Few beauty brands are old enough to have witnessed the birth of the modern cosmetics industry, let alone survived it, but Kiehl’s has, and knows a thing or two.
The skincare brand began in 1851 as an apothecary in New York’s East Village, long before the lipstick tube, department-store beauty counter, or most of the conglomerates that now dominate the global beauty industry. Its founder, John Kiehl, ran a neighborhood pharmacy that would be almost unrecognizable as a beauty store today, compounding medicines and selling everything from baldness cures and virility creams to the wonderfully named “Money Drawing Oil.”
What began as an old-world pharmacy evolved into a skincare business built around formulations, sampling, consultation, and a particularly recognizable version of apothecary eccentricity.
One hundred and seventy-five years later, longevity presents its own challenge: How does a brand capitalize on history without becoming trapped by it? For Petrina Koh, General Manager of Kiehl’s, the answer starts with knowing when not to follow the rest of the industry.
“Kiehl’s has had to unlearn the temptation of constantly chasing short-lived trend cycles at the expense of its core identity,” Koh told BeautyMatter. “Staying relevant requires moving away from relying solely on nostalgic charm and instead focusing on the fact that heritage formulas can continuously adapt to modern scientific standards.”
Heritage may get consumers through the door; it cannot, by itself, give them a reason to keep adding to basket.
For a company founded long before beauty marketing became the multibillion-dollar machine it is today, Kiehl’s spent much of its history practicing what the industry would eventually turn into buzzwords.
The first major reinvention came in 1921. Irving Morse, a pharmacist who had joined Kiehl’s as an apprentice, bought the business from John Kiehl. Morse modernized the neighborhood apothecary into a full-scale pharmacy, adding homeopathic remedies, teas, herbs, tinctures, and products sold under the Kiehl’s name. The brand identifies Original Musk Oil among its earliest proprietary products.
But Kiehl’s did not become a skincare company overnight. That pivot came under Irving’s son Aaron Morse. A trained chemist and pharmacist, Aaron had operated his own pharmaceutical laboratory before taking control of Kiehl’s in 1961. During the 1960s, he gradually phased out the traditional pharmacy and homeopathic side of the business and redirected Kiehl’s toward the hair, skin, and body formulations for which it would become known. Products were still formulated, mixed by hand, and packaged on site.
Blue Astringent Herbal Lotion arrived in 1964, followed by Original Musk Oil in 1969, with Calendula Herbal-Extract Toner, Lip Balm #1, and Ultra Facial Moisturizer joining the growing assortment around the same time. Many remain in the portfolio today.
That Morse-led shift also created characteristics that would eventually become fundamental to the brand: personal advice, liberal sampling, ingredient transparency, and minimal reliance on conventional advertising. In modern beauty language, it was community-led, trial-driven, service-focused retail. Kiehl’s just got there more than 100 years before anyone built a playbook around it.
Much of that philosophy came directly from Aaron Morse. He was less interested in building Kiehl’s to be as big as possible than in making the store somewhere people wanted to spend time. His mission statement argued that a worthwhile company needed a purpose beyond simply making a profit, while his sampling policy was famously generous because he prioritized making “a friend” over making an immediate sale.
The eccentricity helped too. A life-size teaching skeleton became Mr. Bones, perhaps beauty’s least likely mascot. Morse turned the original store into something between a pharmacy, museum, clubhouse, and personal cabinet of curiosities. Customers could find anatomy books next to ones on World War II bombers; a xylophone and timpani alongside apothecary bottles; and part of Morse’s own car and motorcycle collection on display. At one point, he even reportedly had a chimp as a regular companion.
The unconventionalism extended to distribution. For years, Morse rejected offers from major department stores, only relenting in 1975 when Neiman Marcus became Kiehl’s first department-store account. Even that was hardly the result of a formal expansion strategy: Morse knew the retailer’s chief executive through tennis. Barneys followed, through his friendship with founder Barney Pressman.
By the 1980s, the next generation was beginning to make the business more recognizably modern. Aaron’s daughter, Jami Morse Heidegger, took control alongside her husband, former World Cup skier Klaus Heidegger, in 1985. She introduced a product brochure and quarterly newsletter, and expanded mail order and selective overseas distribution; Klaus helped computerize the mail-order operation. As volumes increased, manufacturing also moved off-site to New Jersey, although formulas continued to be mixed by hand.
Jami expanded distribution further, adding Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, and London’s Harvey Nichols, while maintaining the brand’s resistance to indiscriminate expansion. Its annual marketing budget remained modest—around $1 million, according to historical accounts—and it spent most of it on samples rather than traditional advertising.
Under Jami, hero products and carefully crafted cult status became especially valuable when Kiehl’s faced its biggest test: scale.
The biggest transformation came in 2000. After nearly 150 years as an independent, family-owned company, L’Oréal acquired Kiehl’s for somewhere between $80 million to $150 million.
At the time, the brand generated an estimated $40 million in annual sales and remained selectively distributed through its original Manhattan location and prestige retailers that now included Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Barneys.
By then, the very restraint that had helped create Kiehl’s mystique was becoming difficult to sustain. A surge in demand in the late 1990s began to overwhelm its mail-order operation and production capacity, creating a logistical, not financial, problem: the brand had become too popular for its infrastructure.
The opportunity was obvious. L’Oréal could provide research capabilities, distribution, capital, and international reach to take a cult New York business global. Jami effectively articulated that tension when the deal was announced. “This partnership will allow us to retain the core values and spirit upon which Kiehl’s was built while utilizing L’Oréal’s extraordinary technology and resources to improve upon and expand our own product line,” she said at the time.
That remains the central Kiehl’s equation more than 25 years later: Scale the business without scaling away the things people liked about it.
It was a particularly delicate proposition for a company that had spent decades deliberately turning down growth. Under Aaron Morse, Kiehl’s resisted department-store expansion; under Jami Morse Heidegger, it added accounts selectively and prioritized sampling over conventional advertising. L’Oréal wasn't simply scaling a small brand; it was scaling one whose scarcity had made it desirable.
Sampling, intimate consultations, eccentric store design, and staff expertise are relatively simple when a brand consists of one New York institution. Maintaining those qualities across markets, channels, and generations is another matter entirely.
The challenge becomes sharper when many of the consumers Kiehl’s wants today have no memory of the brand before L’Oréal—or even of beauty before TikTok. “Younger consumers, Gen Z and millennials, are fueling massive growth,” Koh said, with many now discovering the brand through “social media and online creator communities.”
Earlier generations were more likely to discover Kiehl’s through word of mouth or physical sampling. Yet Koh says one element remains surprisingly generation-proof. “Our in-store consultations with Kiehl’s Skin Pros remain our most loved service and transcend across generations.”
That makes Kiehl’s growth challenge less about choosing digital or physical and more about translating a 175-year-old brand into experiences younger consumers actually want to engage in.
“Growth requires a dual approach: ensuring existing loyalists always feel part of the community, while actively introducing the brand to new consumers through expanded distribution and innovation,” Koh said.
Product innovation is one part of that equation. Koh sees white space in advanced barrier repair, preventative skincare, and lifestyle-driven skin changes. Recent launches include Better Screen, which combines UV protection with a collagen peptide, and Collashot Plumping Serum, which positions Kiehl’s around emerging concerns including skin changes associated with GLP-1 use.
“The biggest white space lies at the intersection of clinical efficacy and preventative, holistic skin health,” she said. But Kiehl’s is also finding ways to make its history itself commercially useful.
Long before experiential marketing became a budget line, Kiehl’s had already attached itself to adventure. In 1988, the brand supported an Everest expedition, embedding extreme environments into its mythology decades before brands began engineering “IRL moments” for social media.
Nearly 40 years later, that history has become useful again.
In early 2026, Kiehl’s expanded its presence in North American ski culture through a multi-resort partnership with Ikon Pass, becoming its Official Skincare Partner while renewing its relationship with Jackson Hole Mountain Resort for a third year. The footprint now includes Palisades Tahoe, Stratton, Steamboat, and Deer Valley, giving Kiehl’s access to a US ski and snowboard audience it estimates at 30 million people.
More importantly, the mountains turn skincare efficacy into something consumers can experience rather than simply be told about.
At Hydration Ski-Thru activations, skiers stop for skin hydration readings, apply Ultra Facial Cream, and then test their skin again. Sampling, après programming, branded mountain takeovers, and retail sit around the experience.
It is a neat piece of brand recycling: An old adventure credential becomes a contemporary sampling engine, while a decades-old moisturizer gets demonstrated in an environment where dryness needs little explanation. For a 175-year-old business, that may be the difference between having history and knowing what to do with it.
The brand is now applying the same thinking to Kiehl’s oldest piece of infrastructure: physical retail.
On October 1, the brand opened a 1,300-square-foot European flagship at 43 Carnaby Street, its second stand-alone boutique in London’s West End. The site follows an upsized Monmouth Street location and focuses on customer acquisition, loyalty, community engagement, and omnichannel discovery rather than transactions alone.
The timing is significant. Beauty discovery has never been more digital, yet Kiehl’s is doubling down on the part of its business that most closely resembles the original pharmacy. “Physical retail is literally the heart of Kiehl’s,” Koh said. “Service remains at the center and the heart of everything we do.”
For Niki Lo, General Manager for Kiehl’s UK, the flagship is also a straightforward commercial play. She said its continued investment in stand-alone stores is designed to drive high footfall, deepen brand connection, and reinforce Kiehl’s market share in the UK.
Carnaby is becoming increasingly competitive beauty real estate, with Sephora among the major names establishing a stand-alone presence. Kiehl’s is effectively planting 175 years of brand equity in the middle of a much newer battle for beauty footfall.
Something is satisfyingly circular about it. Kiehl’s began as one physical space where formulation, consultation, education, sampling, and selling all happened under the same roof. One hundred and seventy-five years, one multinational acquisition, an Everest expedition, and innumerable jars of moisturizer later, the brand is still using physical experience to explain itself.
Koh is clear that reaching 200 will require change: greater digital integration, more omnichannel personalization, and faster responses to environmental and lifestyle-driven skin concerns. What cannot change, she said, is “the unwavering commitment to personalized service, expert human consultation, community-building, and trusted, science-backed efficacy.”
Kiehl’s has already proved it can survive 175 years of beauty evolution. The harder job now is making sure its history keeps earning its place in the future.
