Founder index · NARS · 1994–present
François Nars
The lesson that travels
“You can sell the whole company and keep the thing that made it valuable, if you are clear about which of the two you actually own.”
Nars was an established editorial and runway makeup artist — Vogue covers, Marc Jacobs shows — before he made a single product to sell. When he launched in 1994 it was with twelve lipsticks in exactly one store, Barneys New York. The scarcity was the campaign. A product available at one address in America becomes something people mention to each other, and that is a cheaper form of advertising than advertising.
He shot the campaigns himself, wrote the copy, and chose the matte black rubberised packaging that made the brand identifiable across a counter in a category that defaulted to gold and glass. He also named a peach blush Orgasm, which turned every purchase into a small performance at the till and produced one of the best-selling single products in prestige cosmetics.
In 2000 he sold 100% of the company to Shiseido and stayed on as Creative Director. Twenty-five years later he is still directing the image. That arrangement — full equity out, full authorship retained — is the sharpest contrast in this set with what happened to M.A.C., where Estée Lauder acquired the equity and the founders left within four years.
§01 — The hard calls
- 1994
Launch with twelve lipsticks in a single door rather than a full range across many.
Turned a small inventory into a story. The restriction created the scarcity that a launch budget would otherwise have had to buy, and it is the opposite of what venture-funded beauty brands do thirty years later.
- 1999
Name a blush Orgasm and refuse to soften it.
A product customers had to ask for out loud became one of the most durable SKUs in prestige beauty. The name did the work of distribution, media and word of mouth simultaneously — at zero marginal cost.
- 2000
Sell the entire company to Shiseido while negotiating to keep creative control, in-house photography and copy.
Gave up the equity and kept the authorship. Shiseido supplied manufacturing, regulatory scale and Asian distribution; Nars supplied the taste, which is the part a conglomerate cannot buy off a shelf. The brand still looks like him.
- 2017
Enter mainland China, which at the time required accepting animal testing on imported cosmetics.
Real growth, real backlash from customers who had assumed the brand's values ruled it out. An honest example of a founder-led brand discovering that scale and stated principles can be in direct conflict, and choosing scale.
§02 — Around this founder