The Aspirational Business of Beauty with John Demsey | Inside Fashion
The Business of Fashion Podcast
The Business of Fashion
4.6 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 23 August 2019
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Demsey, in conversation with Imran Amed, discusses his career path, working with MAC Cosmetics post-acquisition, and what it takes to build the perfect enduring beauty brand.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I didn't get to where I got to with great successes on the first steps. |
| 0:07.0 | The reason why beauty is more resilient than almost any other business in the world with the exception of food |
| 0:13.0 | is that beauty is an aspiration that's universal. |
| 0:17.0 | Every great beauty brand comes from the source of a person, an ingredient, a place, a provenance of something that makes it unique and special. |
| 0:29.3 | And if you don't have those things, you can be a fad or you can be a trend, but you can't be a global business. |
| 0:36.6 | Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the business of fashion. |
| 0:40.3 | Welcome to Inside Fashion, your weekly look into the wonderful world of fashion luxury. |
| 0:46.3 | And this week, Beauty, we sit down with John Dempsey, executive group president of the S.A. Lauder companies. |
| 0:53.3 | For those of you who don't know who John is, |
| 0:55.4 | he's someone that everyone in the beauty industry highly respects, building a career at the S.A. |
| 1:00.6 | Lauder companies for almost three decades. John was there right after the S.A. Lauder companies |
| 1:05.7 | acquired Mac, then a startup beauty brand out of Toronto, Canada, which has grown into the biggest prestige |
| 1:12.8 | beauty brand in the world. This week on Inside Fashion, I talked to John about where the beauty |
| 1:18.4 | industry is going, what he makes of influencers, his experience at BeautyCon, and also what it |
| 1:24.2 | takes to be considered a top acquisition target for the S.A. Lauder company. |
| 1:28.9 | So here's John Dempsey, inside fashion and beauty. |
| 1:34.2 | So welcome John Dempsey. How are you doing today? |
| 1:37.5 | I'm doing fantastic. I just got off of my red eye flight from New York to London. |
| 1:42.4 | Beautiful late summer day. It is beautiful here today, |
| 1:46.6 | and we're really delighted to have you on our Inside Fashion podcast, but I must say, I think this is |
| 1:51.7 | the first time we're talking to someone from the beauty industry, so maybe this is like the first |
| 1:57.3 | episode of Inside Beauty. I don't know. I don't know. They're related after all. |
... |
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