Money & beauty, Helena Rubinstein.
Born without any tangible advantage to succeed, Helena Rubinstein will yet succeed beyond all imagination, at a time when the cosmetic hardly exist and where the makeup is reserved for women of ill repute, the poor little Polish from the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland and who emigrated alone in the brutal Australia Victorian world will build an industrial and commercial empire throughout the world.
Her genius idea: a market previously untapped, beauty in pots.
It begins with a simple skincare cream, Valaze, armed with a concept that will take off, scientific beauty is therefore accessible to all women as long as they believe in it and are willing to pay a high price .
The first cosmetic potions are also more expensive than they should be because Helena intuitively believe that the strength of the belief in the power of a cosmetic justified a high price .
In her ascension, she will always be a pioneer, developing particularly the effective commercial association between shop and beauty salon.
“Beauty is nothing futile ” says the businesswoman and to prove the excellence of her products, she was keen to associate scientific research from Marie Curie, a woman like her ahead of her time.
Brick by brick, working relentlessly, she will amass a huge fortune and her name will be known to all women with her hugely successful products.
Her business sense was incredible and she managed to sell her company to Lehman Brothers and then buying it back from them at a ridiculous low price after the 1929 crisis and pocketing gargantuan profits. There will be feared competitors like Elizabeth Arden (she never ever even pronounced the name) and Charles Revson (she called him the Nail Man) but the first creator in the beauty market was still her. AM x
