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“I could give you a top five for sure,” said Jeffery Wagstaff, chief executive officer of Cosnova and longtime guitarist, when asked what his favorite song is.
The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” he shares, is his favorite song to listen to; the band’s bluesy “Midnight Rambler,” though, is his favorite to play.
“Midnight Rambler” is a little more obscure, but there’s a live album version from The Stones’ ‘69 tour — if you’re a classic rock fan, you know it,” said Wagstaff, who joined Cosnova in 2015 and has led the German cosmetics maker through two consecutive years of more than 30 percent growth, with sales reaching $883.5 million in 2023.
Having grown up during rock ’n’ roll’s golden era with both a pianist mother and grandfather — who, true story, met his wife on the dance floor — it’s no surprise Wagstaff fell in love with music at a young age.
“It runs in my family — when I was a kid I would do the whole concert-in-the-bedroom thing, using my flashlight as a microphone; I just always loved music,” he said.
While his teen years saw him turn instead to sports like volleyball and hockey (“Canadian kid — you play hockey all the time”), it was years later during his tenure as president and general manager of Coty Canada that a run-in with a childhood friend, who just so happened to be a guitar teacher, reignited Wagstaff’s passion for music.
Wagstaff took lessons for a year and a half before successive moves to Spain, Connecticut and an ultimate return to Canada prompted him to turn to YouTube tutorials to fine-tune his guitar skills.
“As much as I loved watching live music, [playing] didn’t come to me easily; my grandfather — he was a natural, but I was one of those couldn’t-do-one-thing-with-one-hand-and-another-with-the-other-hand for some time,” recalled Wagstaff, who soon after returning to Canada formed his now 18-year-old band, The Missing Experience, with three other dads during a Christmas party for his kids’ school.
“The name is kind of a half-joke, because we all have full lives — kids, work, everything — so, often when we practice, it’s like there’s ‘something missing,’” he said.
Though they’re primarily a Stones-based band — the first song they ever rehearsed together was a choppy rendition of “Honky Tonk Women” in Wagstaff’s basement — the group often interpolates discographies of other rock legends into show set lists, including Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Bob Seger.
“Some people say The Rolling Stones are the ultimate garage band — that suits us perfectly,” said Wagstaff, who prefers electric guitars over acoustic (and has the 17-guitar collection to prove it) and, even after moving to New York nearly a decade ago to lead Cosnova, performs live shows with his bandmates about four times a year, recently at the Red Lion in New York’s Greenwich Village.
“It was about 250 people — including a bunch of people from the office who, before that, had no idea I was in a band so it was a bit of a shock — but we put on a pretty good performance,” laughed Wagstaff, who in November will take the stage at one of Toronto’s most famed rock ’n’ roll venues, El Mocambo, alongside his bandmates, which have grown to a group of about nine men and women.
The CEO often listens to music while he works (“unless I have to concentrate — that’s another one of those patting-your-head-and-rubbing-your-stomach kind of things,”) and maintains his band’s teamwork-oriented approach in his day-to-day at Cosnova, which helms Gen Z-oriented makeup brand Essence, best known for its viral $4.99 mascaras, and its growing sister brand, Catrice Cosmetics.
“The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts — it might be overused, but it’s true,” said Wagstaff, whose admiration for rock ’n’ roll’s greats extends beyond musical talent and to their commitment to those around them. “If you read the stories of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Aerosmith — they spent a lot of time together, especially in those early days — a lot of their [success] was about community.”
2023 was Cosnova’s largest sales year to date. The company has doubled its European business during the last four years and increasingly established itself as a key player in the U.S., where Essence sells at Ulta Beauty, and Catrice, which is on track to hit $115 million in sales this year, sells direct-to-consumer and on Amazon.
“The reason Cosnova came to be in 2002 was this idea of innovation, fun and good quality at surprising, great prices,” said Wagstaff. “I’m interested in the world we work in; when TikTok came around, or YouTube Shorts, or influencers — these are natural interests of mine. Just like I love playing the guitar and learning new songs, I love the team-building we’ve done, the accomplishments we’ve had in the toughest market in the world.
“It’s not just a job,” he continued, “it’s part of who I am, just like music is part of who I am.”
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