LVMH

“So LVMH, after 2001 they started to divest of most of their beauty businesses. And we were one of the first ones to get snapped up by another business. So Starwood Hotels and Resorts bought us because they wanted to have bliss bars, and they wanted to put thos…”

“It was a hot time for beauty companies. So, retrospectively there were a lot of cool new companies starting, and a lot of interest in those companies from the big beauty conglomerates. They were starting to buy up smaller players rather than, you know, trying …”

“We had more than one large, large company come and try and get us, and I think the most exciting thing for me at that time was the idea of not having all of the financial responsibility for that business on, on my head.”

“Oh, I, for the simple reason that there's no intellectual property. You can't patent color.”

“So LVMH, after 2001 they started to divest of most of their beauty businesses, and we were one of the first ones to get snapped up by another business. So Starwood Hotels and Resorts bought us because they wanted to have bliss bars, and they wanted to put thos…”

“Well, the first call was with Benefit Cosmetics, who's owned by LVMH, and I remember that call so vividly. It was like pacing around, and it was so exhilarating and so exciting, and at the end of about what ended up being a 30 minute call, he was like, okay, I…”

“Oh, I, for the simple reason that there's no intellectual property. You can't patent color.”

“The Diageos, the Sazeracs, LVMH. Absolutely. They, you have essentially five that own Everything.”

“We had an investment from Arnold Kashyama and we had the investment in 99 from LVMH. Definitely put us on much more stable ground to grow the business and to launch Michael Kors accessories in the early, I think it was, 2000, actually.”

“They offered me a bigger job because they were looking for a head of U.S. Head of U.S.? For Loewe.”

“You can kind of go down the list of every major American whiskey brand, and I can tell you who owns them. So like all the- ... The Diageos, the Sazeracs, LVMH, absolutely. They, you have essentially five that own everything.”

“Yeah, one of the secrets of beauty is that you make your money in the repeat. You don't actually make as much of your money in the first time trial, and so the big three in beauty, LVMH, L'Oreal, and Estee Lauder, win on creating products that have enough love…”

“So we closed that round of them investing fifty million. I don't remember the valuation, but it was a good valuation. And that was February of 2000, and then March of 2000 is when the bubble broke.”

“The perfect exit is to be acquired by a company that has some sort of a synergy and relationship to what you do. My fantasy, you know, we run the Louis Vuitton restaurant in New York City. Would be that LVMH come in and acquire star restaurants or part of us.”