Victor removed his glasses, folded the paper and tucked it under his arm. “We just had our first successful collection in nearly a decade thanks to you,” he said.
“And there wasn’t a single word in the press about it, despite the efforts of our public relations team.”
“Still, it was a huge boost to Espresso employees who haven’t had much to celebrate in a very long time,” the older man said. “You should be patting yourself on the back, not worrying about a ridiculous photo in some rag.”
“America Today has a nationwide circulation. Not to mention online and international editions.”
“My point is Espresso is finally making a comeback,” Victor said.
“Comeback?” Cole leaned against the front of his desk and folded his arms. “We’re a long way from what I’d consider a comeback.
“A sold-out holiday collection was a heck of a good start.”
Cole shrugged off the praise with a grunt. His first order of business as CEO of Espresso’s cosmetics division had been to sit down with the company’s chief financial officer, Malcolm Doyle, to find out exactly where years of stagnant sales had left them financially.
The second had been to untie the hands of the creative and product-development teams and allow them to do their jobs. For too long their ideas had languished due to Victor’s insistence on remaining loyal to what he believed Cole’s mother would have wanted for her company.
“You’ve done more for Espresso in five months than I accomplished after years of being in charge.” Victor’s chin dropped to his chest, his gaze cast toward the carpet. “It’s just I thought...”
“The success of the holiday collection was just a drop in the bucket.” Cole cut him off, refusing to play the blame game.
All he cared about was making Espresso relevant in the cosmetics industry again. It was too late to take back the harsh words he’d exchanged with his mother the very last time he’d seen her. Now the only way he could make it up to her was to save her legacy.
He swallowed hard. “We’d need a tsunami to erase the red ink from the company books and our old-lady image from women’s minds.” Rounding his desk, Cole tapped at his computer keyboard until the survey he’d commissioned appeared on the screen. “I was going to email you a copy of this later, but you might as well take a look at it now.”
Victor sat in Cole’s leather executive chair, once again retrieving his reading glasses from his pocket.
“This is a survey taken over the holidays of customers shopping at various department-store cosmetics counters,” Cole explained. He leaned over Victor’s shoulder, right-clicking the mouse to expand a page. “Here are just a few of the comments female shoppers made when asked about Espresso.”
The older man read aloud. “‘My great-aunt uses their foundation. We call her Auntie Cake behind her back because her face always looks like it’s been dipped in batter.’” Victor winced. “Ouch.”
“It gets worse.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Keep reading.”
“‘Their makeup counters are deader than a morgue.’”
Victor read another one. “‘I didn’t know they were still around.’”
Cole pointed out a remark made by a twenty-two-year-old woman actually making a purchase at an Espresso counter. This time he read it aloud. “‘I’m only here because my grandmother ran out of her favorite pink lipstick. No way I’d wear this old-lady stuff. I’m a Stiletto girl all the way.’”
His stepfather exhaled a long drawn-out breath. “This is why you’re so peeved about that article.”
Cole nodded. “The more I think about it, the more I believe it’s too late to change people’s minds about us. Our senior-citizen image is too entrenched.”
“But...” Victor started to protest, but Cole held up a hand to stop him.
“Hear me out,” Cole said. “Why keep banging our heads against a brick wall? Stiletto already has the hip, edgy vibe and is gaining popularity with the young demographic we’re chasing.”
“I’m not following you, son.”
Cole smiled for the first time in what felt like weeks. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
“It’s the acquire-to-grow strategy—something I was in charge of implementing during my tenure at Force Cosmetics. Simply put, if we can’t beat them, we’ll just have to buy them.”
He paused to give Victor a chance to let the idea sink in. “We would keep Stiletto’s name and packaging the same, meanwhile continue to revamp Espresso and rebrand it as makeup for the classic or mature beauty or something along those lines.”
The older man pressed his lips together a few moments, before he finally spoke. “Couldn’t we just develop our own offshoot brand?”
Cole shrugged. “We could, but that would take a long time. Even then, consumers can be fickle. There’s no guarantee it would catch on and turn into a winner for us.”
“But how?” Victor frowned, deepening the creases in his forehead. “You heard what Doyle said. The cosmetics division is buried in red ink. Your sister’s Espresso Sanctuary spas propped us up until you came back and threw us a lifeline.”
Cole crossed his arms over his chest. While Espresso’s finances had dwindled in his absence, his personal wealth had grown tremendously. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered,” he said. “I’m about to make Ms. Matthews an offer too good to refuse.”
Sage Matthews pulled the phone away from her ear long enough to give it, and the woman on the other end of the line, the side eye.
“Your makeup brand would be a perfect addition to our store lineup.”
The buyer for the trendy boutique chain droned on, but the silent alarms on Sage’s bullshit detector drowned out the rest of her spiel. It sounded identical to the ones she’d heard all morning.
“Strange—that isn’t what you said a few weeks ago.” Sage kicked off her shoes under her desk and wiggled her toes. High heels were the worst form of torture, but when you owned a company called Stiletto, you had to dress the part.
She glanced at the notation she’d scribbled on a message slip next to the buyer’s name. “I believe you said Stiletto’s branding was too provocative. Your exact words were downright raunchy.”
“Um...well,” the woman stammered. “You must have misheard me. I said it was delightfully racy as in sexy. Clearly, there’s been a misunderstanding.”
Misunderstanding, huh? Sage stifled the harrumph on the tip of her tongue. “Hard to tell,” she said, “considering the way your secretary tossed me out of your office afterward like she was a nightclub bouncer.”
“Oh, dear. Please accept my apologies if my staff was a touch overzealous. Again, I assure you it was all a big mistake. One I hope we can...”
“Just stop.” Sage had heard enough.
“P-pardon?”
“Before you continue, you should know I refuse to do business with anyone who lies to me.”
Silence.
Figuring the buyer was weighing her options, Sage waited, making no attempt to fill the dead air. Long awkward moments passed, before a sigh emitted over the line. “Okay, the truth is I didn’t want to risk offending