‘Soap Salesman’ : Neutrogena CEO Takes a Modest View of His Success

Lloyd E. Cotsen sometimes refers to himself simply as a “soap salesman,” a description modest by many degrees.

He has lived a life of privilege and culture, residing in the toniest Westside neighborhoods and supporting the arts with a modesty often lacking in the area’s entertainment-driven philanthropic community.

He’s a successful executive who has been known to leave the cares of business behind for an archeological field trip to Greece or the Mideast.

He’s rich. Cotsen stands to make nearly $350 million when the company he runs, Neutrogena, is sold to Johnson & Johnson.

And, by popular account, he’s “knock-out” handsome.

Cotsen (pronounced Coat-zen) graduated from Princeton University with a history degree in 1950, did graduate studies at Princeton, went on archeological digs and, in 1953, married Jo Anne Stolaroff. After he completed Harvard Business School in 1957, the couple moved west and Cotsen went to work for his father-in-law, Emanuel Stolaroff, founder of Natone Co.

Stolaroff had built Natone, the story goes, on the success of a lip brush. Neutrogena--a translucent soap with the color of amber and an evocative scent--was a side product, licensed from a Belgian soap maker.

According to company legend, it was Cotsen who devised the marketing strategy that made Neutrogena so popular--and so important to the company’s finances--that in 1963 the company changed its name. Four years later, he was made president.

One of the stories Cotsen tells about himself is of getting an early batch of the soap too thick and climbing in one of the huge vats--sans clothing--to unstick the goo. While bending over, he was nicked by a sharp mixing blade. (The blades were later replaced with ones with rounded edges.)

Yet Cotsen, 65, has not lived a charmed life.

In May, 1979, he was in New York on a business trip when he heard on a cab radio that his wife, the youngest of their four children and another teen-ager had been shot by a masked intruder at the family’s Beverly Hills home. His wife and the teen-ager died the day after the attack. His son Noah, 14, died a week later.

The tragedy took a bizarre twist six months later. Police believed a chief rival of Cotsen’s at the Belgian company that made Neutrogena had committed the killing. But the suspect died just as police were to question him.

Friends said Cotsen found solace in his work.

In 1981, he married Jacqueline Brandwynne, a New York consultant who had been on Neutrogena’s board for a year. The second Mrs. Cotsen went to work for the company. In a 1992 lawsuit related to the couple’s divorce, she said she helped formulate the strategy that expanded Neutrogena’s product lines into shampoos and related items.

Cotsen was named chief executive of Neutrogena in 1982. Two years later, Emanuel Stolaroff died. In 1991, Cotsen added the chairman’s title.

He continues to be active in archeology and is said to have an excellent collection of primitive art.

Profile: Lloyd E. Cotsen

Born: Feb. 25, 1929

Hometown: Boston

Education: Princeton University, undergraduate and graduate studies; Harvard Business School

Career highlights: Joined Natone Co. in 1957. Given Neutrogena bar soap account, he devised marketing strategy of offering free samples to physicians and dermatologists; by 1963, the amber soap was company’s best-selling product. Named Neutrogena president in 1967; became chief executive in 1982 and chairman in 1991.