Estee Lauder - saleswoman that became the queen of cosmetics.

Estee Lauder lived the American Dream. Born to Hungarian immigrants in an apartment above her fathers hardware store in Queens, New York,  she created within her lifetime a global cosmetics and perfumes empire. Today, in the U.S alone, almost half of all cosmetics sold are Estée Lauder products.

Determined to give women the opportunity to feel beautiful.

Right from a young age, Josephine Esther Mentzer, born in 1908, was educated to take care of her skin. Her mother often warned the young Estée, a childhood nickname, against the harmful effects of the sun. Her uncle, who was a chemist and created face creams on a small scale, discouraged her from using detergent soaps on her face and showed her how to make the cream that would eventually bear her name.

Estée Lauder was first and foremost a saleswoman. She started her career in cosmetics selling the face creams made by her uncle to shops and beauty parlors in New York and later at beach resorts in Miami, Florida. After marrying Joseph Lauter in 1930, she began using the Lauder spelling of her surname to label her  beauty products

However she always wanted to break into the big department store market and successfully started in 1948 opening in Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. Soon after, she opened in several other department stores across the country and eventually around the globe. She always opened these new stores herself and personally trained the sales staff. One of her most well known quotes was 'If you don't sell, its not the product that's wrong, its you'.

Two key elements to Estee Lauder's success were a personal interest in the client and free giveaways. She wanted women to feel beautiful and believed that any woman could achieve it if they wanted to. She also pioneered the free sample as a marketing ploy. With every purchase she would include a free lipstick. In the early years she also relied heavily on recommendations. Women would try her products, like them and tell their friends.

In 1953 she released her first womens fragrance called Youth Dew. Later she added Azurée, White Linen, Beautiful and more recently Pleasures. In 1965 she ventured into the male cosmetics line with Aramis. She later introduced a fragrance-free range of cosmetics called Clinique specifically designed for skin care. Under the Clinique name she later produced one of the most popular womens and mens fragrances called Happy

In April 2004 Estee Lauder died at her apartment in New York aged 96. The various lines that now come under the Estee Lauder marque read like a cosmetics who's who - Prescriptives, Clinique, Origins, Aramis, Aveda, M.A.C., Bobbi Brown Essentials and Tommy Hilfiger  designer fragrances.