Gap's Beauty Experiment Loses Its Estee Lauder Ringer
John Demsey, the former Estee Lauder executive brought in about a year ago to help the retailer break into beauty, is no longer advising the company, and Gap is not saying why or what is next.
Gap confirmed that John Demsey, the former Estee Lauder executive hired roughly a year ago as beauty executive director, is no longer in the role. The company offered no timeline for his departure and no word on whether it plans to backfill the position, the kind of quiet exit that tends to signal a strategy reset more than a planned transition.
Demsey's hire was supposed to be Gap's credibility card in beauty, a category every apparel retailer has been circling as a higher-margin, higher-frequency complement to clothing. Bringing in a two-decade Estee Lauder veteran said the retailer was serious about the category rather than just slapping a fragrance on a shelf near the register.
His exit, without a clear successor, raises the obvious question of whether beauty was ever going to be more than a licensing play for Gap, or whether the retailer is simply recalibrating after a year of learning how hard that expansion actually is. Either way, the beauty aisle at Gap just got a lot less star-powered.
Source: Retail Dive
Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →
The Brand Briefing
Liked this? Get five more every morning.
The Brand Briefing: the stories moving brands, in your inbox at 7am your time. Free.
