With €38.26 billion in net sales and nearly 87,400 employees in 2022, L’Oréal is the world leader in beauty.
Because the beauty market is a growing market with a focus on the future, the Group is, now more than ever, in a position to seize all opportunities, strengthen its leadership and ensure tomorrow’s success. Building on a long-term vision, with a clear strategy, L’Oréal continues its development by relying on its fundamental assets and transforming itself to respond to the new aspirations of consumers, employees and society, to become the company of the future.
Digital technology has radically transformed the Group, and is fully integrated in the business, in all brands, jobs and countries. It is based on a solid network of over 3,800 digital experts, almost 62,000 trained employees and a wealth of in‑house know-how. Digital has boosted L’Oréal’s strengths tenfold and represents a booster of opportunities and growth. It enhances the power of brands and products, enriches the connection with consumers and creates experiences, new services and personalisation.
E-commerce is an additional source of business, and a growth accelerator because it means we can reach new consumers wherever there is no existing distribution network. The proportion of the Group’s sales represented by e-commerce multiplied by nearly 6 between 2015 and 2022 (5% to 28%(1)), with growth in all Zones and Divisions. L’Oréal aims to increase its e-commerce business to reach up to 50% of its sales. This means strengthening its industrial flexibility, adapting its supply chain in an “omnichannel” approach and redesigning the downstream value chain immediately.
The new frontier of L’Oréal’s digital adventure is the Metaverse, which will provide infinite opportunities to interact with consumers and even market products in virtual universes.
Technology, particularly Beauty Tech, is the future of beauty because of the phenomenal breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, etc., which make it possible to expand L’Oréal’s offering and satisfy all consumer expectations.
L’Oréal, which is already a digital-first company, decided to be the pioneer, champion and leader of Beauty Tech in all its areas of application. By building up state-of-the-art, secure IT, its leadership in Beauty Tech and its expertise in artificial intelligence and data will enable L’Oréal to be a data-driven company for all its activities and business lines. The ongoing transformation of Operations towards greater agility is integral to the Group’s ambition to become a world leader in Beauty Tech.
Beauty Tech will ensure that beauty for all evolves into beauty for each person. To achieve this, L’Oréal has a unique strength: being the only company that can combine more than 110 years of scientific beauty expertise and knowledge of our consumers with cutting-edge digital excellence.
The transformation of our formulations towards the Green Sciences is at the heart of the beauty of the future. This new frontier of research, which combines biotechnology with new agronomic and cultivation techniques, is making it possible for L’Oréal to expand its portfolio of raw materials and to develop ingredients with a favourable environmental profile to break free from petrochemicals. This programme helps to minimise the environmental impacts associated with the cultivation of the plants these ingredients are sourced from, so as to rely on eco-friendly transformation procedures. This transition will provide consumers with performance, safety and sustainability, and L’Oréal with a new competitive advantage.
Through its L’Oréal for the Future programme, L’Oréal has set itself a number of ambitious targets for combating climate change: in terms of reducing its CO2 emissions in order to achieve “carbon neutral” status(2) for its sites, in terms of the use and recycling of water in its industrial processes and in terms of its product design (formulation and packaging) through bio-sourcing and the circular economy.
On the social front, L’Oréal ensures that its strategic suppliers pay their employees a decent living wage and adopts policies to help people from disadvantaged communities to access employment. The Group has also committed on the one hand to supporting women in vulnerable situations with a charitable endowment fund of €50 million, and secondly, to investing €100 million in two investment funds dedicated to the circular economy and the regeneration of ecosystems. In 2022,L’Oréal co-founded the EcoBeautyScore Consortium, with more than fifty players from the beauty sector, to set up a scheme to indicate the environmental impact of cosmetic products so that consumers can make more sustainable choices.
(1) Sales achieved on our brands’ websites and with e-commerce pure players + estimated sales achieved by our brands corresponding to sales through our retailers’websites (non-audited data).
(2) A site can claim “carbon neutral” status if it meets the following requirements:
