On the thirteenth of July 2026, an internal memo from chief executive Stéphane de La Faverie took Too Faced, Smashbox and Dr.Jart+ off the market and set out how they will be run instead. The memo was reviewed by WWD and The Business of Beauty, and on inquiry the company confirmed its contents. The sale it ended had run for half a year without a formal announcement: the company confirmed a review of the portfolio by outside advisers, the trade press carried the three brands as a package from January, and by the middle of May the final bids were in, Too Faced and Smashbox offered as a pair, Dr.Jart+ on its own, with a close expected within weeks.
This article is part of the dossier on the luxury beauty market.
The Brands: What the Decade of Scale Bought
The three brands entered The Estée Lauder Companies during the decade when scale was its strategy. Smashbox came in 2010 from Dean and Davis Factor, great-grandsons of Max Factor. Too Faced followed in 2016 for an estimated 1.45 billion dollars, the largest acquisition in the company’s history, and Fabrizio Freda, chief executive at the time, called it one of the most dynamic makeup brands in the world. Dr.Jart+ arrived in two steps, a minority holding in its parent Have & Be in 2015 and full ownership in 2019, and brought Korean laboratory skincare into a portfolio that had none.
The decade that followed repriced all three. The company wrote down 375 million dollars on Dr.Jart+, citing its performance in South Korea and mainland China, and impaired the Too Faced trademark by 75 million dollars, with a further 13 million against its goodwill. In the quarter to March 2026, Too Faced net sales declined double digits, on continued retail softness for the brand and the closure of retailer-operated shop-in-shop doors. In the financial year to June 2025, net sales fell 8 per cent and the operating margin moved to minus 5.5 per cent. In January 2026 the trade press began to carry the three brands as a package, at least one bidder examined all three, several examined the makeup pair, others Dr.Jart+ alone. No buyer was named and no valuation disclosed, and the memo of the thirteenth of July is the only public account of how the process ended.
Puig and the Sale: Two Routes Out of the Middle
The decision completes a sequence that began in the spring. Filings of the twenty-third of March revealed merger talks with Puig, a combination of more than 20 billion dollars in sales that would have formed the largest premium beauty group in the world. The talks collapsed on the twenty-first of May over family governance and a clause tied to Puig’s 21.5 per cent of Charlotte Tilbury. Eight weeks later the sale ended as well, and Estée Lauder, after examining a route upward and a route downward, stays at its present size.
The middle it keeps is the contested part of its own market. Dr.Jart+, the one laboratory brand among the three, took its 375-million-dollar impairment in South Korea and mainland China, the two countries where the green science of skincare is strongest and where Amorepacific and LG hold the ground. Forest Essentials, the purchase of the spring, stands in the wildcrafted substance of the global South. Too Faced and Smashbox stand between the two, colour brands of the 2010s in a market that has moved its money toward the laboratory above them and the plant below them.
Why Is Estée Lauder Keeping Too Faced and Smashbox?
The memo gives the company’s answer. “As we looked ahead, one thing became clear: our brands have different strengths, consumer positioning, competitive dynamics, and growth opportunities, requiring tailored business models to help them accelerate innovation, strengthen consumer connections, and unlock long-term growth,” de La Faverie wrote. “By adopting the speed, agility and entrepreneurial mindset of successful beauty independents, we are evolving how we operate.”
The reorganisation follows brand by brand. Too Faced moves its headquarters from Los Angeles to New York with a significantly smaller team and joins the makeup cluster beside MAC and Bobbi Brown, under cluster president Lisa Sequino. Smashbox stays in Los Angeles, also reduced. Dr.Jart+ remains in Korea under Ye Jin Kim, who has led the brand for more than four years. Origins moves under Deciem, onto the incubation model that built The Ordinary. Estée Lauder paid 1.45 billion dollars for a single makeup brand in 2016, and now reorganises that brand on the model of the companies it used to buy.
Beauty Reimagined: What the Retention Costs
The cumulative charges of the restructuring programme inside Beauty Reimagined reached 1.1 billion dollars by the end of March, and the company now expects the programme to cost between 1.5 and 1.7 billion before tax, raised from a range of 1.2 to 1.6, against annual gross benefits of 1.0 to 1.2 billion. The planned net reduction has grown to between 9,000 and 10,000 positions, from 5,800 to 7,000, and more than 70 per cent of that increase falls on demonstration roles at department-store and freestanding counters, the selling model the company is leaving. After a strong third quarter to the end of March, Estée Lauder raised its full-year outlook for organic sales and adjusted profitability, the first counter-evidence that the programme holds.
The July decision stands beside the transactions of the spring. On the fifth of March, Estée Lauder announced an agreement, subject to regulatory approval, for the remaining 51 per cent of Forest Essentials, the house grounded in a thousand years of Ayurveda, and moved toward the raw substance no laboratory invents. In April it took a minority stake in 111Skin, a London skincare house built on formulas for repair and resilience at the cellular level. In July it keeps the trend brands of the 2010s under leaner teams, and keeps in Dr.Jart+ the one asset that stands inside the green laboratory science of East Asia. The purchases answer the two jaws of the market. The retention holds the middle that lies between them.
Why This Marks a Shift
For a decade the conglomerates answered every question of the beauty market with a purchase. The memo of the thirteenth of July answers one with an operating model, and names the independents as its measure. That concession is the finding: the standard of the field is now set by houses the conglomerates do not own. Whether a smaller team in New York can give a brand of 2016 the movement of an independent is the question the memo leaves open. The next fiscal year answers it.
