These 7 cosmetics companies control almost every single beauty product you buy!
Megan Willett-Wei and Skye Gould May 18, 2017, 6:44 PM
- The beauty industry has hundreds of brands.
- Seven conglomerates own 182 of those brands.
- They employ thousands and make billions of dollars each year.
- They also control advertising and the way we think about beauty.
As consumers, we like to think we’re making a conscious decision when we buy from a certain brand, especially when it comes to something as personal as beauty products.
But 182 beauty companies fall under the massive umbrellas of seven huge manufacturers.
Inspired by a graphic that shows all the food brands owned by major corporations, INSIDER created one that illustrates all the major beauty brands and the parent companies they fall under.
These seven megacompanies — Estée Lauder Companies, L’Oréal, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Shiseido, Johnson & Johnson, and Coty — employ thousands of people around the world and make billions of dollars in revenue every year. They also control advertising and the way we all think about beauty.
Each conglomerate has more than just the subbrands we listed here, but for our purposes, we stuck with brands that are responsible for skin care (for both the body and face), hair care, perfume, and makeup. We did not include brands that only made products such as deodorant, toothpaste, suntan lotion, or baby lotion, but we did count the subbrands of relevant brands (i.e. Pantene and Pantene Pro-V).
What remains is a compelling look at who controls the beauty products we’re buying, from fan favorites like CoverGirl to expensive and aspirational skin-care lines like La Mer.
Estée Lauder Companies is responsible for 24 of the beauty brands on this list. Some of its holdings include makeup and fragrances by fashion brands Donna Karan, Michael Kors, Tom Ford, Tommy Hilfiger, and Tory Burch, each of which has its own cosmetics or toiletries line.
The company also has quite a few well-known beauty brands, including Aveda, Bobbi Brown, Clinique, La Mer, and MAC Cosmetics.https://0e9048a3589c545d530fc1b165ddb822.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Estée Lauder made an estimated $11.3 billion in beauty sales in 2016, according to Beauty Packaging.
L’Oréal has the most brands on this list, with a total of 39 beauty brands, including major staples like Lancôme, Maybelline, Urban Decay, Garnier, Essie, and The Body Shop.
It also has expensive skin-care and hair-care brands, including Pureology, La Roche-Posay, and SkinCeuticals.
In made $27.6 billion in beauty annual sales in 2016, according to Beauty Packaging.
Unilever has 38 beauty subbrands, and many of those, including Nexxus, Pond’s, TIGI, Dove, Vaseline, and Lever 2000, are drugstore staples in the US.
Unilever also has quite a few brands that are popular outside the US, including Fair & Lovely, a “fairness cream” that’s marketed in India as a skin-lightening lotion for women. It has received backlash for promoting one shade of skin as better than another.
Unilever made $58.2 billion in corporate sales in 2016, according to Beauty Packaging. $22.3 billion was from beauty sales.
P&G‘s nine beauty brands include big-name brands Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Olay, and Gillette.
The company made $76 billion from corporate sales in 2016, according to Beauty Packaging, $18 billion of which was from beauty sales. The corporation sold many of its beauty brands to Coty in October 2016.
Coty has become a leader in the beauty industry, with 33 total brands. It owns many big-name products, including OPI Products, Rimmel, and CoverGirl, and it’s behind celebrity toiletries from Katy Perry, David Beckham, and Beyoncé, among others.
In 2016, Coty made $4.3 billion in beauty sales, according to Beauty Packaging. After its 2016 P&G acquisitions, we expect this number to rise dramatically.
Shiseido, which itself is a well-known skin-care brand, has about 30 other beauty brands underneath it. Some of those are also makeup brands, including BareMinerals, Nars Cosmetics, and Laura Mercier.
The vast majority are brands that might not be recognized in the US, including Japanese brands Majolica Majorca, Ettusais, Maquillage, and Aqualabel, which also markets products to “whiten” skin.
The Japanese corporation made $6.3 billion in beauty sales in 2016, according to Beauty Packaging.
The last major brand we included on this list is on the smaller side, but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in name recognition.
Johnson & Johnson owns nine beauty brands, including Aveeno, Neutrogena, Clean & Clear, and RoC.
The company made $7.1 billion in beauty sales in 2016, according to Beauty Packaging.
