same. New to the New York catwalk and the de rigueur photo shoots, the makeup artist (actually a makeup artist, with a degree in Theatrical Makeup from Emerson College, Boston, in 1979) lamented the products on the market—too greasy, too shiny. , smelly even -, and he asked a chemist from Kiehl’s to test one of the formulations he was testing. The expert’s response was to create a small hydrating foundation line and go halfway. They began to distribute it among models and friends and then the magazine Glamor was interested in the find. And then the Bergdorf Goodman department store. By 1991, he was already operating in a laboratory in the Queens neighborhood with his own label, Bobbi Brown Essentials, the seed of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. In just four years, he was behind Estée Lauder, worried about the ground that was eating him in shopping malls across the United States.
In the minimalist nineties, less is more, Bobbie Brown was the cult brand to turn to, the one of the no makeup makeup (makeup-no makeup). That, added to a revolutionary collection of lipsticks formulated based on the natural colors of all types of mouths (here is a pioneer, not only in making commercial beauty available to different ethnic groups, but also in knowing what each one needs), made it in a phenomenon. “I didn’t invent lipstick, but I reinvented it somehow,” she boasts, not without reason. In the end, her acquisition by Estée Lauder seemed like the natural next step, especially as the founder was promised creative direction. sine die, which allowed him to continue innovating with an inexhaustible financial cushion that took his worries away. Until he ran smack into the male executive wall.
Brown still remembers being surrounded in boardrooms by men waving their fingers in her face, like she was a child who didn’t know anything. She just watched them and learned what not to do. In 2006, with the brand billing 500 million euros, she managed to take the office out of the corporate complex, allowing her employees to wear jeans and bring their pets to work. In 2016, fed up with being passed over with any products that were taken out of her sleeve without consulting her, she felt that she could not continue pulling the car (already at 1,000 million) and took the door, with the non-competition agreement in force . “That was no longer the brand that she had created to be something unique,” she admitted in an interview with the magazine inc. last may. She spent the next two years raging, her hands tied, but then she got her nutritionist degree and, again, eureka: in 2018, she launched Evolution_18, a wellness and inner beauty line (vitamins, collagen complexes) that would put her on the track that would end at Jones Road. “I was at an organic cosmetics conference in California and I thought, ‘I can do this better.’
In Montclair, the wealthy suburb of New Jersey where she has made her home since she raised her family, Bobbi Brown is no longer a desperate housewife who kills time redecorating fancy hotels (like The George, which she renovated with her husband). In addition to her dividends, her current cosmetic endeavor now has 43 employees and she continues to expand her social media domain, appealing equally to young Zetas without resources and to boomers as possible, speaking directly to women. Hello, this is Bobbi Brown. I’m new to TikTokSo you have to help me. Tell me what you would like to see ”, it was presented at the beginning of 2022.
Since then, the hashtag #NoMakeupMakeupLook It has accumulated more than eight and a half million visits. “The truth is that we don’t have a business plan or a long-term strategy. We can grow or not,” she says. What is clear to him is that he does not want more investors. Nor give in to the comforts of the market. And, much less, sold to another large conglomerate. “It’s nice to know that these things I waste time on inspire people,” concludes the makeup artist. Be careful, because in September she will launch the first Jones Road fragrance.
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