Being the world’s largest beauty and cosmetic company, the L’Oreal group has its listed office in Paris and chief office in the suburbs of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Concentrating on skin care, make-up, hair color, sun protection, hair care and perfumes, the company is also active in pharmaceutical, dermatological and tissue engineering. In the United States, it is the leading nanotechnology patent owner.
When the talk is about cosmetics, it relates to make-up, face and body creams, hair care, soaps and the perfumes. Depending upon the types of brands, this market can further be segmented. They are the luxury ones, mass market brands, dermocosmetic brands and so on. Owning a number of diverse cosmetic brands, L’Oreal is the world leader in cosmetics. As for the luxury brands, it owns Lancôme and Yves Saint Lauret. It is also the leader in mass marker brands such as L’Oreal Professional, L’Oreal Paris, Garnier and Mixa and La Roche Posav and Vichy concerning dermocosmetic brands.
The world of cosmetics is huge. In order to compete with other brands, cosmetic brands are required to innovate. Development and Research is significant to contend with competitor’s new goods. L’Oreal has five global Development and Research centers, one in the US, two in France, one in Japan and one was established in China in 2005. Initially L’Oreal started with the hair color business and soon it pronged into other beauty and cleansing products. L’Oreal luxury Paris uses a number of super models, popular actresses and actors for the advertisement of its brand. For example, Doutzen Kroes for makeup and Claudia Shiffer for hair care.
In the Fortune Global 500, L’Oreal was positioned 353 in the year 2007. Employing 60,850 workers, the company had enormous sale of $19,811 million and earned $2,585 million. There is a great demand of the company’s products that are sold in various distribution channels, from perfumeries to hyper and beauty outlets and supermarkets.
