All right. Good morning, everybody, and welcome. I am very excited to welcome The Estée Lauder Companies back to the stage here in Paris, and I'm equally excited to welcome back both President and CEO Stéphane de La Faverie, as well as Executive Vice President and Chief Value Chain Officer Roberto Canevari. Behind me, for those in the room, you will see Estée Lauder's disclosure slide. Please take heed, and for those of you who are listening in online, you will find the same disclosures on Estée Lauder's Investor Relations website. With that, Stéphane, Roberto, we'll kick it off.
Looking forward to it.
Okay.
Thank you for having us.
Good. A year ago, when we were on this stage, we spoke a bit about portfolio optimization.
In that context, the conversation was mostly about organic optimization over time.
Yeah.
Just to address the elephant in the room. You've obviously, since that time, looked at a very large acquisition of a portfolio of brands, and you've continued to be active in minority and majority investments in other assets, as well as hiring advisors to overall do a portfolio review. As we reset and think about the business from here and your strategy from here, how do we think about the role of M&A going forward? Do you have the right portfolio of brands to achieve what your aspirations are, or do you need something more transformational from an M&A perspective to achieve the value creation targets that you've set?
Thank you for addressing the elephant in the room on the first question, which I'm sure everybody's waiting for. let me start by the end of your question. Do we have the right portfolio of brands to compete-
in the prestige beauty market today? The answer is absolutely yes.
Okay.
I think we have a fantastic portfolio of brands today. We have many markets around the world where we're gaining market share. China, even in the U.S., we are in the right trajectory, in the emerging market, all lines around the world. I believe from our portfolio, and we divide our portfolio brand in three groups. You have what we call the large brands that are billion-dollar or close to billion-dollar and more. Anything that is between $500 million in net sales and $1 billion, and the smaller brands. I have to say, our large brands, our midsize brands are very, very good, and we have some really up-and-coming smaller brands that are growing fast.
Think about a brand like Kilian that now is the fastest-growing brand in the company. We have Le Labo as a midsize brand that is the second fastest-growing brand in the company, and La Mer within some of our largest brands that is gaining market share in pretty much every market around the world, let alone brands like The Ordinary, which are performing extremely well. I would say I'm very proud of the portfolio brand. When we were on stage last year, I think there was still a lot of question mark of are our brands impaired or not? Because obviously, with three years of deleverage, there was a question mark.
I think this year, when you look at us being able to just go back into growth and in many geographies and channel and market share growth, I think it is, for me, the proof that our portfolio of brands is very strong. I've also been very public that we will be part of the M&A discussion. We've always been part of the M&A conversation. You think about it, of the 25 brands plus that we have in the portfolio, four were created in the company, the rest have been small or large-scale innovation, the two largest one being Tom Ford and DECIEM that have been done over the past five years. We will be part of it. Sometime, we have to revisit the portfolio, and we are looking at it. I've been clear that we've hired advisor to look at some of our brands.
Sometimes brands don't fit anymore, the consumer needs, and this is what we are in the process of re-looking at. Now, to address the elephant in the room, Puig, obviously, that has been on many people's mind. When you look at what we discussed yesterday about Beauty Reimagined, Beauty Reimagined at its core, obviously, have the five pillars that I think everybody knows very well, but it was about the rebalancing of the growth from a geography, from a category standpoint, and from a channel standpoint. It is true when you look at the portfolio of this, that our company in prestige beauty, we are the leader in skincare around the world with very strong position in Asia Pacific and many other markets around the world. We are the leader in makeup, especially with brands like M·A·C.
Obviously in fragrances, this is the smallest of the three large one. Obviously, hair care, we are playing a much smaller role in the prestige market, even though we see a great potential. We're extremely proud of the portfolio of luxury brand, artisanal, niche, however people are calling them, that we have from Le Labo, Tom Ford, Jo Malone, Kilian, and so on and so forth. It is true that when you go from East to West, the more west you go, the higher the penetration of prestige fragrances is, especially in Europe and in Latin America. Europe, we are roughly 40%-50% of the business that is in prestige fragrances, and in Latin America, it can be in excess of 50%-60%, and we have less of a presence on this one.
When, if an opportunity one day comes, and we can look at it, I want to be very clear, it has to be accretive from a growth standpoint, has to be accretive from a profitability standpoint over time. It has to create shareholder values, if we cannot reach the growth and the profitability at the right price point, that is not an option. This is why, obviously, this deal didn't go through, because it was not at the right price. This is, as the President or the CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies , nothing that I will ever do to the company or to our shareholders to just do something that doesn't make sense financially. Strategically, it may make sense.
The complementarity of the portfolio are very interesting, but it has to make sense financially. I just want to just address one other thing also as part of a large size-acquisition, merger, what is it? Even though it's maybe not at the heart of what we are seeking within Beauty Reimagined, something that is merger transformational, we will continue to look at opportunities. One other thing that people have questioned, is it the right time?
Right.
That's what I just also wanted to address because as part of the PRGP, our Profit Recovery and Growth Plan, we're in the midst of a major transformation from an operational standpoint, cultural, and leadership standpoint. I want to be very clear. This transformation in 29 days is over in term of approval of the PRGP, so by the end of June 30th or the end of our fiscal year, we are done. I would have been approving with the leadership team 100% of the business case, which we've expanded, but the execution of this transformation will be largely completed by the end of this calendar year. That it is the back office, that is the transfer of our media planning with WPP or the integration with Shopify from a direct- to- consumer.
This will be largely done by the end of 2026, which allows us to obviously take more transformational deal if we decide to in the future. Again, it has to be at the right price, and it has to make sense within the existing portfolio of The Estée Lauder Companies.
Great. Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
So, as you say-
Hopefully it addresses-
It addresses.
the elephant in the room.
I think it did. We're now, as you say, the PRGP kind of winding down.
Being fully embedded in execution. It's 18 months, thereabouts, since Beauty Reimagined was.
Right
was rolled out.
I guess, how do you parse or how do you respond to, I guess, concerns or criticism that, okay, Estée Lauder has started to put some points on the board?
Yep
It's low-hanging fruit. How do we parse out between what's low-hanging fruit versus what's more structural momentum that you can build on as you go into the future?
Well, I think it's a really good question. In fact, I'll start with the market. What it's seen as low-hanging fruit is hard work, from the team, and I'm extremely proud of the work that the team has put over the years, the last two years, really, to just do this transformation. That is not something that is insignificant. It is the biggest operational transformation that we've ever done. We are doing it in a market that is below historical growth algorithm. We believe that especially calendar 2025, I think prestige beauty grew 2%-3%.
In this context, I've been very clear at the last earning calls that this year we are going to deliver the top end of our guidance of 3%. Today, I confirm again, we will be in position to deliver the 3% growth for the year, which will translate into slightly higher retail sales growth. There's still a bit of a disconnect between retail to net for us. In many markets, like in China, in emerging market, online, we believe that we are gaining strong market share, and we can elaborate on that in more detail if you want to. I think we have a lot of great momentum. This momentum is allowing us also to confirm today the preliminary view that we've given during the earning calls of 3%-5% net sales growth for next year, which will translate to roughly 4%-6% in retail.
Because of the switch of the channels that we are going from, more traditional channel to specialty multi platform like Amazon, some of the accounting rules from gross to net is slightly different. We have a higher retail sales. With a 4%-6% at the mid- to the higher- point, we will gain market share globally. That's the one thing that I would like everybody to remember is within the year after the PRGP, Estée Lauder Companies will be back into market share again at the mid- to the higher- point of the preliminary view that we're getting. We are doing it also by continuing to expand profitability. We've given also a range of 12.5%-13%, like OI, for next fiscal year.
That's the beginning and the continuation of us being able to just recover us to future mid-teens in term of profitability for The Estée Lauder Companies. The thing I would say on the five pillars of Beauty Reimagined, everything is moving in the right direction. From a consumer coverage, we've really deployed our brands where consumers are. We have 12 brands in 10 markets now today. Like with Amazon, we have many brands in TikTok Shop around the world. We've expanded on VIP.com in China. We expanded on Shopee in Southeast Asia. Many, many great opportunity. From an innovation standpoint, we're accelerating. If you remember, I've put a stand of saying that at least 25% of our sales will come from innovation, and that we will triple the number of innovation coming to market in less than a year. We are making a lot of progress.
This year, we are going to deliver roughly 24%-25% of our sales from innovation. It's a net acceleration compared to where we used to be. In terms of bringing innovation to market in less than a year, we are in the high double digits or high teens at this point, which obviously is very encouraging, and we're moving fast on the category that is benefiting from the most is makeup. The third one is we're accelerating our consumer facing. I was very clear at the beginning of the journey of Beauty Reimagined, it was not only we could have taken the benefit of the PRGP, drop everything to the bottom line, everybody would have been happy with a net increase of the EPS at a moment in time. It was very clear for us we needed to reignite the retail demand.
Think about like the U.S., after a decade of market share erosion for The Estée Lauder Companies, now we are gaining market share and volume in all four categories. That, for me, that's the very good sign that we are now going into stabilization to acceleration because we are recruiting a lot of consumers. The fourth pillar of PRGP, we've expanded it in the last call. The benefit are going to be between $1 billion and $1.1 billion of benefit for the company. It's not insignificant, but think about more the benefit as the agility that we are creating into the company, the speed.
At this moment in time, after three years of deleverage, being back into positive, confirming the top- end of the guidance this year, and already putting a top guidance for next year, in the midst of the current environment with high level of volatility, should hopefully give a lot of confidence that we have the momentum to go back into market share again. The last one, certainly the one that I'm the most proud of, is the cultural transformation of the companies. We've changed the ways of working. We're much more agile. We are one team. We've changed also the incentive program of the leadership team that is really rewarding on the success of the One ELC, so the one company.
We're seeing today, we've already 7,000 position that we've already eliminated, and you know we're going to go anywhere between 9,000-10,000, that we're seeing a lot more agility and speed and collaboration within the company with clear sense of who does what between the brands, the regions, the affiliate, and obviously with the very strong support of the function like obviously Roberto is doing.
Yes. Roberto, underpinning all of that has been a number of changes on the supply chain.
Yeah.
You spoke about last year as well, supporting Beauty Reimagined with PRGP. I guess, as you know, last year we were talking about tariffs. I guess there's still tariff uncertainty. We now have other uncertainties related to conflict in the Middle East.
The list is long.
I guess when you step back and think about the supply chain journey and how you're handling current volatility, what more is there to do from here? How would navigating the current environment-
Yeah
look differently a couple of years ago versus what you're able to do today?
Yeah. Well, a number of things. Maybe, let me start with what we are doing, then I'll explain how and give some elements. What we're doing is we're definitely driving what we call our dynamic value chain or supply chain. Dynamic value chain has three ingredients. Is speed, so time- to- market. There's agility and resilience, given what is happening around us. Those three elements are the principle of dynamic value chain. Why we're doing it, agility is needed now. We want to enable the growth wherever it comes from, however it comes from, and what is happening around us requires quite a lot of agility. At the same time, we want to continue the journey of gross margin expansion. That has been very successful so far, and we want to continue to do it while we give this speed and agility.
That's what we're trying to do it. The how is insisting a lot on a strategy that we started a while ago on regionalizing our network, both the manufacturing network, what we have, but also the sourcing network with our supplier partners. I think I can say I'm very proud of the network that we've built today, and I think it's one of the most diversified of the industry. We have presence, strong presence, in the three major continents that we operate. The idea is, basically if I simplify, is source where we make and make where we sell.
Some data points to explain what I'm saying. 60% + of our finished good production is done in the region we sell. 70% and growing. 70% of the raw and packaging material is sourced in the region where we make. That's where we are today, and the journey continues, of course. We want to make it as efficient as possible, but that's the journey. That's where we are today. On top of that, we qualify for the same product, we qualify always multiple sources of manufacturing so that we can give optionality to our network, and if something is happening, we can play with the diversified network. That's really what is happening. Again, more specific example. I think last year we were mentioning about our factory in Japan, the Sakura factory in Japan.
In less than 12 months, including the reason that we were saying before, tariffs, we moved from a 10 million unit produced to an 80+ million unit produced in less than 12 months. Moving the network around to mitigate tariffs. Now this year we can say what we have done. Last year, we're saying that's what we plan to do. That's what we have done. We have China today as sourcing from North America, which is less than 10%. All of that has allowed us to mitigate 60% + of our tariff exposure. That is what we are doing from a manufacturing and sourcing standpoint. There is more. Fulfillment today, and what is happening today, fulfillment is another challenge. What we're doing, part of the same transformation and fulfillment, we've been doing three things, essentially. Simplifying the network, so reducing stock points, simplifying the network.
Variabilizing the cost as much as we can to follow the volatility that we have. Also investing in key strategic places to be closer to consumers so that we can anticipate stock where is needed for resilience. We have done one in Dubai and is helping quite a lot today to supply in that area. We have one in Hainan. For travel retail, I think is the first beauty, I think, distribution center in Hainan. Anyhow, it's a key presence for us. We have simplified our network and invested in a state-of-the-art in Shanghai. That's from a fulfillment or stock standpoint, and then we work a lot, and again, especially relevant in this period, on alternative freight lanes. Example, there might be disruption in global supply chains as we have seen unfortunately in the past. What we're doing is multiple sources, multiple lanes.
We're using Asia to Europe, sea freight, air freight, but they could be challenged. We're using now also train from China to Germany. This train has a pretty good lead time, and it's definitely much more competitive from a cost standpoint than air freight. Basically, we're giving us a lot of optionality to play with the network. Best example, I have here the product, not by chance, but I have here the product. This is our double-
He's using it every day.
This is our Double Wear, Estée Lauder Double Wear, one of the main product we have, which we relaunched recently. We have applied. This is a big one. This is $700 million of gross sales, 900 SKU, 70 shades, 45 million units. That's a big one. It's 98% regionalized from a manufacturing finished product standpoint, so almost 100%. It's 100% regionalized from a packaging standpoint, and the lead time is 20% faster. That is kind of trying to give proof point of a theory that I was saying at the beginning, but this is really happening as we speak, and we continue.
You see, this is why this agility that we build in the supply chain allows us, in this moment in time of high volatility and disruption, even with the Middle East, to just be able to yet still confirm our guidance.
Right
Obviously, we are mitigating the impact. In this moment in time, the impact from the Middle East has been minimal for us because of how we've been using the agility and the speed of our value chain.
Yeah. That redundancy, regionalization, that was very different than.
Completely eliminated from what it was even a year ago.
Exactly. Okay. Maybe we can tag team on this one. You've spoken in the past about the need to re-energize recruitment, right? You talked about in the U.S.
Yeah
volume growth, but not necessarily market share growth.
Yeah
from a value perspective.
Correct.
How do you balance increasing accessibility into prestige into your portfolio without blurring the lines between prestige and mass or diluting brand equity?
Yeah. That's a very good question because we remain a pure play in prestige beauty, prestige and luxury. We're very careful, and the attention we put it on brand desirability first. Accessibility in this moment in time doesn't mean that you are diluting your brand equity. This is also the reason why we are combining consumer coverage with great new innovation and consumer-facing investment. I think once you start missing one of the elements, you're missing actually the magic equation about how do you maintain and you continue to build the equity. When you think about the reach of consumers, yes, we're continuing to invest in top-end luxury distribution, like top-end department stores or freestanding store. At the same time, we go all the way to platform like Amazon that allows us to just get reach.
There's a clear understanding of where the experience is and where the replenishment is. Today, we have a very good understanding and control of the ecosystem of where discovery starts and where retention continues. That is very important. Remember, we are not in the business of only acquisition. We are actually first and foremost in a business of retention because this is where the profitability will start building. You can do it also by having the right innovation. Innovation, I was very clear when we say we want to accelerate innovation. It's not necessarily in quantities. It depends on makeup. You need more innovation. You may need less in skincare and fragrances. It's also playing the size, the impact, the breakthrough, but also at the same time, sizing and price point.
I've been very clear that on innovation today, we're bringing more innovation at the entry of prestige, especially on makeup or brand like The Ordinary and Clinique, that are allowing us to just reignite the recruitment wheel. At every single time, we're doing it at accretion of gross margin. There's no innovation that we are allowing to launch in the portfolio that are not gross margin accretive to the total. We're doing that. By increasing consumer-facing investment, remember last quarter, we increased consumer- facing by 5%, every quarter before it is anywhere between 3% and 4%, that allows us to put more investment into consumer- facing, driving equity, driving reach. Think about the media today, which it's equity first, then desirability through reach, and making sure that we're putting our brand into culture. Just to illustrate, one good example with M·A·C.
We've expanded M·A·C into Sephora, both into the U.S. and into the Middle East. That gives us access to the largest part of the makeup business in this region. We've went after more innovation, like Powder Kiss, for instance, which has been a global success in the lipstick area. At the lower price point, we've reignited the retail. Third, we've put back the brand into culture. We've hired ambassador like Doja Cat, like Kris Jenner, and et cetera. As a result, in the U.S., for the last quarter, the first quarter of the calendar year, the M·A·C brand grew 250 basis points of market share in lip gloss, and grew close to triple digits in lip in total. That's actually the model that we are applying on every single of our brand.
When you combine equity, desirability, and culture is how you maintain the strong desirability of the brand overall.
The target to 30% new products by innovation, is that more innovation or is that more effective, bigger innovation? Is it both? I guess, what are the bottlenecks or what needs to happen from here to hit that target?
Maybe while tag-teaming on these two things, because I think there is what we do on the product standpoint and what we're doing from a value chain standpoint together. I think it's a combination, depending on the categories. Like I said, I think makeup is more innovation. Skincare and fragrance is bigger and most disruptive innovation. I think we look at innovation in about three buckets. The breakthrough innovation, so these ones have to be like what we do, for instance, in longevity with Estée Lauder or Crème de la Mer that brought regenerating night cream, both face and eye. These are smaller in quantities, but big in size, really. We want to place any of this innovation in the top three of the subcategory we are launching every single time. There's what we call on-trend innovation. In makeup, you have to be fast.
Lip oil is trending, okay, you need to just bring a lip oil in the market in 6-12 months, or you're missing, potentially, the wave. Even if not, you are missing it, the cost of entry becomes so high because there's too many players. The combination of being fast at the entry of where subcategory is trending is absolutely key. That's why I'm putting the accent of bringing product faster to market, never compromising quality or high performance, but you have to be faster. The last one is what Roberto was saying with Double Wear, which is what we call commercial innovation. It's a product that people love. It's number one foundation in many markets around the world.
You can just bring it through different eyes to the consumer with new ingredients, new technology inside, but it's still the Double Wear you love, but it is what we call kaizen. It's like what we know is good, we can make it even better going forward. That's what it is. There's many things that we are doing to be able to just bring product to market faster using AI that allows us to never compromise in quality or performance and other things that you can say.
I'll give some example of that, and one is back to the 30%, what we are doing to enabling speed. There are a number of things. We're well underway. We have doubled, actually, the launches that we do under 12 months. We are in the high teens, as Stéphane was saying. Also below 18 months, it's more than 50%. It's there. It's coming. I've no doubt we will get there. We've done it, and we are doing it in two ways. One, a lot of systemic changes in our value chain processes. There are many. Again, I like to give example, a quick one. The way we do quality, the way we harmonize testing and validation to respect quality with our third-party manufacturers, especially makeup third-party manufacturing is an important component of our value chain network.
By eliminating some activities, by simplifying and synchronizing some activities, by parallel pathing some actions, we're reducing by several weeks that path. This is all speed that we gain in the launch. More relevant, I think, for what we're doing today and for the future that we're building to achieve and beat the 30% is the work that we're doing with technology, with digital technology, and AI being a big component of that. One risk that we wanted to avoid was to have a lot of AI initiatives, but in a way, not connected. A lot of pilots, one after the other, which is then difficult to scale. What we wanted to do since the beginning is to say whatever we do has to have an end-to-end view first, so it has to be full value chain view, and second, we are able to scale it.
We have created internally what we call our digital atelier, which is basically a competence center where we identify and define how to scale the best digital solution, AI solution. We invest in training in what we call our workers for the future, and of course, we look at our data structure to make sure they're all there. Again, examples. Design to manufacture. We go upstream. We're developing an intelligent technical packaging design using AI. What we're trying to do is to link a marketing brief to a packaging that is either already existing or similar packagings that are aligned with the brief, but with the small modifications, they are immediately industrialized, meaning it's much faster the way we develop the packaging first, but second, equally important, the packaging is industrialized, meaning when it goes to a factory line, it can be produced.
We don't need to do the pilot run and do the testing, et cetera. This is months, two to four months, we believe, of savings in the development and the industrialization. This will be saving because it's not about double tooling, as an example. There will be speed, agility, and efficiency at the same time. We're ready to deploy it. We're finishing it. That's why we believe we have plenty of solutions to double down on that. Another example that I like to mention, because it's now a presence in our value chain, in the manufacturing environment, we have an AI solution which we call Ella, is a new colleague, we call her. It stands for Estée Lauder Line Assistant.
It's essentially a AI solution augmenting the capabilities of our people to identify immediately the best setup of the line for a launch. Or for a change in the line for a performance requirement. Something that used to last quite a lot with different line operators is now instantaneously provided by Ella. Again, it's speed, it's agility, and it's efficiency, because, of course, this is allowing more time to produce and more time to set up. The third example, there are many, but I'll stop with the third one. It's the one that I really like because it has helped us to manage the network. Everything that I was saying before, it's also thanks to a digital solution that we call our digital twin of our value chain network.
Basically, we have mapped the network digitally and with all the different technology and the different sizes, all the different lanes, full network, so that when we want to play with scenarios now with what is happening, we play with different scenarios. We can quickly identify which is the bottleneck, where do we have a risk, where we don't have enough agility or resilience, and then we can zoom in and find solutions there. Those are all the technologies that we have, we're building, and will allow us, I think, to definitely go where Stéphane wants to be, maybe a bit more.
That's very interesting how AI, for the time being, we're seeing a lot of benefit in the value chain and in R&D.
About the ability to just be much more resilient, much faster, and agile on how to bring and to scale our innovations.
Yes.
I think it's only the beginning. We'll see a lot more.
Yeah
from what AI can just bring, even on consumer-facing optimization going forward.
We could spend another 40 minutes on AI.
Yeah, I know we can.
We've about seven left, and I want to make sure we hit two key markets that perpetually come up in conversations.
Let me guess.
Yes.
U.S. and China.
You got it.
Okay.
I guess, perspective on the state of the market, the consumer, the health, vibrancy of each of those geographies. I think from a U.S. perspective, the focus is, okay, there's volume, there's momentum, there's volume growth. When do we get to value share growth, and when do we get the gap between organic sales and consumption to close? In China, there's a million questions, but I think the one that I feel the most often recently is just, how does Estée Lauder navigate with all the different local indie brands that are coming up? Is the portfolio as potent today as it has been historically?
Yeah. I think these are, Doja Cat aside, these are the two markets to talk about. Not that I want to diminish the importance of all the others, but if these two markets continue to be in the mid-single digits, sorry, from a growth standpoint, I think we are in a really good position globally as a category. Our ability to gain market share is really what is just going to make us overall gain market share in the total. Looking at the U.S., I would say, first of all, coming from the decade of market share deleverage that we have had, I'm very proud of what the team has done in a very short period of time.
I think especially online, I think the momentum is very strong with what we've done with Amazon, what we've done with TikTok Shop now, or frankly, even our brand.com. I think the early sign of the transformation and the move from our internal platform to Shopify with Tom Ford has really shown increased KPIs in terms of satisfaction, close, retention of the consumers on brand.com. You remember that all direct-to-consumer in the U.S. is not captured in any of the Circana panel. Frankly, we're doing pretty well
in direct-to-consumer especially, linked to brands like Le Labo, where the majority of the sales are in direct-to-consumer, therefore not captured in Circana. On that front, I think, the momentum that we are U.S., for me, the first stage was put back the brand in volume growth and gain market share. Now, from a value standpoint, we're already gaining market share on brands like The Ordinary. The Ordinary is actually flying not only in the U.S. but frankly everywhere around the world. I was with the team last night, just doing a quick review, and the brand is in high double-digit growth in pretty much every market around the world. We're seeing good momentum with our perfume brands also, with Tom Ford, Jo Malone, Le Labo, especially, really gaining strongly. You're right.
For us, we need to go from volume market share growth to value market share growth consistently. We're still dealing with the rebalancing of the distribution. In our case, it is purely a distribution rebalancing. We've made some really clear move lately. I think it was made a headline. Bobbi Brown, we decided to exit Bobbi Brown from the department stores in the North America market to really focus on the high-growth channel. There's nothing wrong with the brand. On the contrary, the brand is doing very well, but it's doing well, and it's well-positioned to just work in specialty, multi, and online. That's what we decided to do.
At the same time, the expansion of the PRGP that we've announced at the last earnings calls, 70% of the expansion of the number of position eliminated are field position of beauty advisor because we are accelerating the cut of the tail of both freestanding stores that are no longer working for us because the traffic is not there or frankly, the tail of department store. The faster we continue to just shift from, I would say, roughly mid-30% of our business in department store to mid-20% of our department store in the U.S., I think then we will poise for a very strong market share acceleration, thanks to the momentum that we're having both on specialty, multi, and online.
One of the big move we made is MAC entering Sephora in the U.S. after 41 years, a title basically in the USA, that it took them 41 years to just go to Sephora. Yeah, M·A·C was not built for that. M·A·C was built as a direct-to-consumer brand.
Yeah.
When the consumer started to shift to go to online and specialty multi, it was time for us to do it. Frankly, the result and the partnership that we have had with Sephora, frankly, with Ulta, and many of our specialty multi retailers has been absolutely fantastic. The faster we shift the distribution.
Okay
Going East completely to the other big block of beauty. I'm very confident of what we are seeing in China. I just want to make it very clear, I don't believe that China will just resume to consistent double-digit market growth as a market because China is a mature market. You've said it, from a pre-COVID to a post-COVID, there's been a complete transformation of the role of the local brands. It's not that we don't know that. We've seen that in Japan, we've seen it in Korea, we see it now in China. We just purchased a brand in India with Forest Essentials. That is the number one brand in India, and we're seeing the rise of the Indian brand. We've seen the rise of the Korean brand.
That's something that we deal by making sure that our brands are the most locally relevant.
in the market where we operate. Don't forget one thing, we've been now 32 years in China.
We know how to operate in China. Of the last eight quarters, we have had seven quarters of market share gain. What I'm the most excited about is, especially since the deployment of Beauty Reimagined, is the growth is much more balanced. In the past, a lot of the growth in China was dependent on Lauder and La Mer that are continuing to do very well. We're seeing net acceleration of Tom Ford. Le Labo. Le Labo now has the number one productivity per door of any beauty brand in China. We have Jo Malone that is doing very strong. Last year we launched The Ordinary very successfully. That allows us to compete at the entry of prestige with many of the local brands. Do I worry about the local brand? No. Do I look at the local brand?
Do I learn from the local brand? Yes, because they have one thing, is the speed. Having the R&D center based in China now today allows us, after two years of really setting up the operation nicely, to have a net acceleration of the number of innovation that we are developing in China for China. 30% of the global innovation for The Estée Lauder Companies will come from Shanghai.
The large majority are targeting the Chinese consumer. I'm really confident. Today, just early in the morning, I was talking to the China team to just get an update on 618. I think you always organize the conference right in the middle of some of the biggest shopping festival around the world. I'm happy to report, actually, the momentum is strong for the time being. It's too early to tell.
Yeah
obviously, because there's still another 20, 17 days before the conclusion of the festival. Very excited about the balance of the growth and the momentum that we are getting, which hopefully puts us again into market share again into this quarter.
We are at time, but I want to end on the final pillar of Beauty Reimagined and culture. We've talked about a lot of the change. There's been a change in the leadership team. There's been a dramatic flattening of the organization, dramatic changes in the ways that Estée Lauder, the company, works.
Yeah.
What do you think has been the most difficult hurdles for the employee base to overcome amidst all that? What are the keys to success from a cultural perspective as you go forward?
I think it's a beautiful question. One that is very close to my heart because all this operational transformation only sticks if you evolve the culture. I think we've put a lot of effort into maintaining what are the core values of the company by evolving the culture. We've deployed what we call our Beauty Commitment. We are in beauty, so Beauty Commitment, and this stands for very simple. B of beauty is bold. We need to be a bolder organization. We need to go after the new ideas. E is to be more entrepreneurial as an organization. I think our founder was the ultimate girlboss, and we want to be more entrepreneurial, which means that there's a lot more empowerment of the organization to go after new ideas. A is agile. I think we've demonstrated in supply chain our ability to go into new channels.
Remember that in the U.S. everybody was questioning, why are we not going to new platform like Amazon? We were part of the last train. Now, obviously this is behind, and we're doing great movement. In Europe and in the U.K., we are the first one doing it.
We are learning. U, unified.
Beauty, we are unified as one team. We're clearly creating this one culture and this one organization, even by changing the incentive model. All the leadership team, as I said, is going from thousand of different mechanisms of reward to just one. We need to deliver the company as a leadership team, when at the beginning of the year, we tell you what is the guidance, top line and bottom line, our job is to meet it or to exceed it. I really want the leadership team to just be behind it. T, transformational. I believe that when the PRGP is over, the big transformation is done. It's going to be constant evolution. We are in a world that, frankly, AI allows you to just create efficiency every day. Y, it's a little bit of wink, is yes.
Yes to new idea, yes to just go to new brands, new markets, new channels, as long as everything we do preserve what we have. The two most important things in our company, the best brands and the best team in the industry. Maybe Roberto, you can say how you're applying that to your organization.
Well, we don't have a lot of time. Maybe I'll just say one thing. On top of the incentive, what is working a lot, and it's certainly working in value chain to kill silos, and apart from the operating model, a number of things is what Stéphane brought with Beauty Reimagined, the idea of the consumer voice. As a consumer-centric organization, at the end of the day, in the meetings, no silos. We say, what is adding value to the consumer? Is adding value, we go for that. It's not adding value, who cares? That, to me, is the strongest push to say that's the very end, and all the rest gets organized and gets three lines for that. I think it's a strong message, and everybody's now talking about consumer value.
Awesome. With that, we will wrap it. Thank you both for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you all for joining.
Thank you.
Thank you. Great.
I thought Y was going to be youthful for you.