Beauty (and reputation) for sale
This week the international retail chain Body Shop International said it has accepted a buyout offer of $1.1 billion from French cosmetics company L'Oréal SA. L'Oreal has said it will maintain 2,000-store chain for beauty products as a separate entity.
The purchase is a change n direction for L'Oréal, the world's #1 cosmetics company. L'Oréal owns a few shops to sell its high-end Kiehl's and Lancôme products. The question is whether it has the retail smarts to turn around the declining sales of the Body Shop company.
Body Shop is a model of benevolent entrepreneurship. Started in England in the 1970s as a single shop, Body Shops made a mark with an "ethical trade" stance, promoting natural products, recycling, human and animal rights. It is also rare in being a company run by is female founder (who, embarrassingly enough, has often railed against big corporations). Once unique in its eco-friendly policies, the company's idea has been copied by others.
Most see L'Oréal's move as an attempt to profit from the glow of Body Shop's reputation (it is notorious for testing cosmetics on animals, a red flag issue to animal rights activists.).. (In a similar move, UK candy maker Cadbury Schweppes last year snapped dup for Green & Black's, a provider of "fair-trade" chocolate.)
L'Oréal is on the prowl for expansion. Since 1999, when it acquired the US's Maybelline, it has purchased a number of brands around the world. More recently, it bought skin care operations SkinCeuticals and SkinEthic.
Current products include:
Consumer products: L'Oréal, Garnier, Maybelline, Softsheen Carson, CCB Paris, Vive, Studio-Line
Professional products: L'Oréal Professional, Kérastase, Redken, Matrix, Mizabui
Luxury products: Lancôme, Biotherm, Helena Rubenstein, Kiehl's, Shue Uemura, Giorigio Armani (cosmetics), Ralph Lauren (cosmetics), Cacherel, Viktor & Rolf
Dermatological: Vichy, La Roche-Posay, SkinCeutical
1:24:16 PM 
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