EP129. The history of the beauty industry

What can history possibly teach us about the modern-day beauty industry? As it happens, there is a quite a lot. The lives of early beauty industry pioneers alone hold clues to how we have arrived at today's global cosmetic industry.

There are parallels, for example, between how those early-20th century industry personalities started their businesses and the indie beauty founders of today; word-of-mouth marketing of a century ago and social media marketing of today are similar in their aims.

Fueled by a desire to unearth the secrets of today's phenomenally-successfully global beauty industry and discover indie beauty's place in it, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier read dozens of books on the sector. One in particular stood out for its sheer depth and breadth of analysis of how the past continues to shapes the beauty sector today.

In this podcast episode, Lorraine interviews Geoffrey Jones, author of Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry, who is Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. Listen in for some fascinating insights into, among other topics, the myths, lies and makeup that helped shaped the modern beauty industry we know today.