Leonard Lauder

breast cancer and Alzheimer's research. So at the beginning of this conversation I should point out to people that Leonard has recently written a book called The Company I Keep, My Life in Beauty. It's an excellent book about his life in the in the world of beauty. So let's go back to the very beginning. You were born in New York City. Absolutely, Now, your mother is State Lauder, but that was not her um name when she was born. Her first name was not Stay, and her last name

was not Lauder. So how did that name come about. She was Josephine Esther Lauder, and her and her pair her mother was Hungarian and they called her St. E s c Y, and so she loved that st better than Josephine. When you were growing up, were you in a wealthy family at that time, we were very, very very poor. Remember this that this was the Depression. My father had had a very successful business importing silk. Now, silk didn't do too well during the depression, so he

his his company had to close down. And my mother had always had ambitions to either be an actress or to make people beautiful. And uh, I have a late friend who had been a high school classmate of hers, and he said she was always combing out of her girlfriend's hair and making them look pretty. That's what she loved doing that, and that became her advocation and vocation. Okay, Now, when you're talking about your youth in New York City, you do it in great detail in the book. How

can somebody remember things that happened eighty years ago? How do you do that? David? It's easier to remember eighty years ago than what I had for lunch today. I understand that phenomenon. Okay, your mother is interested in making people more beautiful, but I guess everybody likes to make people more beautiful. So what is it that she did that actually got her started in the cosmetics world. Well, she started to sell the products that her uncle had made.

He was an Estraedian, and then she decided she could do better, and she started making them in the kitchen, and I, as a little kid, sitting in my high chair, would watch her make the creams on the kitchen stove. Then as time went on, she would invite people to the house to do makeups, and I would come home for lunch. Every day I would sit in the kitchen eating my lunch and she'd be next door making making

someone's face up. But she was a miracle worker. Should anyone who who came in there would and definitely walk away looking fantastic. So when you're in high school, uh, you went to which high school? Bronx High School or yeah, okay, that's a pretty good high school. But did you have time to help your mother and father in the company at that time? I worked very often after school every day except when I was I was on the soccer team, so when I had soccer practice, I wasn't there. But

other than that, I worked every afternoon. And did they pay you or they just said this as part of growing up. Well, if the fifty cents and hours paid, that's what I got. Okay. So you then went to the University of Pennsylvania, where you graduated third in your class. So what was it that you took out of the University of Pennsylvania that you were a good business person or you were a good scholar. What did you want

to be when you graduated. I wanted to be a business I told my parents that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be in the business. But my father wanted me to be a chemist. No, thank you, I didn't want to be a chemist because I wanted to do marketing. Okay, So you graduated the University of Pennsylvania third in your class. You want to be in business. So in those days people would say, well, I guess I'll go to Harvard Business School. So you applied to

Harvard Business School and did they accept you? I got turned down flat and which was which was a rather shock for me. However, I made lemonade out of limits. I applied for the US Navy Officer Candidate School. I was accepted there and that was the beginning of my PhD in leadership and it's the best thing I ever did. So if you ever thought about how much more successful your life could have been had you gotten into Harvard busin of school, I wish the people at Harvard would know.

I would like to send them a thank you note for what they did to Okay, so you go into the U. S. Navy um where there are a lot of uh, you know, young Jewish boys from the University of Pennsylvania in the Navy with you. When I went into the navy, Uh, my father said, you know, there's no Jews in the Navy. I said, Okay, I know that too. But that was that was good. That was the way the United States was. The Jews are in

the minority. Everyone. Everyone was a minority then. But it was fascinating because I grew up, in my view, at the right time to grow up and learn. You you don't grow up if you grew up in prosperity. You don't understand how to fight. Part. I had a fight. Part. So one of your activities in the Navy is running the commissary on the boat you're on or a ship

you're on. So how did you manage to make that a very profitable business sending you realize you were a pretty good business person as a result of making the commissary so profitable. Well, I became the ships star officer aboard an aircraft carrier, an aircraft carrier had we had three thousand men abroad the carrier, and so I had to get everything that they needed and and and then some.

So I stopped to buy perfume that they could send out as gifts to the parents, to their girl friends, etcetera. For risk watches, toothpaste. Everything you wanted I had, and I made it a point to have that so successful that that supported the entire ships entertainment policy. After you leave the Navy, you presumably could go do many things. You could get a lot of business opportunities. Why did you join your parents company? Because I knew I could

make it better. I had a vision of what the company could be and would be, and I didn't have to sell it to them because they I don't think they could see the same thing that I saw. So you joined the company? Was when you joined? Yeah, the company has under a million dollars in revenue, more or less dollars? Right? What was your job? Did you say to your mother and father, guess what I'd like to be the CEO. I'd like to be the CFO. What was the job you actually had? My job description was son.

So I've always wondered when when you're in business with your parents, do you do you call your your boss mom or do you call her estay? I would call her mom. However I would always address her in front of other people as Mrs Lauder added respect and it worked. It worked real look Um, they had trust in me from way back. They said, oh, anything that Letton wants

to do, he can do. So your job was basically everything that your mother and father didn't want to do, and your mother was became the symbol of the company, really was the face of the company. Is that right? They she did everything, my father did everything, But I'm as the one who sort of brought it together, and my my vision was make her famous. Everything that I could do to make her famous was a step in the right direction, and she became world famous because of that.

What did you do to convince people that your mother's products or your company's products were better than the competitors? But two days. Firstly, she created the idea of giving gifts away. At the beginning, she would give send out a car a postcard, say bring this card into the such and such a store and we'll give you a free lipstick, or your free this or free that. Then she built it up later on to say would give you if you buy something, we'll give you a gift.

That that that was magic in those days. It was really magic now when I tried to. When I became I took over the sales area. In fact, as I took over everything. I remember visiting the buyer of a major department store. He wouldn't look at me, he kept his back to me, cleaning his nails, and finally I said to him, I think I can do great things for you. I can, I can make you a lot of money. And he turned her and said, how can you do that? And then we were off and running

from there. So I was able to think of the ideas necessary to make a hint and make a big splash no matter where we were. So, at what point did you realize the company was actually gonna be successful in the sense that it was going to survive. Did you always think that it was going to become a giant, gigantic global company or did you have offers to sell the company at some point when it's small and you

thought of not doing that. Well, my mother came one day when I was in high school, saying, Charles Revson offered me a billion dollars, but I turned it down because I wanted to have the business feel. So it's very grateful for that. Uh. I knew that we were en route and we're out of the woods at the beginning of nineteen uh seventy, and by that time the company was in demand and I was then able to turn around and focus on what we could do in

the future. Was there something about the products that were better than the others? Do you try to make yours, say, higher level, higher cost kind of products so that gives it more prestige. They were much better products. They're expensive and very very very good for the customers. Uh. Look, at the beginning, we never advertised what what did we do? We gave up samples, and gave up samples that were

large enough. If if you give a customer a sample of a product and they like it, and they come back and buy it again and again again, that's the phillis of Bicious. So it was years before you even started to advertise. Now, the brand that you had was called stay Lauder. At some point you or somebody, I think it was you, came up with the idea of

having a sort of competing brand called clinique. Right, So what was the idea of building a product with a different brand name that was competing with and effect your other brand. By the time I started to work on a clinique, which is in the late sixties, est Loader was very successful by the time, and our customers were saying, look, you've only grew intent this year. We need more, we need more. I didn't want to push est Lauder into a way of over promoting the brand because I knew

what I wanted to do. So yes, I said, if I wanted to compete with st Loader, what would I do? And that became the click. You know, Uh, it takes a thief to catch a thief. Remember the movie with with Carry Grant. It takes a thief. It takes a thief to catch a thief. Now, when I go into a department store, and I can't say I'm the biggest shopper in department stores in the Western world, but when I do go in, uh, usually on the first floor right to your right, you smell some nice fragrances and

perfumes and so forth. And I always said to myself, is that because uh, these products are are kind of leaking out of the bottle or something like that. I mean, I mean I thought they were air tight packaging. But now in your book you kind of say, well, you spray it around a little bit to attract people. Is

that right? Around? Springing straight? So it's very important, as you point out in your book, to be at the right location, and that you and your competitors, according to your book, would kind of spar over who was going to be in the right location in the department store. Is that right? That's right. But that's why I said to you that the main thing we were watching for and doing was growth, because every department store in the nation was built not just on the profits that they made,

but on the growth percentage. And I made it a point that we would drive the business, our business faster than any other store, any of the brand, of any time in the store. So if the store had say a ten percent increase, I wanted to have the increase. If they had twenty, I wanted to have thirty. And I always wanted to have a bigger increase than the whole store would have. When that happened, I would get

all the support in the world. Now, if I would go into a drug store and say I want to buy an estate, law or product, I wouldn't be able to find it. You tried very hard to not go into drug stores and compete with people at the lower price range. Is that right? And the reason why is it makes people think and I guess it works that your product is um more upscale, prestigious product. Well, it's it's more than that though. Remember I just mentioned growth.

If you have one department store, and up and down the main street there two or three or four drug stores there. If you divide the business between the between everyone, you will not have the growth in that one store. By giving the the department store the growth at the beginning, they were they were so happy with with what we were doing. They gave us a space and location in the store, so they didn't do more. And so the result is we basically helped the department stores grow in

that era. If it wasn't for us, they wouldn't have had the same growth. So at one point, your company is doing so well that investment bankers who are not shy come to you and say, why don't you take it public? It was a family owned company. Did you want to take the company public? We weren't ready yet. We really weren't because when you are a privately welcome company, you can invest a lot of money and doing what do you think is right for the long term, and

not have to worry about it. So a few moments ago, we're talking about the launch of the Clinique. The Clinique caused US millions and millions of dollars of losses to get the brand started, but we weren't public, and therefore we could simply launch it and get it started, and and and it happened. Well, now today it's harder to launch a brand, and and and since we're public, we now have to buy brands rather than launching, rather than

created them ourselves. You bought one or two extremely successful brands. You might mention one or two of your most famous brands, and you bought, well, they weren't so famous what we bought them. But we we bought a company called Mac, company called Bobby Brown, public called Joe Alone, compan called

Krim de la Mare, and and etcetera. So we would buy a company that had a ready started itself, We kept the entrepreneur working with us, and and that one hey aided the other, and sooner or later we had a whole portfolio of grants that competed with each other

as well as competing with in the marketplace. When your company did ultimately go public at the end of the last century, I guess it was then it's very public what your company's worth and what your own net worth is, And was that something you kind of didn't really want to have people know how quite how successful the company was, and people now realize how wealthy you are. Did it change your life in any way? It never changed my life. But I'd rather have no one know if I have

any money, I collect art and give it away. I don't need to show my wealth. I like to spread what I'm doing to make the people better off. Well, let's talk about some of those things you've done. For example, as a young boy, you got interested in in postcards, and then you later built one of the biggest postcard collections in I guess the world. What was the fascination with postcards postcards in those days? With a snapchat of today,

I have postcards, I say, see what lunch today? They would mail it before ten o'clock in the morning and it would arrive in time for lunch at whether we're going, so we don't realize that this this was before the phone was used all the time to swim before emailably for everything, and so that I love the idea of postcards because I like the idea of instant communications. And so what did you do with your postcard collection? You still have it or did you put it in a

museum somewhere? Well, I've given any to the Views with Fine Arts in Boston, and a good portion of it to to the Nori Gallery uh in New York City, which was started by my brother. I don't buy things to possess them. I buy things to give them away, only things that doesn't mean any to make. So um, one of the things you've given away is your Cubist art collection, which I told is one of the finest, if not the finest, in the world. What is it about Cuba start that made you want to collect it?

And why did you ultimately decide to give this billion dollar plus collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of Firsially, it's a protest gift, which means it goes to them to find my passing. I've already given them almost ever already I love the idea of creating things. Now if I if I buy a post start, it could cost me anyway anywhere between five cents and a dollar or five or ten day. If I buy a Picasso painting, I could pay fifty and a hundred

thousand dollars for it. So to me, I love the hunt of the search, and then I love at the same time the act putting it together for a museum and giving it away. So every time I give something away, I give them money to display it and do exhibitions. So you're now one of the wealthiest people in the United States, but when you're building your art collection, you weren't quite as wealthy. So did you have to worry about getting coming up the money to buy these Picassos? Absolutely,

I was in debt. I was up to my ears. You've also been involved with the Whitney, and we're the chair of the Whitney Museum of Art in New York for a long time and bigger, the biggest donor. What was it about the Whitney that made you so attracted to it? I help. I bought thousands of works of art for them, And I like making museums successful because when I was a kid, three afternoons out of five

after school of I wasn't doing something else. I was in a museum looking at things, and I love museums and I wanted to make them greatly, greater and greater. Let's talk him for a moment about another thing you've mentioned. Your first wife, UM was very involved with breast cancer. She had had breast cancer, and you and she put together a foundation to work on breast cancer. Um you're

still involved with that, is that right? Absolutely? Yeah. And your mother, as you point out in the book in the latter years, suffered from some Alzheimer's and you've also been involved with Alzheimer's research. Is that an important cause for you as well? Very important? We my brother and I both created the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation. We're a pure playing We just do drug discovery for prevention and cure.

We don't do care, we don't do anything else. But the research that we're doing is amazing, and in my lifetime we're going to have a prevention and a cure for Alzheimer's and related diseases. So what do you attribute your obviously sharp mind at your age and good physique at your age? What did you do you exercise a lot? How do you keep mentally sharp. What's the key? I exercise a lot number one, and don't forget this that everyone should know this. The brain is a muscle and

if you don't use it, you lose it. So that each day I'm doing something not doing the courser puzzles to activate my interest. We will read the newspaper, the mine, and we'll discuss the matters and where's this leading to? And I'll make predictions. By the way, I'm very good about seeing the future. So I don't have my crystal both of me, but I can lend it to you from time to time, and I can see the future and I and I work with that, with that knowledge

to help in all the things that I'm doing. Okay, any regrets in this life story you've put together, anything you wish you differently, none whatsoever. I really I love every step along the way. I've never regretted anything. I look. If you can't build your life based on what you're looking back to, uh, you can only build your life by looking forward to it to everything. Well, Leonard, thank you very much for a very interesting conversation, and I

enjoyed reading your book The Company I Keep. Thank you, David god bless you. Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen