The Estée Lauder Companies was founded in New York in 1946 by Estée and Joseph Lauder with four skin care products. Estée sold them through salons and department store counters such as Saks Fifth Avenue, using demonstrations and free samples, and the 1953 launch of Youth-Dew made the company a national brand.
Building a multi-brand portfolio
Clinique followed in 1968 and Night Repair in 1982. From the 1990s the company bought brands rather than only building them, including MAC, Bobbi Brown, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Le Labo, Too Faced, Dr.Jart+, DECIEM and, in 2023, Tom Ford for about $2.8 billion. It went public on the NYSE in 1995, while the Lauder family kept voting control.
Boom and bust in travel retail
Asia travel retail and China drove growth into fiscal 2022, when net sales reached $17.737 billion. As Chinese demand and duty-free sales weakened, sales fell to $14.326 billion in fiscal 2025, and the company reported a $1.133 billion net loss after large impairments.
The fiscal 2026 turnaround
Stéphane de La Faverie became CEO in January 2025 and launched Beauty Reimagined. In fiscal 2026 net sales rose 5% to $15.049 billion, gross margin rose to 75.5% and adjusted operating margin to 11.2%. Merger talks with Puig ended in May 2026, and the company guides to 3% to 5% organic growth in fiscal 2027.
