Fabrizio Freda Speaks at CEW
CEW’s Carlotta Jacobson, The Estée Lauder Companies’ Fabrizio Freda and Chrysallis’ Jill Scalamandre.
On January 28, Fabrizio Freda, President and CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies spoke about Leading Through The Changing Face Of Beauty at Cosmetic Executive Women’s (CEW) Newsmaker Forum. “Having the opportunity to learn from a leader in the industry is invaluable,” stated CEW’s President Carlotta Jacobson. “Fabrizio is one of the most watched executives in the beauty industry,” said Mary Murko, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Prevention.
Mr. Freda explained that he is a big believer in change. “Change is the essence of progress. Every time I made a change, I became stronger,” he said. He also defined the two types of changes—incremental change where you look to the past to determine the next step and disruptive change where you ask
yourself where you want to be in three years and start designing the change from there. Change also means adapting to new situations such as the recession, and Mr. Freda stated that the economic climate was “a great opportunity to do our change faster. It put a big emphasis on cash flow and survival.”
“[The new consumer] is much more careful and is buying less. She has learned the lesson of value,” Mr. Freda said. “The prestige world sells service and education of products; consumers get pleasure from shopping. This experience has a lot more value than what we’ve been communicating to consumers over the years,” he added.
Besides envisioning The Estée Lauder Companies as a truly global company, Mr. Freda also sees a huge opportunity to bring prestige to Brazil. “They have a highly developed mass market and are the biggest hair care market in the globe.”
Lastly, Mr. Freda described the components you look for in a leader—an understanding of reality, understanding the amount of information they have, the ability to connect dots that no one has seen before and to understand the concept of service. “I want to make this company the place for fantastic talent from around the world,” he stated