 | |
| ASX: ABY | |
| Industry | Cosmetics |
| Founded | 1999 |
| Founder |
|
Key people | Tamalin Morton (CEO) |
| Website | adorebeauty |
Adore Beauty is an Australian online cosmetics retailer. [1] The company was founded in 1999 by Kate Morris and James Height and is based in the suburb of Northcote in Melbourne, Victoria. [2]
The company was founded in 1999 by Kate Morris, a 21-year-old business student, and her boyfriend James Height. [3] [4] Morris used savings and an A$12,000 loan from Height's parents to start the business, which she ran out of her garage. [5] [6] She found a company in the newspaper to build the first website, which cost A$8,000 and took six months. [7]
At first, the company only stocked two small Australian brands: Baiame and Santalia. The first mainstream brand, Bloom, signed on in 2002. [6] Clarins signed on in 2006. [7]
The company had a $2 million turnover by the end of 2010. [8] In 2014, the company secured a deal with Estee Lauder Companies to become an authorized agent for Clinique, Bobbi Brown and Estee Lauder brands. [9] That same year, the company earned over $7 million in revenue and ranked 29th in the Smart Company ‘Smart50’ Awards. [3] Morris won the Innovation Award for Victoria in the 2014 Telstra Women's Business Awards. [10]
In 2015, Australian retailer Woolworths Limited bought a 25% stake in the company for an undisclosed sum. The investment grew the company 70% over one year. [1] [5]
In 2016, the company reported an annual turn over of $16 million, carrying 150 brands and 10,000 products. [7] [11] The company is an official online stockist of Dermalogica, ghd, Clarisonic, Lancôme, Benefit Cosmetics, Aesop and Kérastase. [12] The company's Findation service, which compares 22,000 foundations to find the best match, had 1.5 million users, as of 2015. [13]
In 2016, the company began expanding into China. [5] [14] In 2017, Morris bought back Woolworths' 25% stake in the business, restoring her stake to 100%. [15] Morris and Height were co-CEOs until 2018 when Height became the sole CEO. [16]
In 2019, Morris sold 60% of Adore Beauty to Quadrant Private Equity. [17] In August 2020, Tennealle O'Shannessy took over as CEO from Height. [18] In October 2020, the company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. [19]
In January 2023, Tamalin Morton became CEO after O'Shannessy left the company the previous month. [20] In May 2023, Morris and Height announced they would step down from their executive roles (chief innovation officer and chief data officer, respectively) at the end of June but retain their boards seats. [16]
Woolworths Group Limited is an Australian multinational retail and finance company, primarily known for its operation of retail chain Woolworths Supermarkets across Australia and Woolworths in New Zealand, as well department stores Big W and Masters. Headquartered in Bella Vista, Sydney, it is the largest company in Australia by revenue and number of employees, and the second-largest in New Zealand.
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. is an American multinational cosmetics company, a manufacturer and marketer of makeup, skincare, perfume, and hair care products, based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is the second largest cosmetics company in the world after L'Oréal. The company owns a diverse portfolio of brands, including La Mer, Jo Malone London, Clinique and Tom Ford Beauty, among many more, distributed internationally through both digital commerce and retail channels.
Estée Lauder was an American businesswoman. She co-founded her eponymous cosmetics company with her husband, Joseph Lauter. Lauder was the only woman on Time magazine's 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century.
Leonard Alan Lauder is an American billionaire, philanthropist, art collector. He and his brother, Ronald Lauder, are the sole heirs to the Estée Lauder Companies cosmetics fortune, founded by their parents, Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder, in 1946. Having been its CEO until 1999, Lauder is the chairman emeritus of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. During his tenure as the CEO, the company went public at The New York Stock Exchange in 1996 and acquired several major cosmetics brands, including MAC Cosmetics, Aveda, Bobbi Brown, and La Mer.
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Coty Inc. is an American multinational beauty company founded in 1904 by François Coty. With its subsidiaries, it develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes fragrances, cosmetics, skin care, nail care, and both professional and retail hair care products. Coty owns around 77 brands as of 2018.
Aerin Rebecca Lauder Zinterhofer is an American billionaire heiress and businesswoman.
William Philip Lauder is an American billionaire businessman, and executive chairman of The Estée Lauder Companies, one of the world's leading manufacturers of skin care, make-up, fragrance and hair care products.
THG plc, formerly The Hut Group, is a British e-commerce retail company headquartered at Manchester Airport, England. It sells own-brand and third-party cosmetics, dietary supplements and luxury goods online. It provides an end-to-end e-commerce service to third parties through its Ingenuity division. As of 2023, the company operates 16 fulfilment centres worldwide.
MAC Cosmetics, stylized as M·A·C, is a Canadian cosmetics manufacturer founded in Toronto in 1984 by Frank Toskan and Frank Angelo. The company is headquartered in New York City after becoming a subsidiary of Estée Lauder Companies in 1998. MAC is an acronym for Make-Up Art Cosmetics.
Jane Lauder Warsh is an American billionaire heiress and businesswoman.
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Brandon Truaxe, was an Iranian-Canadian. He was a computer scientist and cosmetics entrepreneur known as the founder of DECIEM, the Toronto-based beauty company. He made headlines first for launching 10 cosmetic brands at once and then for being the brain behind the brand The Ordinary with clinical formulations at modest price points - manufacturing everything in-house.
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