Earlier this month, I was onstage with Bobbi Brown during New York Tech Week (at an event hosted by the AI company Gamma). We were there to talk about the makeup artist-turned-entrepreneur’s journey as a second-time founder. And just a few weeks before that, one headline had captured that path.
In May, Puck published an article titled “How Bobbi Brown beat Bobbi Brown.” That’s how Brown (the person)—now running her brand Jones Road—beat Bobbi Brown (the brand), owned by Estée Lauder Companies.
I asked Brown how she felt reading that headline, but before I could get the question out, she made her feelings clear with a shrug: “Oops.” Brown isn’t shy about sharing the low points that came at the end of her 22-year tenure under ELC; she launched Jones Road the day her noncompete expired, four-and-a-half years after leaving the brand that had her name on it. Is it a competition? I asked her. “There is no competition,” she said, before adding a cheeky “anymore.”
Puck theorized that Jones Road has cannibalized the business that used to belong to the Bobbi Brown brand (and reports that while Bobbi Brown exits almost all U.S. department stores, Jones Road is expected to do $200 million in sales this year). Jones Road is, unsurprisingly, closer to Brown’s original vision. “[The Bobbi Brown brand] started as a very small essential line that helped women figure out how to do their makeup very quickly, with a few products and just what they need,” she told me. “By the time I left, it was a 10-step, 20-step, figuring out how to sell a lot of products to a lot of people.” Jones Road sells a more minimal assortment; it’s still 85% direct-to-consumer, with 17 of its own stores.
