EP129. The history of the beauty industry

I'm a firm believer in the concept of not knowing where we're going until we understand where we've come from. And for that reason, a few years ago, I decided to get to grips with the history of the beauty industry as I felt I didn't know enough. So I went online and I ordered every single book I could find about the history of beauty business, cosmetics, beauty ideals, you name it. My bookshelf is now completely stacked. And then I spent a very nice Christmas holiday reading all of them to learn as much as I could. And in my hunt for information, one book stood out more than all the others. A book by Professor Jeff Jones called Beauty A History of the Global Beauty Industry. Not only did this book provide an incredibly detailed and comprehensive overview of the modern cosmetics sector, but it also helped explain how the industry has taken off in such an incredible way and how it's got to the stage that it generates half a trillion dollars in revenue each year. And once you've listened to this podcast, I thoroughly recommend you go and buy your own copy. There's a link in the show notes as I think everyone interested in beauty should have a copy of this book on their bookshelf. But the point that really amazed me when reading Beauty Imagined was the observation that this industry gave rise to so many female entrepreneurs at a time when women didn't even have the vote. And these female entrepreneurs must have faced even more barriers to entry than women face nowadays. Yet many of them were so entrepreneurial that the decisions they made over 100 years ago still influences today. So I want to inspire you with this story of our industry's past because I think it will help you understand how we can shape its future. Settle in to join me for an exclusive interview with the author of the very best book I've ever read on beauty industry history. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make or sell your green beauty formulations. In my weekly episodes, I explore the sustainability of the beauty industry and encourage you to join me in changing the beauty industry for the better. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmeyer. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have thousands and thousands of students in over 180 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course and if you want to be the first person to know what's happening in Green Beauty. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app. So in today's episode, I'm joined by Professor Jeff Jones, Isadore Strauss professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School, considered by many to be the leading business school in the world. He researches and teaches the history of global business and the ecological and social responsibility of business, and is the author of the truly excellent and fascinating books Beauty Imagined, a History of the Global Beauty industry, as well as Profits and Sustainability, A History of Green Entrepreneurship. Welcome to the podcast, Geoff. It's great to have you here. How are you doing today?

Very well. Thanks for having me.

I'm delighted. And before we dive into the history of the beauty industry, which is a fascinating topic and I can't wait to explore it, I wanted to ask you what inspired you to write your book Beauty imagined back in 2010?

Well, some years previously I'd published A history of Unilever and during this research became very clear very little had been published about the beauty industry, which I found very surprising. Of course, there's tons of biographies, stories of individual brands, some of them really readable. Few of them use corporate archives or have that much depth. And I thought this was a huge gap. I mean, it's a huge gap because the industry is so enormous. It's a huge gap because the industry is like, so important because it shapes how people feel about themselves and their confidence levels. So I really wanted to fill this gap and I wanted to fill it globally, because when there are studies of the beauty industry, they usually look at one country or one market. And yet this is and always has been a very global industry with global consequences. So I wanted to capture that.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, it's a fascinating book, first of all, and I absolutely love it. It is by far my favorite beauty industry history book. So let's dive into the history of the modern beauty industry a little bit. What would you say gave rise to the modern beauty industry in its current form?

As is widely known, beauty products as such have been around for thousands of years. Every civilization has used those. But the modern industry is really a product of the post industrial revolution period, the 19th century. The industrial revolution enables factory production, that is, you could make products in large batches rather than in small batches. People's incomes started to rise so they could afford to buy things beyond just food and clothing. And then there's a series of other new things which really facilitate the rise of beauty one industry. One is the spread of clean water in the big cities that were emerging. And that starts from the middle of the 19th century. Secondly, there's like a new visual awareness. So candles give way to gaslighting and electricity and mirror technology improves, so people could see themselves for longer and better than they had ever seen before. And then towards the end of the century, you have the rise of commercial photography, which means you could preserve images of yourself and see images of other people. So suddenly visual appearance matters a lot more than it ever had.

Gosh, isn't that fascinating? I mean, it's hard for us to imagine nowadays, isn't it, that wouldn't have been able to see ourselves so clearly in the mirror. And yeah, it's fascinating to put it in context like that. So your book starts around the time of the 1800s, roughly when a big shift occurred towards the modern beauty industry. But what was the beauty industry like before that big shift?

For the most part, it's like cooking. It was a craft that you did in your kitchen and people made all sorts of products in their homes. Hair dyes, rouges, makeup, and they just used natural dyes, herbs, all that sort of stuff. The only really sophisticated branch of the industry was perfumery. And there in the 17th century France, CEO of the Louis XIV France, perfume had become art of the emergent luxury industry. And so in Paris, or outside Paris, you have a guild, about 250 perfumers who were sophisticated and they supplied small quantities of perfume to the monarchy and to the aristocracy. But there's nothing like that in other branches of the industry.

Fascinating. And obviously it ties in with our message of formula Botanica. Everyone can formulate because, as you say, it was a skill that people knew, like cookery. Moving back to the modern cosmetics industry, then who were some of the key players who gave rise to this modern industry?

There's quite a bunch of key players. So I'm going to be very like, arbitrary. I'd think of a couple, really. I think the first would be Helene Rubinstein. So Rubenstein's a fascinating person. Starts life in an Orthodox Jewish community in Poland, escapes to rule Australia, moves from Melbourne, goes to London, goes to Paris and in World War I, goes to the United States. You can't do that sort of. These days, Rubenstein creates much of the modern beauty industry while still in Australia. She comes up with the idea that there are different skin types, oil, dry, whatever. And she provides products for what she calls each need absolutely a classic, the beauty industry going forward. Then she comes up with the notion of beauty as science and she's like photographed wearing a white coat in a lab which become kind of iconic photographs. And then after moving to the United States and in competition with her arch rival, Elizabeth Arden, she builds a luxury brand based on very exclusive salons and. And close connections with avant garde artists. Luxury had always been something only the French produced, and she makes luxury something Americans can produce as well. So she is a top brilliant entrepreneur. But I also think she reflects some of the darker side of the industry. She exaggerated, she overclaimed she had no medical training whatsoever. And she lies about her most things, including her age. She's preoccupied with age and age as a problem, and that also sticks in the industry. And some of her messages, for example, one of her famous saying was, there are no ugly women, only lazy ones. She's basically saying to a woman, you know, if you don't look good, it's your fault. And that kind of message, too, has sort of stayed in the industry. You know, you have a problem, we'll fix it for you. And I think it's not the most positive thing, although it certainly sells products. A second guy I think is very important is Max Factor. So Max Factor begins, son of a Polish rabbi, gets his first job providing cosmetics for the Imperial Russian Grand Opera, of all things, emigrates to the United States 1904, and then moves to Hollywood, where the new beauty and cinema industry is just starting. And he forges a link between cosmetics and the new movie industry. And that's important in multiple ways. Actors working under bright lights needed a different type of makeup. So he's investing in new technologies of makeup to deal with that situation, which over time diffuses to the general public. Again, movies are very visual. So he comes up with the development of the principle of what we call now color harmony. That's right. You know, certain combinations of a woman's complexion, hair color, eye coloring are complemented by certain types of makeup. And he's really the one who formalizes that. So that's. That's a very impressive. And I think, finally, he's really important in making makeup legitimate. Also. The 19th century, wearing makeup was slightly associated with being a loose woman and not having the highest ethical standards. He's linking it to this emergent and highly influential Hollywood industry, and he's perfecting the technologies behind it. And he's really, I think, a force for legitimization of the industry.

Isn't it fascinating how just a few key players can have such a profound impact even on us today? Because the stories you've just told just show that their legacy still lives on in the modern beauty industry. So One point that really struck me as I was reading your book was the observation that women had the ability to start their own beauty brands in the late 1800s. And of course at this point women didn't have the vote even, and some of them had only recently been able to own property or land in some parts of the world. So what do you feel gave women the opportunity to start beauty businesses with such apparent ease?

Well, first, my first reaction to say it looks more easy in retrospect than it did at the time. Somebody like Rubenstein is like working crazy and she's starting with a pot of cream in some dusty Australian town and figuring out how ways to build a business from that. So I don't think it was a breeze even for the most successful ones. Having said that, I think it has to be put in the context of what's happening to gender in the 19th century. In the 19th century we see gender identities becoming much stronger and that's manifested in multiple ways. Men stopped wearing cosmetics they had in the 18th century. Women, they wore darker clothes, women wore lighter clothes and became the primary consumers of cosmetics. That carried over to business. It didn't became although there were many female entrepreneurs in earlier centuries, now business became something which was not really legitimate for a woman to do. Women just didn't take leadership positions in big companies. It was not gender relevant. The exception is industries which have women as their consumers, fashion and beauty. And there it became societally legitimate for a woman to build a business and to employ and to employ men. And honestly for much of the 20th century that has remained the case. So I think it's partly a question of legitimacy and it's partly a question why it was so called relatively easy to enter the industry, that the industry was still emergent in the 19th century. It's highly fragmented, it's highly local, and Rubenstein and others are making categories up as they go along. 50 years later you have big incumbent firms, powerful brands, lots of marketing spend. It's a lot tougher to enter the industry then than it was when the industry is emergent.

So what similarities then do you see between the female entrepreneurs of the late 1800s, early 1900s and modern day PT brand founders?

I think there are similarities and I think there are differences for neither. In the late 19th century, as I said, the industry was emergent. Today I think we see incumbent big brand weakening and the growth of indie brands as consumers seek authenticity and more individual solutions to their problems. In the late 19th century, businesses flourished through word of mouth effects. Today social networks and influencers are key to the flourishing of brands and both of them that requires far less marketing spend than it did in the middle of the 19 20th century when you know you needed big marketing budgets to push out your business. So in both periods, I think it's easier to start a business. I think it's harder now to really sustain a business than it was in the 19th century to become the next Arden or Rubenstein or Factor. It's relatively easy to start a brand, but extremely hard to sustain the brand. And the big reason for that is capital. It's very hard to raise capital in the industry to grow sufficiently. That's because venture capitalists, on the whole, avoidance the beauty industry. And there's a systematic bias against female businesses, systematic in the industry, certainly in the United States. So even if you create a successful brand, you frequently end up having to sell it if you want to grow. And quite frequently the brand is effectively destroyed over the hands of a bigger company as, as well. So easier to create a business now, harder to sustain it, I think, than in the late 19th century.

Yeah, I understand. It's also why of course, we see indie brands pitch it at so many different levels because some of them obviously do want to go big, raise investment and yet others want to stay small, spread through word of mouth, very similar to what you were talking about, and stay in their local communities. So when you were researching the history of the beauty industry, which must have been fascinating, were there any stories that stuck with you in particular or made a profound impact on you as you were researching them?

I like the story of the Brazilian beauty seller Natura. Natura's now a very large business with 200 million customers. It owns Avon, the body shop, Aesop in Australia and it's the world's largest B corp. B Corp status, I think is really impressive about the company because from the beginning, and it was founded in 1969, the company was concerned with helping the society and over time helping the environment rather than just exploiting them. So they built a brand that was aspirational. They're a successful business, yet with growing concern for sustainability, social sustainability and environmental sustainability. 2000 they launched their ecosystem line of beauty products sourced from the Amazon, from the indigenous, using sustainable methods. I think it was 1992 that they launched their truly beautiful woman concept with the explicit declaration that beauty was not a matter of age, but of self esteem. That's 10 years before Unilever's Dove campaign. So they've always been at the frontier, I think, of sustainability. Why did the natural story stick with me. Well, I think it's absolutely fascinating. You think Brazil, you think women on beaches in skimpy bikinis, you think everybody's obsessed with physical beauty. It's the world's largest market for Botox. It has, I think it's the world's largest per capita consumption of plastic surgery. And yet out of that environment comes probably the world's most sustainable beauty company. I think it shows, Natura shows. Beauty industry can really not simply reflect the societies that it's in, but be a force for social and ecological good if you walk the talk. So the company, I think is a role model which far too other companies have followed.

Amazing. What a fantastic story. I had no idea. I mean, that is obviously very pioneering because hardly anyone in the beauty industry puts that message out. And people are starting to jump on the bandwagon a little bit more now, but it's slow going. Definitely. The mainstream beauty industry can be very secretive. And I mean, you talked earlier a little bit about the fact that there was no book that really summarized the whole global beauty industry and its history. And it's not easy to gain access to the big brands. I mean, some of them don't even have like public facing PR departments. You just simply can't get through to them unless you know someone there. So they must have a veritable treasure trove of historical information sat in their company archives. What was it like gaining access to that information while you were writing your book?

Well, you're right, it's a deadly secretive industry which puts off many people writing about it. You have a handful of companies, Avon is the biggest, which have deposited their records in a public institution. A few other companies, Beiersdorf and Unilever, have good corporate archives, which they certainly open to me and I think they open to others too. After that, I think I was just very fortunate being based at Harvard Business School, which has a respected reputation, I think, for not wanting to just bash the industry. So I was able to see more archives than many other people and talk to people, a large number of people, large number of people in the industry. But the problem of secrecy remains a problem. And I wish the industry would be a little bit more open and transparent than it is.

Yes, I think we all wish that. But who knows, maybe, maybe over time, as the sustainability movement takes place, transparency will become more of a thing for some of the big brands. So knowing what you do about the modern beauty industry and the way it has been and still is a big part of globalization, what lessons do you feel that we should learn? From our history.

Probably the main lesson for me is this is one of those rare industries which has the potential to make people happy. You can change your appearance, at least for a night. You can change your hair color, you can feel more confident about yourself. And that's wonderful what the industry can do for human beings. The problem historically is that the industry has tended to promote images which are very restrictive of age, skin color, body size. And it's made women in particular feel bad about themselves more often than it's made them feel good about themselves. This is changing. It needs to change a great deal more. So I always think this is a very dangerous industry because it's dealing with people's self worth and confidence and insecurities. It's an industry that has to get away from saying that you have a problem once you're over 30. You have a problem if you don't have a skinny body, you have a problem if you don't have round eyes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And honestly, a firm like Natura has shown you can build a successful business, not peggling those stereotypes, but seeking a more open vision of beauty and how it can be a force for good in the world.

Oh, what a fantastic point to end on. I love that. Let's stop peddling insecurity and be a force for good in the world. Jeff, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It's been absolutely fascinating. Want to buy your book Beauty Imagined or any of your other books? Where should they go?

They should go to Amazon, I think. Or they could go to Oxford University Press website. They're all on Amazon somewhere. They're all available in electronic form as well.

Excellent. Well, I highly recommend everyone listening to go and buy Geoff's books. I've just bought his new one, Profits and a History of Green Entrepreneurship. So who knows, maybe there's a podcast in there too. Thank you very much, Jeff. It's been lovely chatting to you today.

Thanks for having me.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Isn't it fascinating to hear where this beauty industry came from? Which stories stood out most to you? Please do come and leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. Thank you for joining Jeff and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Too. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is, and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter or LinkedIn. And come and follow me too at Lorraine Dalmeier, as I always share the latest from the podcast and share my thoughts on green and sustainable beauty. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today. Sam.