The senior leadership shuffle continues at the Estée Lauder Cos.
After it was revealed that both chief executive officer Fabrizio Freda and chief financial officer Tracey T. Travis plan to retire, another long-term leader at the company is following them.
Mark Loomis, group president, North America, will retire at the end of fiscal year 2025 after close to three decades at the beauty company, the company said Monday. He will be succeeded by Tara Simon, who will assume the role of president, North America, and Amber English, who will step into the position of president, digital and online, North America.
Simon and English will assume their new roles beginning Jan. 1. The former will report directly to Freda, while the latter will jointly report to Freda and Gibu Thomas, executive vice president, online.
“Mark has done a terrific job of leading the company’s North America business throughout a highly complex, competitive, and fast-evolving landscape,” said William P. Lauder, executive chairman of the Estée Lauder Cos. “He has guided the business strategy and innovation agenda across brands and channels for the region, with a focus on unlocking emerging, granular opportunities. He will be greatly missed across the organization.”
While much of the company’s issues have been attributed to a slowdown in China, there has also been weakness in North America, which analysts have put down to its reliance on department stores and its lack of appeal to younger consumers. In the most recent quarter, net sales were flat in the region.
Of Simon and English, Freda noted that that makes them uniquely well-suited to capture the promise of this evolving market. “Together, their leadership marks a new chapter of growth in North America, by launching new products and taking existing ones to new audiences, fueled by relevant, compelling and differentiated marketing, and serving our customers wherever they prefer to shop.”
In her new role, Simon will focus on executing the company’s North America brick-and-mortar channel strategy, including specialty-multi, department stores and freestanding stores.
She joined the Estée Lauder Cos. in 2020 as senior vice president, global manager at Too Faced, and was promoted to global brand president, California brands, which includes oversight of Too Faced and Smashbox. A successor to Simon’s role leading the company’s California-based brands will be revealed at a later date.
“As someone who is growth obsessed, I understand the industry is fiercely competitive, and evolving to continually engage a wide range of consumers for increased prestige beauty share is more important than ever,” said Simon. “I look forward to working closely with Amber to identify and capture fast-growing distribution opportunities while bringing to market accelerated product innovations, scaling our hero products and responding to trends faster.”
English will oversee the continued acceleration of the company’s digital-first transformation and omni-capabilities for North America, fueled by online.
Most recently, she played an instrumental role in leading its initial brand launches in the U.S. Amazon Premium Beauty store, and has led the North America digital transformation. In particular, her knowledge of Amazon is key, having spent 14 years there, most recently leading the global Amazon Fashion Private Brands business.
“We have a new chapter ahead of us, and I am excited to collaborate with Tara to advance the strategic direction of our North America business,” said English. “We will continue to prioritize recruiting new consumers, engaging consumers with captivating products, and approaching improvements and distribution with an eye towards scaling growth.”
So far, the move to Amazon is proving successful with Clinique, Bumble and bumble, and Too Faced among the brands now on the platform.
“All three brands are off to a very strong start on the U.S. Amazon Premium Beauty store,” said Freda during an August earnings call. “Clinique and Bumble and bumble are seeing promising uptake also with male consumers. And for Clinique, where we now have a full quarter of performance, we are encouraged by the extent of consumers subscribing for future purchases as well as the strong level of repeat purchases in the quarter.”
The changes in the North America division come at the same time as an executive switch in the Latin America market.
On Friday, in a LinkedIn post, Daniel Rachmanis, president of Latin America, revealed his retirement. Roberto Soto, general manager of Mexico, will take over his role.
“It has been the highlight of my 40-year professional career to serve the Lauder family alongside the amazing brand, function and region presidents in the executive leadership team,” he said in the post.
