Inside a cosmetic company

Press, 6 October 1987, Page 25

Inside a cosmetic company

During a recent European holiday DEBORAH McPHERSON stopped off for a look at the inner-workings of one of the world’s biggest beauty firms.

Cosmetics have come a long way since the days of grandmother’s mud face-packs and cold cream.

Fierce competition in the cosmetics industry has fuelled a big demand for research based on scientific and technological advances into beauty products.

A peep at one of the largest cosmetic companies in the world, L’Oreal, in France, reveals more than 2000 people employed in research and manufacture.

The company last year sold about $5.77 billion of cosmetics throughout the world. The budget for scientific research was a cool quarter of a billion, a reflection of the cosmetic industry’s increasing emphasis on the use of high technology for the seemingly ordinary creams we blithely smooth on our faces.

“These days, people want to know the reason for their skin’s behaviour,” explains L’Oreal’s immaculately-suited scientific communications officer in Paris, Dr Edith Clar. At L’Oreal’s Lancome Laboratory in the up-market Chevilly Larue Suburb, company researchers and technicians work in quiet elegance on the three main stages of research. These are formulation, quality control, and performance testing. The research requires some sophisticated technology that might astound the unsuspecting consumer of the end product.

The skin laboratory, where face creams and other skincare products are tested, is equipped with an unassum-ing-looking machine, dubiously called a “wrinkle metre.” This machine’s fascinating function is, of course, to measure wrinkles, but the principles for doing this have been adapted from an American space research technique developed for measuring craters and mountains on the surface of the moon. Lancome researchers have developed also a highly sophisticated machine for diagnosing the condition of skin. The results of the diagnosis as well as an appropri-

ate beauty treatment and diet are displayed on a television screen connected to the machine. It is used at the Lancome Institute of Beauty, in the wealthy Paris shopping street, Rue du Faubourg St Honore. L’Oreal divides its overseas markets into several zones.. New Zealand is included in the fast-growing “Zone Anglo Saxonne Australe,” which lumps us together with Australia and South Africa.

Beauty is a serious business for a company which is almost as well-known as Coca Cola. Leading dnd renowned scientists and dermatologists are employed by L’Oreal. In France about 1100 people work in four main research laboratories in Paris, as well as several smaller laboratories. About 300 scientists and dermatologists research in the pharmaceutical field. A further 900 people work in cosmetic research laboratories in various sub-companies. The company also has a research centre in the United States.

Equipment for testing products is either bought or borrowed. If no machine is on the market that suits the company’s needs, then its machines department technicians usually build a suitable model, explains Dr Clar.

“Sometimes the machines department have to put up with all sorts of crazy requests, such as how to measure the strength of nails after dishwashing,” she says.

L’Oreal is structured into three main divisions: Parfums et Beaute (perfumes and beauty), salon (hair products), and a public division which distributes retail products. The Paris-based Parfums et Beate division also includes the well-established Lancome beauty company, which was acquired by L’Oreal in the 19605.

Fragrance brands marketed through this division include many well-known perfumes < such as Guy Laroche, Cacharel, Picasso, Ralph Laurent, O de Lancome and Magie Noire.