L’Oréal to set up ecommerce platform for French market

Paris-based cosmetics firm L’Oréal plans to tap cosmetics and beauty care consumers via its website in its home market of France from 2013.

The company said that the new distribution approach will help boost revenues from the ecommerce arena.

According to data from Tesco, 43% of the Europeans shop online and various manufacturers are trying to leverage this space to attract consumers.

L’Oréal Consumer Products president Jean-Jacques Lebel told the Financial Times that the firm is not sure as to how the website will be, but consistency and clarity will help it ensure that its needs and that of its customers are met.

L’Oréal said that it previously it tested the online market when it launched Club des Créateurs de Beauté brand online offering its licensed Agnès b cosmetics mainly in France and Japan.

The French experiment follows suit of a similar one launched in China a few months ago in partnership with ecommerce platform, Taobao Mall.

L’Oréal Consumer Products arm, however, does not sell products on the internet in the US, although its luxury product division and Kerastase haircare have an online presence. Despite the internet enhancing capabilities, the stores remain important to the organisation’s future strategy, as it is said to offer unique benefits to the brands, said the company.

"Nothing replaces the stores in our categories," added Lebel.

"I don’t think there’s a model that says you do it [all] online, not for our types of products. You have to be the physically on shelves to create relationships with customers," added Lebel.