L'Oreal Case Analysis

L’Oreal

1. How did L’Oreal become the world’s largest beauty company? What was the role of acquisitions in this growth?

L’Oreal is the largest beauty company in the world and in the past 100 years that it has expanded, it has supplied to 130 countries with offices in 58 different countries. This global company is the number one premium cosmetic product in the world today and has taken the core and beauty of people’s everyday lives since 1907, the beginning of L’Oreal. The superior leadership of a guy named Eugene Schueller started this strategic company with basic products such as hair care and also the first man-made hair color product. Five years later you could find these products in Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands. In 1934 Eugene invented the first mass market of soap less shampoo and this led the success of L’Oreal in the country of Europe which soon recognized them as the leader in body care and hair coloring products. Finally soon after World War II L’Oreal moved into the United States and the company seemed to change. When L’Oreal expanded the competition was more involved and more growth was needed in order for the company to be more successful. With problems like this, the strategy and planning that has been applied in L’Oreal has been huge for the success of the company. L’Oreal realized they needed to expand in other fields of the beauty market and target markets in order to stay alive and successful. This would mean that L’Oreal would need to acquire other companies as part of their expansion and through this they have kept the constancy of the leading company with acquisitions of many small companies. Finally in the 1980s they started their globalization into new markets all around the globe by acquiring new companies that would form the cosmetics that we know today. Although the role of acquisitions has never been the main focus of the company, internal growth and strategy was the number one reason for L’Oreal becoming such a big name. The main strategy was to adopt new companies and expand it from within believing that the brand could be taken globally and benefit their overall brand portfolio. The main role of acquisitions was to increase and lengthen the internal growth rate. L’Oreal started acquiring companies from the beginning of their name. They started with the basics of their own brands such as L’Oreal Professional, L’Oreal Paris, Kerastase, and Club des Createurs de Beaute.