Neutrogena to move headquarters from LA to the Garden State

Neutrogena, maker of Beach Defense sunscreen and cosmetics, will move its headquarters from Los Angeles to New Jersey. New Jersey?

The Westchester-based unit of New Jersey-based Kenvue is closing its corporate headquarters at 6080 West Center Drive to consolidate operations in Skillman, in the Garden State, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported.

The move comes as Kenvue executives try to boost Neutrogena’s lackluster performance. It also represents the latest major business exit out of L.A.

Neutrogena, which had called Westchester home for decades, is laying off 84 local employees in three waves, with most given the option to relocate. The company expects to shut the doors by August.

Founded in 1930 initially as Natone, the company changed its name to Neutrogena in 1962 and went public in 1973. Johnson & Johnson bought the firm in 1994 for $924 million. It then spun off its consumer health division last year into the independent Kenvue, owner of Aveeno, Band-Aid, Tylenol and Neutrogena.

The publicly traded firm reported an 8 percent drop in sales for skin health and beauty last year, a segment driven largely by Neutrogena.

A company executive told Bloomberg Finance this month that the decision to move to New Jersey was made in an effort to “boost growth and improve collaboration.”

The size of its headquarters at the 13-story office building north of LAX were not disclosed. 

The 316,000-square-foot, Class A office building, built in 1987 off the 405 Freeway, is part of a six-building, 1.4 million-square-foot Playa District campus owned by EQ Office, based in Chicago. Tenants include Sony and Pepperdine University.

The pending departure by Neutrogena is just the latest in a series of mergers and moves by homegrown firms out of Los Angeles since 2000, according to the Business Journal.

Northrop Grumman moved from Century City to Virginia in 2011, though it’s still a large employer in Los Angeles County. In 2009, Hilton Worldwide Holdings moved from Beverly Hills to Virginia. In 2014, Occidental Petroleum moved from Westwood to Houston.

Real estate brokerage CBRE moved its headquarters from Los Angeles to Dallas in 2020. A year later, engineering and construction firm AECOM also left L.A. for Dallas.

Last year, Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft in a deal that kept local operations, but resulted in substantial layoffs. Mexican food producer Cacique Foods last year moved its hub and dairy plant from Monrovia and City of Industry to Texas.

Only two Fortune 500 companies are now headquartered in L.A.: Reliance Steel & Aluminum and Farmers Insurance. Outside the city limits, Disney is in Burbank and Amgen is in Thousand Oaks.

— Dana Bartholomew

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