Philippe d’Ornano ― Maintaining growth and success across generations

When Philippe d’Ornano was growing up, he watched his parents, Isabelle and Hubert, build their beloved brand, Sisley Paris, from the ground up. It’s hard to imagine, given the company now has us d 1 billion in turnover and is one of the world’s most revered cosmetics companies, but Philippe remembers well what he calls the “start-up” phase. “It was a challenge,” he says. “You start in a two-room office in Champs-Élysées, just so that you can put ‘Champs-Élysées’ on the packaging. You reinvest everything you have, with no certainty as to whether it’s going to work or not. My parents carried that challenge together.”

The d’Ornano name has a long history in the cosmetics industry, dating back to the 1930s, when Philippe’s grandparents co-founded the family’s first skincare business. In 1953, Philippe’s father, Hubert, and his uncle, Michel, teamed up with their parents to create the skincare brand Orlane, which is still today a leading player in global cosmetics. The d’Ornanos sold Orlane in the late 1960s and, in 1976, Hubert and his wife Isabelle struck out on their own and launched Sisley.

Given his family’s long history in the cosmetics business, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Philippe, the eldest of five siblings, was put to work in the company at an early age. “I remember my parents working on Sisley’s first perfume, Eau de Campagne,” he recalls, speaking from his office in central Paris. “I was 13 and I was paid 20 cents per letter to hand write the addresses on promotional letters that were sent to customers, because there was a better chance the letters would be opened if the address wasn’t printed.”

Despite this start, there was never any concrete plan for Philippe to join the family company. “My parents never had any dynastic vision,” he says. It was the accidental death of his younger brother Marc which led Philippe to abandon the job he had just accepted in the newspaper business. “I said to my parents and my sisters, ‘Listen, I’m not going to leave you now and go abroad. I’ll stay with you.’ That was it. There was no plan, no strategy, no dynastic idea.”

Philippe started out as a salesman, travelling around France and speaking with buyers. He quickly fell in love with the job, because, he says, “the beauty industry is very human; our products bring to customers from all over the world beauty, care, efficiency and most importantly a sense of self-confidence.” It’s clear that the young Philippe was also exceptionally accomplished at the job. By the time he was 24, he was in charge of the entire French market for Sisley; soon after, he took on Belgium and built the operation there; and following that, he was given Switzerland, Italy and Spain to grow. Eventually, he was also running the rest of Europe and Asia, taking advantage of these newer markets as they opened up to trade in the 1990s and 2000s. Then, in 2013, he took over from his father Hubert as CEO of the company.

Today, Sisley is still very much a family company. Although Philippe’s father sadly passed away in 2015, his mother Isabelle – whom he describes as “one of the great cosmetic creators” – is still highly involved in the business. Philippe’s sister Christine is the company’s managing director, responsible for developing the brand’s image; and his niece, Daria Botin, is head of Sisley’s in-house creative studio. Philippe’s other sister Élisabeth is a shareholder, a board member and was for a time the face of the brand. Sisley is also a vast global operation, with 5,000 employees, 34 subsidiaries and products distributed in more than 110 countries.

Yet, despite Sisley’s scale, Philippe has concerns when it comes to the outlook for the future. For him, some of the toughest questions are those centred around international relations and geopolitics. “Are we going to see a period of closure and less open markets?” he asks. “Are we going to build a society of over-regulation, or are we going to build a society that still believes in innovation and science? And are we going to build a Europe, which is competitive and creative?” For a company that benefitted so much from the opening up of markets in the 1990s and 2000s, the answers to these questions could play a significant role in shaping the future.

Nonetheless, Philippe is relatively sanguine, in part because Sisley is a family business and, as such, has an innate resilience. “Studies have shown that family-run medium-sized businesses are the airbags of the economy,” he points out, “because in a crisis period, they don’t overreact.” This was borne out during the Covid-19 pandemic, Philippe notes, so he is confident that Sisley can weather any future storms in our unpredictable economic and political climate, too.

As a family-owned business, Sisley is also able to take a longer-term view. This mindset is built into the Sisley operation in countless ways – for instance, in the way the company develops products. “Look at Sisleya, Sisley’s top-selling product, the first global anti-ageing cream on the cosmetic market, created in 1999,” says Philippe. “It took 10 years of development, 50 different active ingredients, and a very high price because the product was so sophisticated. This is what makes the point of difference for a brand like Sisley. We have no limit on time and no limit on price.” This ethos is reflected in the way the R&D department is structured – the researchers aren’t allowed to calculate the price of a product until the research is finished, because the price should not dictate the quality of the end result. “This is something we find in lots of other family businesses,” says Philippe. “This passion for making a quality product that represents you.”

Sisley’s long-term mindset is, however, perhaps clearest in the way it invests in the environment and society at large through the Sisley d'Ornano Foundation. Since it was launched in 2007, the foundation has supported hundreds of projects in France and abroad (over one tenth of which have been suggested by Sisley employees), across five key areas: education, the environment, culture, health and support for women. It gives out over eur 1.5 million in bequests per year. “Money is a tool,” says Philippe. “If you have the tool and if you can, you should do something with it.” At the same time, Sisley has invested vast sums in making its buildings environmentally friendly, from its modern R&D centre in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône to its headquarters, which opened in 2017 on Avenue de Friedland in Paris. “Do you think we would do this if we wanted to sell the business in four years’ time?” Philippe asks. “No, this is about long term vision and collective impact. When you run a company for the long term, you don’t behave in the same way towards your environment and the ecology.”

So, what about the long-term future of Sisley itself ? Will it remain in the hands of the d’Ornano family? For Philippe, there’s an important distinction to be drawn between management and ownership. While there are a number of family members working in the company at different levels, he isn’t wedded to the idea that the business should forever be managed by a member of the family. “You need somebody who has the capacity and the commitment, because it takes a lot of work and many skills to run this operation, and it is a social responsibility,” he explains. “If you have that in the family, then great, of course that’s better; but your first priority is to have the right person.”

Ownership, however, is a different matter. Philippe is currently in the process of “training” the next generation. “Our new generation is great, with the right work ethic and sense of responsibility; they were raised together and there is a lot of love between them. We are really proud of that.” The objective is that they, in turn, become passionate and responsible stewards for their grandparents’ business. “We have 5,000 employees – that’s 5,000 salaries around the world and 5,000 families living off that.” From Philippe’s point of view, there is one simple yet essential question: “Do you have owners and shareholders in the company who support the long-term project, and can they support a professional management? If you don’t have that, you should sell the company.” On the other side, Philippe says, there is a brighter picture: “If we have shareholders who want to keep the company, I believe there is still a lot of potential growth for Sisley.”