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L’Oreal And The Globalization Of American Beauty

Introduction:
L’Oreal was started in 1907 by French chemist, Eugene Schueller, who developed the world’s first synthetic hair-color product, L’Aureole. By 1912 his hair products were sold in France, Netherlands, Austria and Italy. In the mid-1930s, Schueller moved into the hygiene and toiletry sectors of the cosmetic market with great success. L’Oreal soon earned the reputation as the leader in European hair coloring and skin care products.
Although L’Oreal reached European success, entering into the U.S. market proved much more difficult. In 1953, L’Oreal formed licensee Cosmair Inc. in New Jersey to distribute its hair-coloring products to beauty salons. The company soon realized three challenges within the U.S. market. First, in the U.S. local middlemen delivered products to salons, and L’Oreal had little to no relationship established with this group. Second, L’Oreal hair products were not well known by the salon workers and their clientele and therefore were not purchased and sold much in salons. Finally, the French prestige, which helped sell perfumes, did little for the hair-coloring products.
L’Oreal continued its attempts of global expansion and gained ground in the U.S. hair-coloring market in 1973 with the famous, “Because you’re worth it” ad campaign. The success of the campaign L’Oreal established a quality reputation with U.S. consumers, allowing them to sell their hair-coloring products at a higher price than competitive firms for the first time.
In 1984, new CEO Owen-Jones began pushing for L’Oreal to become the largest cosmetics firm in the United States. In order to accomplish this, the company began assessing acquisition opportunities that would broaden L’Oreal brands throughout the U.S. The first two companies acquired were Ralph Lauren Fragrances and Helena Rubinstein, a cosmetic maker with international distribution. These two were soon followed by Redken, a fashionable hair-salon product company. Along with Redken, L’Oreal also...