John Demsey Joins L Catterton as Senior Adviser
L Catterton looks to be eyeing prestige beauty with the appointment of John Demsey as senior adviser.
While no official announcement was made, Demsey is listed on the investment firm’s site as a senior adviser. A representative for L Catterton declined to comment, while Demsey did not not respond to request for comment.
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Demsey was most recently an executive group president at the Estée Lauder Cos., overseeing some of its key brands, including MAC, Estée Lauder, Tom Ford Beauty and Clinique. He was asked to leave the business last year after he posted a meme on Instagram that contained a racial slur and joke about COVID-19.
In its annual report, the Estée Lauder Cos. stated that Demsey’s non-compete provision would last two years until March 2024. The exact details of the agreement are not known, but WWD understands that the move to L Catterton was given the green light by Lauder.
Prior to Lauder, which he joined in 1991 and where he became an executive group president in 2015, he held positions at Revlon, Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s and Benetton.
Demsey has experience of working with L Catterton as he was previously on the board of Baccarat, which is backed by L Catterton.
As for L Catterton’s beauty footprint, it recently made a “significant” growth investment in color cosmetics brand Dibs Beauty, launched in September 2021 by Tula Skincare founders Ken Landis (who also cofounded Bobbi Brown Cosmetics) and Dan Reich, with Austin, Texas-based influencer Courtney Shields and former chief operating officer of A-Rod Corp Jeff Lee. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. It previously partnered with Tula, a probiotic, superfoods-based skin care line, in 2017, which was acquired last year by Procter & Gamble for an undisclosed amount.
Its current investments in the beauty sector include Intercos, Oddity and Merit.
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