From billion-dollar brand to blank slate: Bobbi Brown’s comeback

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1:28I'm not going to want to work. So who cares? As a young entrepreneur, Bobbi Brown sold her then-budding cosmetics company, and it grew into a billion-dollar brand. And as it turned out, 25 years later, when that non-compete was finally over, she wasn't ready to retire. Not even close. Instead, Bobbi dove headfirst into building a new beauty company. She quickly learned that things work differently in the age of TikTok influencers. I said, I'm a makeup artist. I love to learn new things. And I dug my hands in the foundation and I put them on my face and I just started cracking up. And that went viral.

2:15And I learned a new term because everyone that watched it said, you know, Bobby Brown clapped back. I didn't know what a clap back was, but apparently I clapped back.

2:30You've got to have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going home. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of a three-bedroom apartment. Stuff that just seems absolutely nut balls. Ten years later, we're like, well, that's just how you do it. We have it made just how you do it. This is Masters of Scale.

3:07I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, Bobbi Brown. She built her namesake company, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, into an icon in the world of beauty. But after a rocky split with her parent company, Bobbi had to start over in her 60s. Now she's back in startup mode with Jones Road Beauty. Bobbi Brown, welcome to Masters of Scale. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to talking to you. I'd like to start by going all the way back. Why beauty? I wasn't very good at accounting. And honestly, my mother was the one that just said, what's your passion? What could you do if today was your birthday?

3:46And I said, I'd love to go play with makeup at the department store. She said, why don't you make that your life's work? And I said, that's a great idea. How do you get from that mom advice to actually launching your own brand? Well, I went to college. My third college was at Emerson College in Boston. And I went there because they let me design my own major, which is a major in theatrical makeup and a minor in photography. I moved to New York and started cold calling people that I found in the yellow pages and built a portfolio and asked a lot of questions. I've always been incredibly curious.

4:26And I've also been not afraid to ask people to please explain it to me. How do you do this? How does this work? So I started as a freelance makeup artist in New York, and I did that for about seven years until I fortuitously met a chemist and created a lipstick. Not everyone fortuitously meets a chemist. So how did you put yourself in position to meet a chemist at that point in your career? I said yes to a job. You know, when you're a freelance makeup artist, you get jobs for the day. So this was a job where I was taking a women's magazine, Self Magazine, makeup shopping to alternative places in New York.

5:05And one of the places was Kiel's Pharmacy. And there was a chemist there. And like I asked questions. I talked to him. And I told him how unhappy I was with traditional lipsticks. And I used to always fix them. And he said, oh, I could probably make one for you. And so that's how I made my first lipstick. Why were you unhappy with the traditional lipsticks at that time? And what year is this? Will you just situate us? This is 1990. Could have even been 89. I was pregnant with my first baby. I was living in the suburbs of New Jersey, even though I worked in New York. And that was a thing that didn't happen back then.

5:42People just didn't work in the New York fashion and go home to New Jersey. But I did. And why I didn't like the lipsticks that were out there? most lipsticks were just greasy and smelled bad and bad colors. You know, as a makeup artist, I was always mixing my own to make them more palatable to what I liked. And I always liked a natural look. I was just prone to do makeup in a natural way. And I showed them and told them what I wanted. I pulled out of my kit, because I was working that day, the three things I mixed together to get this color that I wanted for my lips. I never thought this was going to be anything except it was going to be a lipstick for me that I would love.

6:25So it was kind of a browny, plummy tone, didn't have any smell at all. I wanted it creamy, not greasy. I didn't want it dry. And I wanted it dense so that when I put it on my bottom lip, I could smack them together. So I explained all that to him. And we looked at a couple, you know, existing lipsticks. And then And he said, all right, give me your address. And he started sending me things. And then I would call him and say, yes, but this. Or why don't you do that one and that one? So, you know, I gave him direction how I wanted it. So he sent it to me and I'm like, wow, this is exactly what I'm looking for.

7:01And he said, well, I said, I bet we could sell this. And he said, we'll sell them for$15. You'll take$750. I'll take$750. We'll split it. So basically what he was saying was, okay, you have to do the marketing, the PR, the shipping, analytics. I'm just going to supply you. All those words, I didn't know what they were at the time, you know, PR and marketing and analytics. And then I realized, wow, people would love this. And then I said, not everyone's going to love this. Some people have darker lips. Some people have lighter lips. Some people have pinker lips. And we went back and forth and I added a red, a pink and an orange and a D.

7:43And then I came up with this concept. I said, this is a line of lipstick like designed by a makeup artist. And I'm going to teach women how they could mix and blend these colors to get almost any tone they wanted. And they would never have to buy another lipstick. and we had 10 lipsticks that we started selling out of my house where my husband would run to the post office and mail them and they became very popular. My sister-in-law eventually had to come and do the books. She was a teacher and when she was done with school, she came over and did the books. My husband was in law school and running to the post office and we had a little business until one day I went to someone's house and I thanked her for inviting me.

8:30I didn't know her. And she said, I'm a big fan of yours. I'm like, oh, you know me. I couldn't believe it. And I said, what do you do? And she said, I'm a cosmetics buyer at Bergdorf Goodman. Before we get to Bergdorf, you said they became very popular. And this is pre-internet, pre-consumer internet. We have some sense in the 2020s of how something might become very popular very quickly. In the early 1990s, how does this become very popular? I was still a working makeup artist and I would be talking to all the people there and I would start selling them to the models and then their friends would start calling.

9:06And before we went into Bergdorf Goodman, I was at lunch with a friend of mine who was a beauty editor at Glamour Magazine. We're chatting. How's it going? What are you doing? And I said, oh, I'm working on this thing. Now we call it a side hustle. It was a thing. And she said, that sounds so interesting. Can I write about it? And I remember saying, why would you want to write about this? Now I realize that's called PR. So she wrote about it with an 800 number, my home number, I just don't remember. And we started getting orders. Literally, people are like calling your house and placing orders.

9:42There's no e-commerce and you had no retail presence. So you show up in a beauty magazine. and next thing you know, it's flying off the metaphorical shelves. You know, I'm not saying thousands, but hundreds, you know, hundreds. So we're like, wow. When we got into Bergdorf, I think it was a year, at least a year after we were selling in the house. How did it evolve and how did you go from a set of products to an actual company? We had to completely scale up. And, you know, we had these new friends that the wife worked in PR and the husband worked in the cosmetics business. So we asked them to become partners.

10:21And then literally I was in an elevator and there's a girl in the elevator and I said hi to her. And in two seconds, you know, what do you do? And she worked at a cosmetics manufacturer in Queens. I asked her for her card and they replicated the lipsticks. Sounds like Glamour was a tipping point. Was Bergdorf another tipping point for you? It was huge. Bergdorf was huge. And it really did become an overnight sensation, these 10 lipsticks. And Vogue wrote about it and all the cosmetics companies, the competitors were coming in and buying all 10 of them. And the president of the store, who, you know, I remained friends with for years, used to just come in and scratch his head and say, okay, we need more.

11:04What's next? We need more. I'm like, I guess I could do a lip pencil. So we added a lip pencil. And then one by one, we added other products. and we grew the business in Bergdorf. Eventually, we launched in Neiman Marcus because Bergdorf's and Neiman's were cousins. And after four years, we were the number one line in Bergdorf and Neiman's. At what point does the question come on the table of, are we going to grow this ourselves or are we going to sell the company? Never. We never, ever talked about selling the company. It would just, I mean, first of all, we didn't take outside investments. My husband and I emptied out our then bank account, which I think was$10 ,000.

11:48Our partners put in the same we did, and we all of a sudden had$20 ,000 to start this company. And it somehow becomes profitable right away. We didn't do advertising. We didn't do any of that. Since the partner was from PR and I was already a PR machine, we just used PR. And what really put Bobby Brown on the map was I had written my first book, Bobby Brown Beauty, and I was on book tour. It was in Florida, and I was at Neiman Marcus, and it was the in-circle ladies, so they're these very fancy ladies. At the end of the talk, I said, are there any questions? And there was a very little old lady sitting in the back with red hair.

12:34And I went over to her, answered her question, and she grabbed my arm. And I don't know why, but she said, are you Jewish? And I'm like, yeah, I am. Why? And she said, because I'm so proud of you. As a Jewish girl, you've done so much. It's incredible. I said, thank you. She said, I've seen you on the Today Show. I had been on once. And she said, is there anything else you want to do? I said, I'd like to be a regular on the Today Show. Why I said that, I don't know. She said, honey, Jeff Zucker is my grandson. He was the executive producer of the Today Show, and that's how I got on. And I stayed on for 14 years.

13:08Once a month for 14 years. Bobby, will you tell us about how you first met Oprah and your first time on the show? Well, I think I probably was on Oprah a dozen times. And the first time I was on Oprah, it wasn't a national show yet. It was just regional in Chicago. And I got a phone call. I'd never heard of her or the show, but I'm from Chicago. So I flew in to see my family and be on the show. and I'll never forget she came backstage and we talked and I don't remember a lot but I remember that I had this big ugly green sweater on and I had this you know kind of messy makeup artist hair and I went to go change my clothes she goes don't change your clothes you're perfect as you are and I listened to her and I went on and I look at those pictures now I'm like oh my god Oprah I think I had a perm at the time you know whatever so that was a great Oprah moment but the The other thing I remembered the other day is one of the times I went to see her, I heard that she loved the pea soup from the Four Seasons in New York.

14:12So I called up the Four Seasons and I said, could your chef put it in the freezer, you know, this fresh pea soup? And they did. And I brought it in a very nice bag. And Oprah said it was the best gift she ever got, like fresh pea soup. I mean, when you can give Oprah the best gift she's ever gotten, I feel like we're done. That's it. How did you meet the Lauders? How did that come to pass? Well, I got a phone call one day from the hairdresser, Frederick Fakai, that said Leonard Lauder would like to meet you. And getting a call like that, it's like Leonard Lauder, that's like royalty, you know, when you're in the makeup business.

14:49And we had a dinner and it was the most wonderful, warm, friendly, incredible evening, you know, that I had ever had. and he said, you guys are beating us in the stores. We were. Bobby was the number one brand and Estee Lauder was number two. And he said, I think we should buy you. Where was this dinner? At his apartment, on the roof. Him and his wife were the most incredibly charming, down to earth, but everywhere you looked, there was, you know, du buffets and Picassos and I just never experienced anything like that. But sitting on their deck eating dinner, It was like being, you know, with any of my family members or my friends.

15:33They were incredibly wonderful and down to earth. And I fell in love with him. And he said to me, he said this at dinner, he said, I know what you're good at and what you love. And I know what you don't love. He says, I know you want to be a really good mother and wife. But I also know that you're the most incredibly creative person. What if we partnered together and we could help you do all the things you don't like to do? Like HR, like distribution, like all of that. So, you know, the price was right. He was right. And it probably took about five or six months to get the deal done. I mean, it's not that common that in a very first meeting, I mean, it's like proposing to get married on a first date, right?

16:16What do you think he knew that gave him confidence that this was the right move for Estee Lauder at that time? Well, I think he looked at this new makeup artist doing this and it reminded him of his mother. And we did have a follow-up dinner and meetings, you know, and I'm lucky. My husband, who was in law school and is a businessman, he just dealt with the deal. He came to me and he said, all right, we've agreed on everything. except they would like you to sign a 25-year non-compete. I started counting on my fingers. 25? I'm going to be in my 60s. I'm not going to want to work. So who cares? Still ahead, why Bobby Brown built a billion-dollar brand and then left it behind to start again.

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20:12How did things change for you when you went from being effectively a solopreneur to being part of a pretty big global corporation? In the beginning, in the early years, it was magic. I mean, I had such support. You know, when I had an issue with anything, I would just ring up Leonard and he would just talk me through it and tell me good idea, bad idea, how we can help, what can we do. And it was amazing. And I had the resources from the Estee Lauder Labs all the way down to, you know, the head of PR, marketing. So for many, many, many of the years, it was great until it wasn't. What happened that it wasn't when it wasn't?

20:57It was one awful year and, you know, a really tough year before that. You know, there was new sheriffs in town. Leonard was no longer the CEO. There was someone that came in from another corporation that had his way of doing things. And, you know, it just started to feel different. Things were starting to shift. But I've always been such a naive person. I thought, oh, well, who cares? I could still do what I have to do. And I guess I couldn't. Can you just break down what you were experiencing where you didn't feel the support? Was it you couldn't get the right person on the phone? Was it they were just saying no to your ideas?

21:37Had the company become more process-driven or sclerotic? What changed in your experience of it? Very process-oriented. And a lot of people coming in that were consultants that were not consultants that I signed up for. That was a lot of time and energy suck. I used to interview every single person, like in the beginning, every single person. And then big people were being hired, the head of international, the head of this. And it'd be like, excuse me, this is not the right person. This person doesn't understand what this business is. And that started happening more and more. And they were being hired not at the Lauder level, but at the Bobby Brown level.

22:19At the Bobby Brown level, yeah. And presumably, you're hardly a shrinking violet. it. I assume that there were attempts at conversations. What are they saying to you when you're saying, it's not unreasonable for me to interview the people who are going to work on the brand that has my name on it? No, they would say things like, this is just what it is. This is the best person for the job. This is the best person for the job. They've had success over there. And, you know, one person particularly that was hired for a very big job, I had all these long term Bobby Brown, heads of countries, call me up and saying, this is a disaster.

22:53This is going to ruin the company. He has no idea what this brand is. He's messed up everything else. And you know what? I couldn't get anyone to listen to me. You'd been there 20 years. The Bobby Brown brand inside Lauder is how big at this point? You know, when I left, it was a billion dollars. Okay. So not a small business. No, no. When you look back on it and particularly for entrepreneurs who do sell their company to a big corporation. What do you think you did right? What did you do really well? And where would you do it differently if you were doing it all over again? Well, I think what I did really well is I was a sponge and I was really open to what they had to teach.

23:37And I took what they were teaching and did it my way. I had the autonomy to, which, by the way, was a word that I learned when we signed the contract because I had complete autonomy in my contract. I didn't even know what it meant. Now I do. And Leonard stuck to it. And so did all the people he hired. And then things started to change. You know, there's a certain amount of pompousness in corporations, you know, especially I find this, I apologize to say this to you, in men. Like I just, men in suits. It's like, are you kidding me? Just because I don't speak the language you speak, you don't know more than I do.

24:21You know, we know different things. And when you put the different things together, it's magical. You don't know what women want. I do. I mean, it feels like founder and CEO of acquiring company alignment is a huge part of this? Is it your instinct that if Leonard had been there longer, your run there might have gone longer as well? Longer or just even better. I mean, the one thing about Leonard was, I don't care how bad things were. And there was a lot of things, you know, that happened that were pretty bad and pretty tough. And I knew that I can always go to Leonard's office anytime I needed him to shut the door and discuss it with him.

25:01He would never look down to me like, oh, she's, you know, I'm just, she's hysterical. She's, you know, a woman. She's hysterical. We would talk about it. And sometimes he would be tough and say, no, this is the way we have to do it. And I'd say, okay, but what if we then do this? Like it was a conversation. And that's because of who he was. And then there was the next CEO was a guy named Fred Langhammer. He was the same way. So I don't need to even like dwell on this and talk about it because, you know, the only reason I'm like reliving all these things is because of my memoir where I write, you know, for the first time I write it all down.

25:40The new memoir is called Still Bobby, and we've put a link in our show notes. But I am so not tortured. I'm not angry. I'm not hurt. I'm not any of those things anymore. I was in the beginning. But, you know, there's nothing like time and a success of another company to kind of get you over those emotions. Yeah. Bobby, the decision to leave, you referenced the 25-year non-compete that you'd signed when you sold the company. It hadn't been 25 years when you decided to leave. You still had... Four and a half years left. Not that anyone's counting. You don't strike me as someone who's going to be super happy sitting on a beach with a drink in your hand, not doing anything.

26:23How did you square the idea of leaving and having to sit on a metaphorical beach, at least when it came to beauty, for four and a half years? Well, I didn't decide to leave. I was called into the office and thinking that I was going to have finally some candidates because we went to search to help me turn around this company and fix the company and all of that. And instead, I walked into the head of legal who canceled my work contract. And I said, you're firing me? She goes, no, no, we're not firing you. We have a new position for you. My new position was to be the face of the brand, but get out of the day-to-day.