Forest Essentials is a rare brand for which the numbers, or the hype, doesn’t tell the whole story. 

And it’s some story. 

The Ayurveda beauty company has eschewed received wisdom about what makes a luxury cosmetics business tick—saturation advertising, influencer marketing, persistent discounting—and still turned tidy profits. Attractive enough for multinational major Estée Lauder to acquire it in one of the biggest deals in the industry.

Forest, founded in 2001 with a flagship store in........

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