br />Scientific Approach,
One of the Group most recent challenges is the African market. The Group merged and
purchased Soft Sheen and Carson, thereby offering African consumers a new product line.
The chosen approach was scientific. Alain Evrard, LOr*ƒ¹al managing director for Africa,
the Orient and the Pacific, explains that LOr*ƒ¹al boosted African awareness of the
combined brands by: “educating hairdressers about our products and providing training in
how to use them.”They opened a Chicago laboratory to study the properties of African and
African-American hair and research
Hitting the right audience with the right product
Loreal is a very carefully crafted portfolio, each brand is positioned on a very precise
[market] segment, which overlaps as little as possible with the others.”
Brand portfolio management is about as original as “adding water to moisturizing cream”.
However, the secret ingredient that makes LOr*ƒ¹al stand out from all the rest is its highly
cosmopolitan CEO. He is driven to manage brands so that they live up to their full
potential, so that they grow and expand “outside the box”. There is no reason for brands to
continually service the same clientele. LOr*ƒ¹al brands are therefore constantly spruced up
and sent travelling to the four corners of the world. With a strong commitment to research
and constant innovation (the equivalent of more than 3% of sales revenues are spent on
scientific research), LOr*ƒ¹al is a company that truly brings science to bear on beauty.
Diversity in Creed
One of the Group creeds is diversity, and LOr*ƒ¹al sometimes surprises the public with
just how diverse its conception of beauty can be. This year, the cover of its annual report