Cruel market realities, fading loyalty in the beauty industry

“The term ‘female entrepreneur’ is demeaning,” says Eszter Szakonyi, founder of the natural cosmetics brand Vintage Beauty, in an interview with Pénzcentrum, who recently won the title of Businesswoman of the Year at the Woman of the Year 2025 gala. Despite the recognition, she believes that success cannot be tied to one person – behind the brand is joint work, vision and a lot of struggle, she and her husband run the company, which has been present on the market for 15 years.

Railway industry, stilettos, Siberian settlement – ​​the beginnings

Eszter Szakonyi’s career did not start in the beauty industry: as an economic engineer, she worked as a foreign trader in the Central and Eastern European railway vehicle industry for ten years. “There you really had to stand out: I ran around Siberian vehicle yards and industrial tracks in stilettos,” she recalls. In the late 1990s, as a woman, she even had to face open sexism – “the bank manager commented in the middle of a meeting how pretty my butt was,” she says.

The beauty industry: both play and stand-up

Eszter entered the beauty industry as a kind of “theater role” – her attraction to cosmetics had already been present in her life. At the beginning, she did not plan to build a brand, but it soon became clear that there was no quality product with which she could work authentically. This is how their own product line was created, based on pure raw materials and uncompromising production technology – but from a business perspective, this is not profitable in the long term either.

“We are still barely breaking even today. If we were to apply the usual market margin, our products would cost five times as much,” they say. Cooperation with drugstore chains has produced more losses than profits for them: high supplier prices and poor storage conditions (products placed under LED lights, thus spoiling) have proven to be serious learning curve.