“Because We're Worth It”
L'Oréal
Tagline
Net Worth
$29,400,000,000
Started in (City)
Pasis
Started in (Country)
France
Incorporation Date
30th December, 1909
Bankruptcy Date
-
Founders
- Eugène Schueller
About
L’Oréal S.A. is a French personal care company headquartered in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine with a registered office in Paris. It is the world’s largest cosmetics company and has developed activities in the field concentrating on hair colour, skin care, sun protection, make-up, perfume, and hair care. L'Oréal Paris is a truly global beauty brand with many internationally renowned products. For most, the name “L'Oréal” is immediately evocative of the brand’s signature phrase, "Because I'm Worth It.”— The concept behind the legendary advertising campaign for the Superior Preference® hair color launch in 1973. Today, it represents the essence of the L'Oréal Paris brand as a whole, a spirit which is about helping every woman embrace her unique beauty while reinforcing her innate sense of self-worth.
Beginning
In the year 1909–1956 the first steps, constructing a model, Eugène Paul Louis Schueller, a young French chemist of German descent, developed a hair dye formula called Oréale. Schueller formulated and manufactured his own products, which he then decided to sell to Parisian hairdressers. On 31 July of 1919, Schueller registered his company, the Société Française de Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux (Safe Hair Dye Company of France). The guiding principles of the company, which eventually became L’Oréal, were research and innovation in the field of beauty. In the year 1920, the company employed three chemists. By the year 1950, the team was 100 strong; by the year 1984 was 1,000 and is nearly 82,000 today. Schueller provided financial support and held meetings for La Cagoule at L’Oréal headquarters. La Cagoule was a violent French fascist-leaning and anti-communist group whose leader formed a political party Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire (MSR, Social Revolutionary Movement) which in Occupied France supported the Vichy collaboration with the Germans. L’Oréal hired several members of the group as executives after World War II, such as Jacques Corrèze, who served as CEO of the United States operation. This involvement was extensively researched by Israeli historian Michael Bar-Zohar in his book, Bitter Scent. L’Oréal got its start in the hair-color business, but the company soon branched out into other cleansing and beauty products. L’Oréal currently markets over 500 brands and thousands of individual products in all sectors of the beauty business: hair color, permanents, hair styling, body and skincare, cleansers, makeup, and fragrance. The company’s products are found in a wide variety of distribution channels, from hair salons and perfumeries to hyper - and supermarkets, health/beauty outlets, pharmacies and direct mail.
Road to Success
In the early 20th century, Eugène Paul Louis Schueller, a young French chemist developed a hair dye formula called Oréale. Schueller formulated and manufactured his own products, which he then decided to sell to Parisian hairdressers. On 31 July 1919, Schueller registered his company,[5] the Société Française de Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux (Safe Hair Dye Company of France). The guiding principles of the company, which eventually became L'Oréal, were research and innovation in the field of beauty. In 1920, the company employed three chemists. By 1950, the team was 100 strong; by 1984 was 1,000 and is roughly 88,000 today (in 2020) . Schueller provided financial support and held meetings for La Cagoule at L'Oréal headquarters. La Cagoule was a violent French fascist-leaning and an anti-communist group whose leader formed a political party Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire (MSR, Social Revolutionary Movement) which in Occupied France supported the Vichy collaboration with the Germans. L'Oréal hired several members of the group as executives after World War II, such as Jacques Corrèze, who served as CEO of the United States operation. This involvement was extensively researched by Israeli historian Michael Bar-Zohar in his book, Bitter Scent. L'Oréal got its start in the hair-color business, but the company soon branched out into other cleansing and beauty products. L'Oréal currently markets over 500 brands and thousands of individual products in all sectors of the beauty business: hair color, permanents, hair styling, body and skincare, cleansers, makeup, and fragrance. The company's products are found in a wide variety of distribution channels, from hair salons and perfumeries to hyper - and supermarkets, health/beauty outlets, pharmacies and direct mail.
Challenges
L'Oréal's biggest challenge is getting consumers to come on board with sustainability, according to the cosmetics and beauty company's director of corporate social responsibility and sustainability Alexandra Palt. Talking to delegates at the Smarter Sustainability Reporting conference in London, Palt said like most companies, L'Oréal has make progress to make in sustainable consumption. Palt asked: "This is still our biggest challenge - how are we going to market products that have less impact on the environment but that are still bought by consumers? "It is about making it desirable to consumers and getting them all involved. "Today, consumers say that they are very interested in sustainability, and that they will buy a product with a higher price if it is responsible, but when they do go to buy [a product] they don't do it." Palt suggested this was a big problem for companies because if CEOs were aware of the consumers' likelihood to agree in principle but not to act on it, sustainable consumption surveys would hold little sway with the finance side of the company. "I can honestly tell you that our challenge is to make sustainability desirable." "If it's about making sustainability desirable, reporting will be very useful - it is absolutely necessary," she said. The company, which has more than 70,000 staff in 130 countries, recorded a €20.3bn (£17.6bn) turnover in 201. Palt pointed out that L'Oréal's ambition to attract one billion new consumers worldwide was a considerable challenge to the company in terms of sustainability. One way of assessing progress and setting targets was the company's initiative of visiting different countries and hosting 30 to 40 NGO representatives simultaneously. Palt explained how her team would present them with the challenges they faced and would in turn receive questioning from big NGOs as well as grass roots organisations. She reassured delegates at the conference organised by Sustainable Business magazine and edie, that L'Oréal was committed and well on way to meeting its targets of reducing CO2 emissions by 50% by 2015 and achieving zero net deforestation by 2020.
Failures
“To L’Oreal, Brazil’s Women Need Fresh Style of Shopping,” by Christina Passariello, is from the January 21, 2011 issue of The Wall Street Journal. The article discusses how the French company L’Oreal decided to begin doing business in Brazil in 2009. This was because the financial crisis was hurting the cosmetics industry in the European and American markets, and Brazil is home to the world’s third largest cosmetics market, just below the United States and Japan. However, the company has not realized success as it hoped, which is mainly due to the fact that Brazilian women like purchasing their skin creams, mascaras, and other cosmetics from door-to-door salespeople, not in shops, which is L’Oreal’s current method. The French company is remaining stubborn, however, and Jean-Paul Agon, the chief executive, says that L’Oreal will not be using the door-to-door sales approach. Instead, the company hopes to increase sales by providing personal beauty advisors in stores where L’Oreal products are sold. Mr. Agon is convinced that the market will continue to develop, and direct sales will become less popular. It appears that Mr. Agon is attempting to make Brazilian women just forget about part of their culture. Because of door-to-door selling, millions of Brazilian women have found jobs and pulled themselves out of poverty. Out of the 42 million women that are employed in Brazil, 2.5 million of them work as a direct salesperson. The chief executive for Natura, a cosmetics company that has one million salespeople across the country, predicts that door-to-door selling will remain strong for at least another ten years.
Achievements
- As a LEAD company by the United Nations Global Compact and received the 2 Awards of Excellence in Ethical Governance and Ethical Leadership from the University of Cergy-Pontoise (France)
- L’Oréal achieved a #1 ranking out of 6,000 companies worldwide in the Covalence ESG Ranking
- L’Oréal organizes an annual Ethics Day where employees from around the world can chat online with L’Oréal’s Chairman and CEO and their country General Manager about ethics.
Subsidies
- Maybelline
- NYX Professional Makeup
- Kiehl
CEOs
- Jean Paul Agon