Product details

Opens with a brief history of the U.S. cosmetics market and its rapid development in the 1920s. Also recounts Lauder''s initial involvement in the sector, making skin care products and selling them in Manhattan beauty parlors during the Great Depression. Pays particular attention to the period after World War II, when widespread socioeconomic shifts were altering women''s possibilities--perceptual and material. For Lauder, such shifts presented important business opportunities. Invites students to analyze how the entrepreneur exploited these opportunities by building quality products, a powerful brand, and a best-of-brand organization. Closes with a discussion of the other brands that Lauder and her colleagues created, those that it acquired in the 1990s, and the importance of specific organizational capabilities in sustaining market leadership in the global, intensely competitive market for prestige beauty products.; 1) To illustrate how a particular moment of rapid socioeconomic change-- the postwar period in the United States--created specific entrepreneurial possibilities; 2) to analyze the specific strategies that one individual-- Estee Lauder--pursued to exploit these new business opportunities in the face of formidable competition; and 3) to understand why Lauder succeeded in making a market for prestige cosmetics, building a strong brand, and creating an enduring organization at a time when most other entrepreneurs and some bigger players competing in the young industry failed.