As part of its acceleration strategy in e-commerce, L’Oréal has made a minority investment in US-American social selling platform Replika Software through its corporate venture capital fund BOLD Business Opportunities for L’Oréal Development.
WHO: Replika Software is a turnkey social selling platform that enables brands to activate at scale their network of social sellers to sell online, inspire on social media, and connect with consumers anytime, anywhere. Founded in 2016 by Kareen Mallet, former Fashion Director at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, and Corey Gottlieb, advertising, marketing, and tech entrepreneur, the company is based in New York and has offices in Paris.
L’Oréal has devoted itself to beauty for over 100 years with a unique international portfolio of 36 diverse and complementary brands. The Group generated sales amounting to 29.87 billion euros in 2019 and employs 88,000 people worldwide. As one of the world’s leading beauty companies, L’Oréal is present across all distribution networks: mass market, department stores, pharmacies and drugstores, hair salons, travel retail, branded retail, and e-commerce.
WHY: L’Oréal’s financial support and expertise will help Replika execute its vision faster and more broadly while supporting L’Oréal’s acceleration strategy in e-commerce.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “Social commerce is an exciting new form of e-commerce that enables consumers, influencers, experts, beauty or shop assistants to sell brands and products on social platforms through formats such as live shopping or livestreaming,” said Lubomira Rochet, Chief Digital Officer of L’Oréal. “Today, e-commerce already represents 25% of L’Oréal’s revenues. The rise of social commerce is a great opportunity for our brands to reinvent the consumer beauty experience worldwide. We are very excited to partner with Replika Software, a pioneer in the field, to create social commerce at scale. Our ambition is to crack this new channel and create a healthy and dynamic ecosystem of social sellers for the beauty category”.
“As an industry, we’re just scratching the surface of how powerful social commerce can be when it’s combined with the massive scale offered by the global online community. Replika Software comes off an excellent year of growth and is powering new revenue-generating social selling programs for brands of L’Oréal and others around the world,” said Replika Software Co-founder Kareen Mallet. “We are thrilled to strengthen our partnership with L’Oréal. Having their financial support and domain expertise will help us execute our vision even more rapidly and broadly”.
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