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Consumer History | Estée Lauder — The First Order at 611 Fifth Avenue
· 1948
Unreviewed contributionBy kevin · · Report an issue
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Consumer History | Estée Lauder — The First Order at 611 Fifth Avenue
kevin
1948
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People treat Estée Lauder as a brand that was always behind a marble counter on Fifth Avenue.
The first Saks order was eight hundred dollars of cream and lipstick.
Estée Lauder, born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Queens, and her husband Joseph incorporated the company in New York in 1946. The first four products were a cleansing oil, a skin lotion, a super-rich all-purpose cream, and a cream pack. She had already sold those jars from salon chairs, including the Florence Morris shop at 39 East 60th Street.
Saks Fifth Avenue, at 611 Fifth Avenue, was the store she wanted. The cosmetics buyer, Robert Fiske, had no budget and no space for a four-item line standing next to Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden.
Lauder forced the question at a charity luncheon on the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria. She put more than eighty lipsticks, in metal cases, on the tables as gifts. After lunch a line of guests crossed Park Avenue and 50th Street into Saks asking for the same sticks. Fiske placed the order. Company histories date that first department-store account to 1947 or 1948; a 1999 Saks anniversary traced fifty years of the counter from 1949. The eight-hundred-dollar shipment sold out in two days.
The mechanism was not a magazine page. Agencies would not take a fifty-thousand-dollar budget, so the Lauders spent it on samples and gifts with purchase. She opened each new counter herself and trained the women behind it.
The flagship at 611 Fifth Avenue, finished in 1924, is still the public pin. The cosmetics floor is visitable. The company that carries her name on the S&P 500 still launches fragrance at this store.
Photo: Epicgenius, Saks Fifth Avenue flagship at Fifth Avenue and 50th Street, March 2021, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons.
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