Heiress to a Legacy of Simplicity

Jami Heidegger looks like a character created by one of the Bronte sisters. With her alabaster complexion, flowing dark hair, long, sweeping skirt and regal carriage, she might have just stepped off a fog-shrouded moor.

How fitting that this Southern California woman could pass for a 19th century heroine. Because for Kiehl’s, the quirky cosmetic company her grandfather founded and which she heads, affection for the past was mother’s milk. The unique character of tiny Kiehl’s made its recent sale to L’Oreal a coup for the international cosmetics giant.

Nostalgia for the good old days, when food wasn’t chemically enhanced, the neighborhood pharmacist was a trusted friend and wise elders passed on their beauty secrets is as appealing to most Americans as a cozy blanket on a chilly morning. It has been central to the allure of the 149-year-old cosmetics brand, which has managed to combine the values of its founder with an instinct that has made Kiehl’s almost accidentally modern.

Community involvement was a family principle Heidegger learned well. She will receive a Corporate Humanitarian award tonight at the kickoff of Divine Design 2000, an annual event that benefits Project Angel Food, an HIV/AIDS service organization. Kiehl’s has donated funds to Project Angel Food since 1979.

“We never had a great design for our philanthropy,” she says. “We would just try to respond to whoever asked us for help. We’ve donated to a wide spectrum of charities, but health-related causes have always been dear to my heart.”

If Heidegger’s image is Brontian, her story veers closer to Judith Krantz territory, where women are fiercely intelligent (she graduated from Harvard), men are dashing (her father was a World War II fighter pilot, her husband a champion ski racer), and where no seemingly charmed life escapes adversity (when her twins, now 3 years old, were born prematurely, they were so frail that their doctor feared they would not survive).

The tale begins, as such sagas often do, with a poor immigrant. Irving Morse took a job in John Kiehl’s New York apothecary, founded in 1851, shortly after he arrived from Russia. He didn’t speak English well but was a trained pharmacist and quickly became a favorite of the Greenwich Village neighborhood where the Kiehl’s shop still stands. “My grandfather was very sweet,” Heidegger says. “He was a quiet, humble man who wanted to take care of his family and do a good job.”

Morse bought the store from the Kiehl family in 1921 and began formulating products under the Kiehl’s label. Pharmacies at that time specialized in home-brewed elixirs like Money-Drawing Oil and Virility Cream. Morse added herbal remedies and homeopathic cures he’d learned to make in the old country. His son Aaron studied pharmacology and started a laboratory that manufactured a variety of pharmaceuticals. In 1961, the same year Jami was born, Aaron Morse decided to concentrate on cosmetics.

Heidegger’s parents separated before she was born, and when she was 11, she moved with her mother to California. Until then, Jami lived in New York. Kiehl’s was two blocks from her elementary school, so on the way home, she’d visit her father at the store. It was a little like Santa’s workshop--with employees doing everything by hand.

Morse packaged his potions in plastic containers with as much information as a label could hold. He gave them descriptive names such as “Castille Grapefruit Bath and Shower Soapy Liquid Cleanser.” Shampoo, lip balm and Morse’s pimple-fighting blue astringent were mixed in a back room. Up front, the shop was crowded with clients ranging from locals to international loyalists for whom Kiehl’s was an important destination.

Kiehl’s began to reflect Morse’s personality. He loved opera, America, his work, his family, skiing and people, but not necessarily in that order. “He’d go out for coffee and have a three-hour discussion with the waitress, who’d then become his new best friend,” Heidegger says. “He always said that making a friend was more important than making a sale. So he wanted people to come into the store and have a great experience. He didn’t want them to buy a product unless they were sure they liked it, so he’d test it on them and give them free samples to take home.”

A 2,500-square-foot space behind the store was turned into a museum, where his favorite cars, motorcycles, planes and musical instruments were displayed in an ever-changing exhibit. Whenever the mood struck him, the sound of opera would fill the store.

With his museum, Morse presaged the era of store as Disneyland, when elaborate environments were created to entertain customers. Such prescience was typical. Years later, when Kiehl’s looked to be in the vanguard of a revolution in cosmetics marketing, competitors wondered what genius had designed a company so perfectly positioned to appeal to the ‘90s customer.

In fact, Aaron Morse just clung to his own vision.

He thought fancy packaging was silly and wasteful. Kiehl’s products were created in the pharmacy, where a cellophane-wrapped pink box with a ribbon on it would have been incongruous. When a mania for minimalism surfaced as a reaction to ‘80s excess, Kiehl’s simple packaging looked smartly understated. The world had grown environmentally conscious and had begun to value natural products.

Kiehl’s had never consciously made unisex products. But when men wanted moisturizers and toners, Kiehl’s had some that weren’t “girly.” Although Kiehl’s is sold in Barneys, Neiman Marcus, Saks and Fred Segal, over the years Morse rebuffed most department stores, wary that they would pressure him to change his style. By the time an air of exclusivity and luxury became a selling point, the fact that Kiehl’s was not that easy to find added to its mystique.

Heidegger appreciates the ways her father was instinctively right. That didn’t prevent some epic battles when she came to work for him full time in 1985. After college, she’d combined experience as an amateur ski racer and exercise teacher to help train the Austrian ski team for the Sarajevo Olympics. Klaus Heidegger, a star with celebrity status, became her student first, then her husband. She was living near Innsbruck when her father, diagnosed with cancer, asked her to come home. He knew he’d have to sell the business unless his only child got involved.

“There are difficulties and challenges, being in a family business, but it’s also what I grew up talking about all the time,” Heidegger says. “It’s the tie that binds.”

In the place of the little girl everyone at Kiehl’s had known was a 6-foot-tall woman with a deep voice and reservoirs of ambition. “Coming into it, I didn’t imagine that it would be as challenging as it was. It was hard to get my decisions accepted and respected. I wanted to make a brochure of all the products. My father thought it was a waste of money. Any little decision like that could become a power struggle. We’re screamers, and we used to have notorious shouting sessions.”

Peace was somewhat restored when Heidegger’s husband retired from the racing circuit and joined her in 1986. She credits him with modernizing the company and computerizing its operations. Just 13 years ago, the manufacturing staff consisted of six workers in the back of the New York store. Now, two plants in New Jersey employ 120, and the company has annual sales of $40 million.

Heidegger won the battle over the brochure and inaugurated a quarterly newsletter. She focused on training salespeople and hired a public relations expert. Donating products for charity gift bags and giving away samples costs Kiehl’s more than $1 million a year, but Heidegger insists that if salespeople aren’t sending customers home with freebies, they aren’t doing their jobs.

Morse died in 1995, at 72. In the Kiehl’s tradition, new products continue to be added that reflect the owners’ tastes. A line of children’s products, including a diaper rash treatment cream, was developed after Heidegger’s first child was born nine years ago. When daughter Nicoletta took up horseback riding, a few equine products were created. Husband Klaus, as a former World Cup skier, suggested a line for sports enthusiasts--special shampoos and skin protectors he wished he’d had as a professional athlete.

When Nicoletta was born, the family settled in Los Angeles. “I had grown up here and knew it’s a wonderful lifestyle, especially for children. They can be involved in sports and be out in the warm sunshine all year.”

For a few years, the couple shuttled between home and Kiehl’s New York headquarters. One of them hopped on a plane every time there was a plumbing problem, or a more serious crisis, such as the one that shut down the phones at Kiehl’s mail order operation last Christmas, when demand attacked like a tidal wave.

“We were involved in every aspect of the company, and we were overwhelmed. We realized Kiehl’s needed resources--not money, but more people with more expertise,” Heidegger said.

The Heideggers decided to turn the day-to-day operation of the company over to a bigger company. In June, L’Oreal, the largest and fastest-growing cosmetics firm in the world, paid an estimated $150 million for Kiehl’s. Heidegger will remain president of Kiehl’s.

Even with more time for her family and herself, Heidegger’s habit of keeping her own look low-maintenance would be hard to break. Before the Divine Design awards ceremony tonight, she’ll wash her hair with Kiehl’s Tea Tree Oil shampoo, rinse with Coconut Conditioner and apply Kiehl’s Black Raspberry Lip Gloss. Simplicity and naturalness have always worked well for her family.