L'Oréal partners with Station F

Paris, 20 October 2017 - L'Oréal announces today a strategic partnership with STATION F, the world's biggest startup campus in Paris, created and backed by leading French tech entrepreneur Xavier Niel. With this agreement, L'Oréal becomes STATION F's partner for development of early stage digital beauty startups worldwide. 

As part of the partnership, L'Oréal will run its own beauty accelerator inside STATION F. Through the accelerator, L'Oréal will finance 62 workstations on the STATION F campus and support selected startups providing expertise in beauty and marketing, as well as networking and mentorship with group's key stakeholders and a dedicated digital team.

"As a French company with a global reach, L'Oréal is proud to support STATION F's ambition to make France a global center of digital innovation. Asa beauty industry leader, we are thrilled to empower the next generation of beauty enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Together we will create a powerful innovation synergy to address the aspirations and diversified needs of beauty consumers worldwide," said Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and CEO of L'Oréal.

"We are excited to partner with L'Oréal, a world leader in the cosmetics industry who shares our values of ambition and diversity. I look forward to the launch of their startup program at STATION F, which will bring great value to startups on campus," said Roxanne Varza, Director of STATION F.

"Digital is transforming beauty and we see a shift towards augmenting the consumer experience through services such as color try on, diagnostics, online beauty consultations, live broadcasting and personalisation. Our partnership with STATION F is strategic to help us connect, collaborate and support the rising generation of digital beauty entrepreneurs. We are excited to provide the resident beauty startups with access, networking and mentorship across the Group's brands, labs and business teams to accelerate their development," said Lubomira Rochet, Chief Digital Officer of L'Oréal.

This partnership adds to L'Oréal's large-scale digital open innovation strategy, which includes investments in Partech Ventures, an international venture capitalist firm, and Founders Factory, a London based digital accelerator and incubator.

To join L'Oréal's accelerator at STATION F: http://www.loreal.com/group/startups/stationf

About L'Oréal
L'Oréal has devoted itself to beauty for over 100 years. With its unique international portfolio of 34 diverse and complementary brands, the Group generated sales amounting to 25.8 billion euros in 2016 and employs 89,300 people worldwide. As the world's leading beauty company, L'Oréal is present across all distribution networks: mass market, department stores, pharmacies and drugstores, hair salons, travel retail, branded retail and e-commerce.
Research and innovation, and a dedicated research team of 3,870 people, are at the core of L'Oréal's strategy, working to meet beauty aspirations all over the world. L'Oréal's sustainability commitment for 2020 "Sharing Beauty With All" sets out ambitious sustainable development objectives across the Group's value chain.
For more information: http://mediaroom.loreal.com/en/
 
About STATION F
STATION F is the world's biggest startup campus, opened in June 2017 in central Paris and backed by Xavier Niel (Free Telecom, Kima Ventures, 42 coding school). The 34,000m2 campus will be home
to over 1,000 start ups and will add a 600-person housing extension opening in 2018.

"This news release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy L'Oréal shares. If you wish to obtain more comprehensive information about L'Oréal, please refer to the public documents registered in France with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, also available in English on our Internet site www.loreal-finance.com.
This news release may contain some forward-looking statements. Although the Company considers that these statements are based on reasonable hypotheses at the date of publication of this release, they are by their nature subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or projected in these statements."

Contacts at L'Oréal

Individual shareholders and market authorities
Mr Jean Régis CAROF
Tel.: +33 1 47 56 83 02
[email protected] 

Financial analysts and institutional investors 
Mrs Françoise LAUVIN
Tel.: +33 1 47 56 86 82
[email protected] 
 
Journalists
Mrs Polina HUARD 
Tel.: +33 1 47 56 87 88
[email protected]

Switchboard
Tel.: +33 1 47 56 70 00

For further information, please contact your bank, stockbroker or financial institution (I.S.I.N. code: FR0000120321), and consult your usual newspapers or magazines or the Internet site for shareholders and investors, www.loreal-finance.com, the L'Oréal Finance app or call the toll-free number from France: 0 800 66 66 66.