(News Bulletin 247) – The beauty giant opened the ball at CES 2024, the high mass of innovation held every year in Las Vegas. L’Oréal intends to establish itself as the champion of tailor-made beauty, with data and artificial intelligence.

A revolution in the temple of innovation. It was the boss of L’Oréal who had the privilege of opening the ball for the 2024 edition of CES organized in Las Vegas. An exercise rather reserved for tech giants like Google or Apple and not for a company in the world of beauty.

However, the cosmetics giant intends to establish itself as a champion of beauty tech, or beauty technology. By opening this 2024 edition of CES, L’Oréal is also the first company in the beauty field to present a keynote (a main speech) during this flagship tech event which you can also follow live with our colleagues from Tech & Co.

This edition is therefore historic for L’Oréal although the company has been present at this high mass of innovation since 2019. And with each edition, the global cosmetics giant communicates on new trends. Becoming a major player in “the beauty of the future”, through technology and science, is one of the ambitions of the French cosmetics flagship.

AI and data on the program

L’Oréal, for example, unveiled the free Beauty Genius application which aims to be “a virtual personal advisor” supported by generative artificial intelligence.

This app recommends skincare and makeup products based on skin type, gives tips on makeup techniques, answers questions about issues like acne, hair loss, and more. The cosmetics giant also unveiled AirLight Pro, a new generation hair dryer designed with hairdressing professionals, for beauty experts and for consumers.

Winner of the CES 2024 Innovation Award, this device was developed in partnership with start-up Zuvi, and uses a combination of infrared light and airflow technology. Above all, AirLight Pro is designed to adapt to the needs of each user. It must be marketed from April.

“At L’Oréal, we are convinced that it can help us make beauty more inclusive and our products more efficient. This is why we are constantly innovating, day after day,” it is stated on the L’Oréal website. cosmetics giant.

During the 2023 edition, L’Oréal unveiled two prototypes intended to facilitate beauty procedures for people with disabilities. Hapta, the world’s first portable, computerized makeup applicator. This tool, equipped with a stabilizer, allows people with limited dexterity to apply makeup with precision. The company also unveiled L’Oréal Brow Magic, an at-home electronic brow makeup applicator that can tailor brows to the user’s face shape.

Here too, these innovations were rewarded with two prizes. “These revolutionary technologies, designed to expand access to the expression of beauty, underline L’Oréal’s desire to leverage technology to drive inclusion in the beauty industry,” L’Oréal said.

Know your consumers better

On the occasion of a “capital market day”, that is to say an investor day, organized in mid-November, L’Oréal renewed its ambitions in this field of tailor-made beauty. Stifel analysts also came away from this presentation with “a better understanding of how L’Oréal exploits the potential of beauty technologies to better understand its consumers”.

L’Oréal has started to integrate technology into its activities since 2018, the aim being for the group “to anticipate and respond to the expectations and unmet needs of consumers before the competition”, recalled Stifel in a previous note devoted to this investor day.

The financial intermediary recalled that this positioning as a champion of beauty reinforced “L’Oréal’s competitive advantage” and should thus “enable it to gain new market share in the years to come”. The company predicts that its current addressable market of 2.3 billion consumers – that is, Stifel points out, customers who meet the minimum income requirements to purchase its products – will increase to 2.9 billion people. by 2030. These are therefore all potential consumers for L’Oréal which should, thanks to technology, adapt its offer according to the diversity of consumers.

On the Paris Stock Exchange, L’Oréal is stable at 440.55 euros on Wednesday around 11:30 a.m. In 2023, the stock had a good year 2023 with gains of almost 35% and even had the luxury of doing better than the CAC 40 (+16.5%). The file had certainly suffered from a poor Chinese economy (and an offensive by Beijing against the gray market), but the market had been reassured by L’Oréal’s ability to adapt to these headwinds, with activity that exceeded expectations in other regions of the world in the third quarter.