The Untold Story of L'Occitane

When you think of big beauty, L’Occitane probably doesn’t come to mind. It’s a nearly fifty-year-old French brand that, to me, represented nothing more than dated packaging and one fantastic hand cream. I’d always associated it with a dying customer base–and I mean that quite literally.This brand-turned-group is a quiet powerhouse with a fascinating story. But it’s one the company has mostly told itself, so polished and tightly edited that I never felt compelled to pay attention. That was until a listener of this very podcast, an equity analyst no less, shared some recent financial reports with me. They read like a gripping episode of reality TV… if only they weren’t buried under layers of finance jargon.So in this episode , we’ll unpack the untold story of L’Occitane: from its unlikely founding, to the bold bet on Asia that transformed the business, and finally, to the challenges they faced after going public.A series of images, references, graphs and visuals aids have been created to help narrate this story. You can find them at barefaced.substack.com.You can find Barefaced everywhere else at https://beacons.ai/barefaced . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barefaced.substack.com