Eau de Success
Coty’s Bernd Beetz has a keen sense for smells
For most of its more than 100 years of existence, cosmetics maker Coty Inc. was not well known inside the United States. But that changed after Bernd Beetz came on board as CEO in 2001. Beetz, a native of Germany, knew that Coty had a “big weakness in North America,” he says, and the executive made it his mission to crack the U.S. market. “I had to find an angle that nobody else had used so far,” he recalls.
Beetz came to Coty with a reputation for unconventional thinking. Most notable among his strategies for the “new Coty” was the decision to use celebrity-backed fragrances to gain a footing in the enormous U.S. market. His plan worked. Today, Coty has deals with numerous celebs, including Jennifer Lopez, Celine Dion, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Victoria and David Beckham. Coty has enjoyed double-digit sales growth and a doubling of profitability in the last five years. It is now the world’s largest fragrance company, with 8,500 employees, annual sales of $2.9 billion, and a portfolio of designer, celebrity, and lifestyle brands.
The 56-year-old Beetz attributes his success to a “good sense for the consumer,” which he developed over the years in such positions as CEO of Parfums Christian Dior and in various marketing roles with Procter & Gamble. “I’ve worked in all consumer goods,” he says. “You name it, I did it.” Beetz says the beauty segment is the most exciting area he’s worked in because of “the impact that you can have on product innovation, and the impact that you can have on the consumer.”
That excitement for his job manifests itself in how Beetz deals with his life inside and outside the workplace. “I don’t make a distinction,” he says. “I live my job. I live my work. And I enjoy that. For me, it’s around the clock.” He also loves to travel, which is a good thing, since a typical month sees him spending a week in New York, followed by a week in Paris and further travels in Asia and Europe. “I’m always meeting new people, hearing new ideas, and it’s a very exhilarating thing,” he says. “I like to travel. It makes you feel like you’re in touch with life around the world.”
Fluent in four languages (German, English, French, and Italian), Beetz says his communication skills allow him to attune himself to the different cultures and customs of each region he travels to. “I think [learning other languages] teaches you and trains your mind to be very attentive and to think beyond cultural boundaries,” he says. “That frees [me] to do a lot of things.”
When he does get some spare time, one of Beetz’s favorite activities is rowing. Just last fall, he got together with some old college teammates from the University of Mannheim in Germany and rowed in the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, where Beetz and crew placed 19th in their division. “It was a fantastic experience,” he says.
Beetz’s other passion is working with charities. He’s proud of Coty’s partnership with DKMS, in Germany. The world’s largest nonprofit stem cell donor center, DKMS is helping to lead the fight against leukemia. “It’s important to society and to us as a company,” Beetz says.
In his personal time, Beetz works with the March of Dimes. In 2006, Vera Wang presented him with the Beautiful Apple award at a ceremony that raised $1.2 million for the March of Dimes. (Continental is the official airline of the March of Dimes 2007 National Ambassador Program and of WalkAmerica.) The charity, which fights to improve babies’ health and prevent premature birth, holds a special place in Beetz’s heart. He believes that anyone “can make a real difference in everyday life.”
Even with all he’s accomplished, Beetz shows no signs of slowing down. He wants to build Coty into a $5 billion beauty powerhouse by 2010. Judging by what he’s done so far, few would bet against him.
— Thomas Wailgum
(Executive Travels)
On the Road with Beetz
Favorite business travel city: During the winter, I prefer Beaver Creek [Colo.], but over the summer, Istanbul.
Favorite type of food when on the road: Japanese
Never leaves home without: My BlackBerry
Critical hotel amenity: A health club
Naturally Blonde
Broadway veteran Laura Bell Bundy is having more fun with her latest role
If Elle Woods, the plucky heroine of Legally Blonde, saw her 50-foot-tall photo in the center of New York’s Times Square, she would, like, totally die. But Laura Bell Bundy, the actress who plays Elle in the new Broadway musical based on the film and book of the same name, takes the sight in stride. “It’s exciting,” she says, “but it also reminds me that I need to maintain a sense of normalcy.”
Regardless, it’s hard to avoid the fact that Bundy is one of Broadway’s hottest rising stars. After garnering raves for her performances in Hairspray and Wicked, the 26-year-old actress is currently taking on one of the Great White Way’s most unlikely challenges: stepping into the shoes of a character played so memorably on the big screen by Reese Witherspoon and making an airheaded sorority girl lovable.
“I haven’t really thought about it that much,” Bundy says about comparisons with Witherspoon. “Of course, I loved her performance in the film and think what she did was brilliant, but I haven’t studied it. I’ve tried to stay away from the film to find my own Elle Woods. I think that was the only choice I had.”
For Bundy, the confidence to make each role her own comes from a life spent honing her craft. The actress has two older half-sisters who weren’t around much during her childhood, and the experience of growing up mostly on her own helped her to develop a keen sense of imagination. “There was always something very theatrical about how I was and how I entertained myself,” she says. She demonstrated her creativity in shows that she put on in her family’s living room in Kentucky.
Fortunately, Bundy’s mother knew that her youngest daughter was meant for bigger stages, so starting when she was 5, the two spent every summer in New York, where the young up-and-comer soon won a contract with Ford Models. Bundy’s New York stage debut, a starring role in the Off-Broadway comedy Ruthless!, came when she was just 11. In 2002 she graduated to Broadway and made her debut in the Tony Award–winning Hairspray. She’s also appeared on the big and small screens, including a role on the soap opera Guiding Light and a cameo in the film adaptation of Dreamgirls.
When the chance to play Elle Woods came along nearly two years ago, Bundy knew it was the perfect role for her. “The character and I have a similar sensibility when it comes to our attitude about life and being positive, friendly, and bubbly people,” she says. Still, Bundy acknowledges that in the time she has worked on the show, the role has had a strong impact on her. “I’ve obviously been wearing a lot more pink, like to the point that it’s ridiculous. But also, I can’t shed Elle’s general spirit because it’s her indomitable spirit that attracts others to her. It’s fun. I find myself a happier person as a result of playing her.”
Another similarity Bundy shares with Elle is the fact that her happiness comes from within, not from the approval of others. She says she’s not worrying about next month’s Tony Awards ceremony, or even the nominations themselves, which will be announced on May 15. “Everybody hopes they’ll get nominated and get to go. I’m trying to keep my head from being in that place,” she says. “Of course I would love it, but I’m trying not to go there.”
Whether her Legally Blonde performance earns Bundy a Tony remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: she’s come a long way from her Kentucky living room. With her impressive skills and grounded approach, Bundy is sure to remain larger than life.
(Continental is the official airline of Live Broadway.)
— Martin Lieberman
The Art of Curating
Nicholas Baume keeps Boston’s ICA at the forefront of the art scene
Since it opened in December, the new Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) building on Boston’s waterfront — the city’s first new art museum in more than 90 years — has been receiving rave reviews from both the public and architecture critics. For the committees, architects, and construction crews who planned the project for eight years, the hard work is done. But the job of ICA chief curator Nicholas Baume is just beginning. Baume’s goal is to maintain a compelling roster of exhibitions, so that those same people who showed up for the museum’s much-hyped debut keep coming back.
“It’s up to us to develop a level of trust that if the ICA is going to put on an interesting show, it will be worth your while to visit,” Baume, 41, explains.
A 1987 graduate of the University of Sydney, Baume was the founding curator of public programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney before joining the staff of the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, Conn. It was there that the Australia native made a name for himself in the contemporary art scene by creating exhibitions devoted to emerging artists. In spring 2003, he joined the staff at the ICA’s old location and quickly brought a couple of firsts to Boston: the works of German artist Kai Althoff and Swiss artist Thomas Hirschorn.
“For a retrospective on one artist, I need to find the most important works of that person’s career, figure out where these pieces are, and see if we can borrow them,” Baume explains.
A group show is a much harder nut to crack. Super Visions, Baume’s inaugural show at the new building, took more than three years to pull off, from conception to exhibition. It features 27 artists in a variety of media and examines how we view art today compared with a century ago. To keep current in the art world, Baume speaks to artists and other curators, reads art publications, and travels extensively to exhibitions, art fairs, and artists’ studios. In February, for example, he traveled to London to visit sculptor Anish Kapoor, whose work will be the subject of an ICA exhibition in 2008, and then ventured to New York for that city’s annual Armory Show.
Baume says he’s lucky in that his current job is “probably the most exciting job in contemporary art.” But he knows that in the end, it all comes down to what’s on the gallery walls. “No matter how good your ideas are and how much you know as a curator, you’re only going to do a fantastic exhibition if you have really wonderful works of art.”
— Stephen Jermanok
(More Ideas)
Three Other Curators
Robert Storr
As curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art from 1990 to 2002, Robert Storr brought Pluralism to the forefront by presenting exhibitions on then-little-known female and minority artists like Elizabeth Murray, Susan Rothenberg, and David Hammons. In July, he will take the helm at the Yale School of Art, but be on the lookout for his freelance curatorial efforts all over.
Jessica Morgan
Baume’s predecessor at the ICA is now curator at the popular Tate Modern in London. With her eye for whimsy, Morgan has brought to the Tate such exhibitions as Test Site, by conceptual artist Carsten Höller, which featured five giant, fully enclosed steel and plastic slides that visitors were free to zip down.
Keith Christiansen
New is not necessarily better, as this longtime curator of European paintings at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will certainly argue. Overseeing the Met’s collection of 14th- through 18th-century Italian paintings, Christiansen has put on exhibitions for such artists as Tiepolo and Fra Carnevale and helped the museum add to its extensive European collection. — S.J.
