Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) has spent decades building an extensive prestige-beauty portfolio: Estée Lauder, Clinique, M·A·C, Bobbi Brown, La Mer, Jo Malone London, Tom Ford Beauty, Le Labo, AERIN, Origins, Too Faced, Smashbox, KILIAN, Darphin, Aveda, Bumble and bumble, Dr. Jart+, GLAMGLOW, Lab Series, the DECIEM family (The Ordinary, NIOD) and a number of niche fragrance houses and acquisitive add-ons across skin, makeup, hair and scent. The group sells across roughly 150 countries.
For the past few years, however, ELC has been living two business truths at once: sales pressures in the West and potential opportunity in China. The latter market has increasingly become a focus for expansion, with ELC’s recent reporting highlighting fragrance as a bright spot. The company has backed this with product and marketing investment, as well as a minority stake in Melt Season, a Chinese luxury fragrance brand.
Which brings us to an awkward juxtaposition: the Lauder family’s high-profile political activism and the geopolitical views of the market they’re courting. Ronald S. Lauder, longtime president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and scion of the family that controls ELC, has forcefully expressed public support for Israel in recent years through statements and WJC activity. His advocacy and public condemnations of anything anti-Israel are well documented.
That creates real cognitive dissonance. On one hand ELC courts Chinese consumers — a market where the government in Beijing has repeatedly called for a ceasefire. Indeed, China officially recognized Palestine in 1988 and China’s MFA officials have stated at press conferences that “Gaza belongs to the Palestinian people.”
Why should a beauty company care? Consumers increasingly expect the brands they buy to reflect values — from animal welfare to human rights. Beauty consumers in many markets have shown they will hold companies accountable, and boycotts can travel fast on social platforms when politics and commerce intersect.
The question for ELC is twofold: can it continue to expand profitably in China while its leadership maintains public positions that are widely perceived to contradict China’s position on Gaza?
