"Beauty is a stabilizer of economic development. China's beauty market, even with some economic ups and downs, continues to grow. Recently, Fabrice Megarbane, president and CEO of L'Oréal North Asia China, said in an exclusive interview with The Paper that China is expected to become L'Oréal Group's largest market in the world.
L'Oréal was one of the first French companies to come to China and, as the world's largest cosmetics group, has been a witness, promoter and beneficiary of the friendly relations between the two countries for decades. L'Oréal's growth in China is a reflection of the "United States and the United States" between China and France.
On September 21, the first season of "Benliu: Starting from Shanghai - Global Urban Humanities Dialogue" (hereinafter referred to as "Benliu") kicked off. "Rushing Current" is a platform for people-to-people exchanges and cooperation initiated by the Information Office of Shanghai Municipal People's Government, which is committed to promoting in-depth dialogue between Shanghai and an internationally outstanding city every year. 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France and the Year of Sino-French Cultural Tourism, and Paris has become the first dialogue city of "Rushing Current". L'Oréal participated in the roundtable discussions of the first Shanghai Forum as a corporate guest.
Taking advantage of the launch of "Rushing", The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) interviewed Faberui. Recently, L'Oréal Group also announced that Faberry will serve as Chief Global Growth Officer, effective in the first quarter of 2024. This reflects the change in the international cosmetics giant's strategic direction in China and North Asia.
Fabrice Megarbane, President and CEO of L'Oréal North Asia China
Since entering the Chinese mainland market in 1997, L'Oréal has played a role as a "messenger of beauty" in the exchanges between the two countries, promoting cultural and artistic exchanges between China and France.
Faberry told The Paper that L'Oréal has participated in the 1998 Zao Wou-Ki's "Sixty Years of Painting Retrospective", to the sponsorship of the Shanghai World Expo and the French Pavilion in 2010, to the recent "West Bund Museum-Pompidou Five-Year Exhibition Cooperation", to the AR exhibition at Notre Dame Cathedral and the recent Dunhuang Public Welfare Walk, which is to hope that the concept of beauty will continue forever with the deep friendship between China and France.
In addition to cultural and artistic exchanges, L'Oréal has also left a lot of marks in Sino-French economic and trade cooperation.
In the first half of this year, L'Oréal Group achieved sales of 20.57 billion euros, with sales in North Asia accounting for nearly 30% of group sales. Faberry said that China is the headquarters of L'Oréal Group in North Asia, leading the latest trend of the "golden delta of beauty" in China, Japan and South Korea, and China is also the second largest market for L'Oréal Group in the world and is expected to become the group's largest market in the world.
It is understood that L'Oréal Group has one of the world's six major R&D hubs and one of the world's three beauty technology centers in China, and China is already the core strategic place of L'Oréal Group. As a result, the market cooperation between China and France is heating up.
During French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to China, L'Oréal Group Chairman An Gong, on behalf of L'Oréal, signed a memorandum of understanding with Business France and Oriental Valley, a Sino-French strategic cooperation project "French Start-up and SME Incubation Platform".
"China and France have formed an all-round, wide-ranging and multi-level mutually beneficial cooperation pattern in economic and trade cooperation. As China's development enters a new stage of transformation and upgrading, quality and efficiency, the potential of Sino-French cooperation is constantly released. Fei Borui told The Paper.
In the Sino-French strategic cooperation project, the above three parties plan to further integrate their respective resources and platforms, increase support for French innovative enterprises in China for exchanges and cooperation, project incubation and investment landing, and at the same time provide a new window for Chinese technology enterprises to exchange overseas and expand international cooperation.
Building a platform for open innovation and deeply embedding it in the local industrial chain is a strategy that L'Oréal has promoted in recent years.
Last year, L'Oréal set up its first investment company, Shanghai Meifang Investment Co., Ltd., in the Chinese market, working with government partners, investors and entrepreneurs to build an ecosystem. This symbolizes that this multinational giant's cultivation in China has gone another level.
Faberry told The Paper that L'L'OREAL BIG BANG BEAUTY TECHNOLOGY CREATION CAMP (HEREINAFTER REFERRED TO AS BIG BANG) HAS ATTRACTED MORE THAN 1,500 CHINESE STARTUPS AND NEARLY 20 FRENCH COMPANIES TO PARTICIPATE IN THE PAST THREE YEARS, AND SUCCESSFULLY INCUBATED MORE THAN 50 LANDING PROJECTS. Including the development of biodegradable polymers, intelligent picking robots, digital brand spokespersons, etc., BIG BANG also looks forward to contributing more to the Sino-French open innovation ecosystem.
On September 22, L'Oréal Group announced a minority investment in Shanhai Innovation, an innovative Chinese biotechnology company. This is the first open innovation investment made by L'Oréal Group in China through its subsidiary Shanghai Meifang Investment Co., Ltd., and it is also the first investment project incubated by L'Oréal BIG BANG in four years, which proves the success of this model and provides a reference for promoting the in-depth integration of China's open innovation and international science and technology innovation ecology.
Establish government-enterprise cooperation and jointly "pilot" new consumption models
The beauty market is a market about innovation, a market that brings excitement and excitement to consumers. Every beauty company has its own positioning, meaning and purpose in the market.
Commenting on his views on the domestic beauty market, Faberry said, "China has the world's most demanding and sophisticated consumer group. The young people of the new era are very eager for beauty, and at the same time very professional and demanding". He believes that consumers present many new attitudes and new behaviors, such as the pursuit of personalization, the search for emotional resonance fields, and the pursuit of excellent functions, valuing the efficacy, quality, safety, convenience and so on of products.
Faberry further said that in this new era, in the face of the change of new habits of consumers, L'Oréal should increase innovation. For example, create more digital intelligent applications. In this way, digital intelligence applications are superimposed on offline applications, with strong and clear responsibilities and goals, L'Oréal will connect and interact with more specific groups of people.
In recent years, innovative operating models have been one of L'Oréal's ongoing investments in the Chinese market. In October last year, L'Oréal Group's world's first self-built intelligent operation center was officially laid in Suzhou, and in March this year, L'Oréal China's high-end cosmetics intelligent operation center settled in Nantong.
In terms of offline service innovation, Faberry said that in April this year, L'Oréal China obtained the "on-site personalized service" cosmetics production license, which is the first such license in China issued by the Shanghai Municipal Medical Products Administration.
This means that L'Oréal is the first company in the Chinese mainland market to be able to "license" to provide customized cosmetics services in its stores. Relying on mini production stations, relevant stores provide consumers with customized serums based on pre-made formulas for on-site dosing and blending according to consumers' skin conditions, with special recipes and names.
Behind the landing of the "on-site personalized service" pilot is the result of long-term government and enterprise cooperation, actively responding to the latest consumer demand, and working together to achieve breakthroughs.
"Shanghai has always provided an increasingly optimized business environment for enterprises, and we look forward to continuing in this direction." Faberry said that L'Oréal has been rooted in Shanghai for the past 26 years. As the headquarters of North Asia, the significance of Shanghai to L'Oréal is self-evident, and Shanghai's good business environment and open and cooperative atmosphere provide strong support for L'Oréal's high-quality development in China.