American beauty company, home to a range of high-end brands typically found in department stores. Its boss, Stéphane de La Faverie, points out that people buy its products to help them "feel confident". Leonard Lauder, an American beauty tycoon from the founding family, coined the "lipstick effect"—the tendency of consumers to splurge on small indulgences during tough times. Estée Lauder has acquired The Ordinary, a brand offering products with high concentrations of active ingredients at relatively low prices, known for plain bottles with clinical labels. It is still controlled by its founding family.
The firm's market value rose from $16bn in 2010 to $133bn in 2021 before sliding back to $31bn—a seventh of L'Oréal's value. Sales in 2025 were $14.7bn, down 17% from their peak four years earlier even as the wider beauty business has boomed. Its 2010s success owed much to China's daigou trade—shoppers buying products in bulk abroad, often at duty-free outlets such as the Hainan port, and reselling them at home. A 2019 Chinese crackdown on daigou and the post-pandemic slump in Chinese consumer sentiment hit the firm hard. Acquisitions in that era disappointed: Dr Jart's revenue fell from an estimated $500m in 2019 to around $150m in 2025; Becca Cosmetics was shut in 2021.
Mr de La Faverie was appointed boss in 2024 after his cousin Jane Lauder lost a family fight to take over from Fabrizio Freda, the long-serving boss. He has expanded sales on Amazon, TikTok Shop and Sephora, and is shedding as many as 10,000 jobs—more than a sixth of the workforce. First-quarter 2026 revenue rose 2% year on year. In May 2026 he was reported to be planning a roughly $6bn takeover bid for Puig, a Catalan beauty firm with strength in Europe, Latin America and perfumes.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.