Welcome in, today is Monday, August twenty-fourth, and we begin with Estée Lauder, where Marketing Week reports a chief executive defending a turnaround that has cut ten thousand roles. Estée Lauder's net sales rose five percent to fifteen billion dollars in the year to June thirtieth, with gross profit up seven percent, per Marketing Week's account of the company's analyst call. Fragrance grew ten percent and skincare four percent, while makeup growth improved by more than five hundred basis points on the prior year. Hair care fell one percent. On that same call, president and chief executive Stéphane de La Faverie described the Beauty Reimagined plan as the biggest organisational and cultural transformation in the company's history. It runs alongside a recovery programme that has eliminated roughly ten thousand roles, a net reduction the company says is enabling a fifty percent productivity increase across corporate functions. Asked whether the cuts had cost the company talent, the CEO said, quote, nothing could be further from the truth, citing new hires in creative, marketing, research and technology. Industry reaction leans skeptical that the growth narrative and the scale of the contraction can hold together, with a recurring concern that leanness erodes institutional knowledge. He also ruled out transformational deals, keeping the focus on single-brand acquisitions. Also today, China. Global Cosmetics News reports that L'Oréal-owned IT Cosmetics will close its Tmall Global flagship store on September second, effectively exiting the country's official online market. That was the brand's only online purchasing channel in China, so the closure leaves it without an official route to consumers there. Per that reporting, the store is already unsearchable, its products have been removed, and the withdrawal follows a prolonged reduction in the brand's presence. For groups weighing cross-border e-commerce against on-the-ground investment, this reads as one brand's retrenchment rather than a market-wide exit, but it is a data point on how thin the cross-border route has become. Staying with the numbers. WWD reviewed first-half earnings from more than a dozen beauty and fragrance makers across nine countries, and finds the guidance picture splitting. Per that review, L'Oréal, LVMH, Puig and Chanel held full-year guidance, Unilever and Henkel raised theirs, Kao lifted its forecast, and Beiersdorf cut its consumer outlook, citing a volatile market. The same account puts hair care as the standout, with L'Oréal's professional division up eleven point six percent, and marks K-beauty's pivot west. LG Household and Health Care's North American sales outpaced its China sales for the first time since two thousand one, rising forty-seven percent, while China slipped five percent. Practitioner reaction skews toward whether that growth is volume-led or price-led, with some pressing for brand-level detail. That question decides how much of this half's momentum carries into second-half planning. Also today, discovery. WWD Beauty argues that generative engine optimization, GEO, is changing the consumer journey, and that brands need to shift gears fast. That is the argument in its own terms. The operating stakes are concrete: search budgets, product copy and retailer feeds in beauty were built to rank against keywords, not to be selected by an answer engine, and the cost and timing of any re-tooling remain unquantified. Some practitioners frame it as a reframing rather than a new channel, where the question moves from how a brand ranks to how an AI decides to recommend it, and a recurring criticism is that most brands still silo the work. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Coty reported one percent year-on-year sales growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal twenty twenty-six, ahead of expectations, per Global Cosmetics News, as its Coty Curated framework moves into execution. DSM-Firmenich has agreed to a thirty-three million dollar settlement with direct purchasers over alleged price fixing in fragrance ingredients, Cosmetics Business reports, and says it does not admit liability. Fenty Beauty is reformulating its Pro Filt'r foundation as Fluid Flex, pitched by the brand on expanded shade inclusivity and launching September fourth, per WWD Beauty. WWD Beauty sizes Saudi Arabia's beauty and personal care market at eight point one billion dollars, per Euromonitor, with Ulta Beauty entering via Alshaya Group in Jeddah. And finally, Dolce Glow, the at-home tanning brand founded by tan artist Isabel Alysa, has raised an eleven million dollar Series A led by Cavu Consumer Partners, WWD Beauty reports.