🌱 Local Love: L’Oréal makes another move in China by taking a minority stake in clean-beauty label LAN. Earlier, the group bought 6.67% of Chando for USD 62 million.
📉 C-Beauty Boom: Global brands are losing ground in China’s USD 75 billion beauty market. Local players are grabbing share, innovating faster, launching new products quicker and outspending foreign brands in marketing.
🚀 Shortcut Strategy: Instead of repositioning its own brands at high cost, L’Oréal teams up with local winners through minority stakes. This way, it taps into their speed, ingredient trends and access to China’s smaller cities.
❝"We firmly believe investing in China is investing in the future."
L’Oréal China CEO Vincent Boinay
📈 China Comeback: After two slow years, L’Oréal China returned to growth with roughly 3% in Q3. LAN and Chando are meant to stabilise the China business and capture the mass market without cannibalising L’Oréal’s core brands.
🧪 Tech meets Tradition: LAN develops all products in-house and was an early mover in oil-based skincare. With new bio-based ingredients and affordable pricing, the label has become a Gen Z bestseller.
Big Picture
China is becoming the toughest beauty market in the world: more competition, slower growth, and more demanding consumers. Instead of “buy & bury,” global players like L’Oréal now invest, let local brands run independently, and scale together. Local brands stay agile and the multinationals ride the C-Beauty momentum.
The China Survival Guide for Western Businesses
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