Welcome to The Strategy Files—a newsletter about history's most ambitious people in fashion, beauty, and culture. I study the icons, you apply their strategies; you win.

This month’s deep dive comes from the book My Life For Beauty by Helena Rubinstein.

Support my book habit by becoming a paying contributor.

Here’s what you missed in part one.

Helena Rubinstein dropped out of med school in the late 1800s. As a result, her parents ordered to marry a rich man. They found one and arranged a marriage. This presented a series of problems: Helena wanted to leave Poland, she didn’t want to get married, and she didn’t want to start a family. Helena wanted something that wasn’t in that small town: opportunity. 

So, she started plotting and planning to move out of Poland.

This brings us to our first lesson of the day: change your location, you change your life. 

I love this lesson because it keeps popping up in the biographies we read. For example, remember when we talked about Nobu. Nobu Hospitality, LLC owns and operates 36 hotels and 56 restaurants across four continents.  But his empire started out with just one fusion Japanese restaurant in LA.  And how did he build the skill set needed to own and operate his first successful restaurant? By working and studying in places like Peru and Argentina and relocating to LA. If he had never left Japan, there wouldn’t be 36 restaurants and 56 hotels for his business to own and operate.

But back to Helena. She packed her bags and headed to Australia to live with her uncle.  She didn’t take much with her, but she brought all the right things: a killer wardrobe, a great complexion, and 12 bottles of her family’s secret face cream.

I say “all the right things” because the wardrobe and the clear skin helped shape the way people saw Helena.  They didn’t see someone who needed to be married off; they saw a glamorous, aspirational woman who had something they wanted: soft, clear, and radiant skin.

They didn’t have skin like hers because the sun was intense where they were, they didn’t cover their skin, sunscreen hadn't been invented yet and they weren’t using any products to repair the damage done to their skin. 

So naturally, they loved Helena’s face cream so much that they bought it all. And she had to get her mother in Poland to make more. On page 24, She says:

“I longed to be able to help them. It was this experience, I believe, which first made me aware of other women’s beauty problems.”

I find it incredibly funny that she suddenly realized that every woman in the world isn’t as beautiful as she was. And felt the need to publish that realization in a book for the world to see.

Anyway, Helena realized that she had an excellent product to sell. But if she wanted to get that product in front of more people, she’d have to move to a bigger city. 

So she relocated again; this time to Melbourne. 

The move to Melbourne and the success that followed would not have been possible if she wasn’t great at building relationships. When Helena was on the ship from Poland to Australia, she met two women. And they both played a part in helping her get to the next level.

The first gave her room and board in Melbourne in exchange for teaching her children German.  But there was an added benefit: this woman was part of “society”, which meant that Helena got to go to all the right parties and meet all the right people. Helena loved it, and wanted to make this new world part of her own. But she knew her position in society was not permanent because she was just staying with a friend who lived that life. Without the resources of that friend, Helena had no part in society.

So, she decided to take her business seriously so she could be part of society. 

And this is where the second woman comes in; the second woman she met on the ship gave Helena her first and only business loan. 

Now, I want to stop for a moment. Ask yourself: when was the last time you built an authentic relationship with a new person? Helena didn’t go into these relationships expecting anything in return; she wasn’t expecting room and board an investment.  But, when she needed those things, she looked to the women she was in community with, and they helped her. So I want to challenge you to build an authentic relationship with someone.  Anyone! And if you can’t think of anyone, email me, and I’ll introduce you to someone new.

Now, back to Helena.

She spent the loan she got on two things.  She used part of the money to create a large enough batch of an excellent product to support sales. The rest of the money was used to rent a space that would allow her to connect with would-be buyers: a beauty salon.

I want to sit with this for a moment. You can have the best product in the world, but if you don’t have a way to get it in front of the right customers, see if it solves a problem they have, and provide them with an amazing service, then the product means nothing.

The beauty salon had everything she needed: three well decorated rooms where she could talk to clients and a kitchen she could experiment in. She was early; salons weren’t a big thing back then. Some people would often come in out of curiosity. Others would come in to ask her for advice.  Both resulted in sales. 

The salon wasn’t just a way for her to sell to potential clients. It allowed Helena to gather user feedback, use it as data, and make data based decisions in her business. 

On page 27, she says

“Examining for the first time so many skins at close quarters and discussing with clients they’re different problems, I began to realize how much one skin differs from another. And it dawned on me that, wonderful as my cream undoubtedly was (and still is), it would not solve every irregularity and could itself be improved. I would have to learn how to adjust the formulation of the cream and create new creams and lotions to suit different skin types. There was only one thing to do. At the end of the working day, I would close up shop and spend long evenings experimenting in my kitchen.”

She classified skin types in ways we still use today: oily, dry, combinations, and normal.  And she gave her customers demonstrations on how to properly apply the cream depending on their skin type.

And she just keeps doing this loop over and over again: providing customers with an excellent product, getting their feedback, and iterating on it.

Best,

LaToya

References && Further Reading

FIT Library, SPARC unit

War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry 

Helena Rubinstein - The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Helena Rubinstein | Harrods US 

Helena Rubinstein : ses bijoux de beauté - The French Jewelry Post 

Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power - The Jewish Museum

Helena Rubinstein - The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Helena Rubinstein | Harrods US 

Helena Rubinstein: A Pioneer of the Modern Beauty Industry