Elemis Cofounder Noella Gabriel Discusses L’Occitane Deal

For Noella Gabriel, cofounder and president of Elemis, the brand-building journey has been a long one. Elemis started out under a public company, Steiner Leisure, before being acquired by L Catterton and eventually, L’Occitane en Provence for $900 million. But Gabriel noted that she wished an event like BeautyVest had been around in the company’s early days. “I built a brand over 30 years, and how I wish there was a forum like this in the first 10 years of my starting out. It would have prevented me from making a lot of mistakes, and spending a lot of somebody else’s money,” Gabriel said. The company learned lessons — like running a lean business — during its early days, she said. “Publicly owned was a great training because we were taught then to run something very lean and mean. We had very little budget but we were very creative with it,” Gabriel said. While she acknowledged that money is important when it comes to running a business, she said “raw passion” and “a little bit of gut feeling” need to be involved, too. “In Elemis, we’ve always done things differently. We’ve always pushed the boundaries — 30 years ago, we were bold enough to

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