Stéphane de La Faverie Unveils New Organizational Structure and Executive Team to Revitalize Estée Lauder

Shortly after the Estée Lauder Cos. announced plans to cut as many as 7,000 jobs as sales fell 6 percent in the second quarter, it is also reshuffling its top echelons.

One month into his new position, Stéphane de La Faverie, president and chief executive officer of the Estée Lauder Cos., is beginning to make his mark by building out his bench. So far the shakeup includes primarily those who already work for the company and no new external hires.

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On Tuesday, he unveiled a new organizational structure and executive team, effective April 1, to lead the so-called Beauty Reimagined vision and action plan he created to reinvigorate the prestige beauty company, whose share price sank 45 percent over the past year.

“To achieve our bold Beauty Reimagined goals, we must be organized effectively and efficiently, to make the greatest impact,” said de La Faverie. “This mix of internal and external talent will bring together a depth of knowledge across our brands, business and heritage, as well as fresh and innovative insights.”

As part of this, Jane Hertzmark Hudis will take on the new title of executive vice president, chief brand officer, reporting directly to de La Faverie. Previously, oversight of the brands was split between Hertzmark Hudis and de La Faverie, then executive group presidents.

Now, the company’s 24 brands will be organized by category clusters reporting to Hertzmark Hudis, with the hope being that this will break down silos, and accelerate faster speed-to-market innovations. Much of that leadership shuffling involves the elevation of internal executives, many of whom joined the company in the last few years, save for the creation of the makeup brand cluster, consisting of MAC Cosmetics, Bobbi Brown, Too Faced, Smashbox and Glamglow, which will be overseen by a leader who will be named at a later date, the company said.

Additionally, Lauder is searching for outside talent to fill the chief digital marketing officer role and chief technology, data and analytics officer. In October, Jane Lauder announced her departure from her role of executive vice president of enterprise marketing and chief data officer at the company.

The company did not provide a time frame to fill these roles, as well as the head of the makeup cluster.

In terms of leadership, Justin Boxford will continue to lead Estée Lauder and Aerin Beauty; Sandra Main will lead the skin care brand cluster, including La Mer, Clinique, Origins, Dr. Jart+, Darphin and Lab Series; Guillaume Jesel will continue to lead the couture brand cluster, including Tom Ford and Balmain Beauty; Shane Wolf will lead the hair care brand cluster, including Aveda and Bumble, and Deborah Royer and Jesper Rasmussen will continue to lead Le Labo and Deciem, respectively. Jo Dancey will lead the lifestyle fragrance brand cluster with oversight of Jo Malone London, Kilian Paris and Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle.

On the heels of the departure of Peter Jueptner, group president, international, Lauder is consolidating its existing regional organization into four geographic clusters, including Nadine Graf leading a newly expanded geographic cluster, overseeing EMEA, the UK&I team and a newly established and dedicated emerging markets cluster, spanning markets such as India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa.

Joy Fan will continue to lead mainland China, while North America co-heads Tara Simon and Amber English will add Latin America to their responsibilities, creating an Americas cluster. Matthew Growdon will lead an evolved Asia-Pacific region, excluding mainland China. Additionally, travel retail worldwide, led by Olivier Dubos, will report directly into Growdon.

Graf, Simon, English, Growdon and Fan will join the executive team, reporting directly to de La Faverie.

Elsewhere, in the newly created position of executive vice president, chief value chain officer, Roberto Canevari will assume leadership of the company’s packaging and engineering organizations, in addition to maintaining responsibility for the global supply chain.

Carl Haney, executive vice president, global innovation and research and development, is evolving his role to be solely focused on driving transformative product innovation across the company’s R&D network, including drastically reducing the amount of time it takes to deliver new innovations to consumers.

As previously announced, following the retirement of Michael O’Hare, executive vice president, chief human resources officer, Michael Bowes has been named executive vice president, chief people officer.

Unchanged are Akhil Shrivastava as executive vice president and chief financial officer, a role he assumed last November; Rashida La Lande, who joined last August as executive vice president and general counsel, and Meridith Webster, executive vice president, global communications and public affairs.

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