Over the century L’Oréal has pursued its adventure in the beauty industry to cement its position as the world’s leading cosmetics company. The urge for innovation, which began a century ago by scientist and inventor Eugène Schueller, has led to excellence in producing safe, imaginative and effective products; Visible is the quest for diversity and a range of cultures to meet the needs of men and women around the globe and make beauty products available to as many people as possible;
Here comes the interview with the central figure, in Pakistan, of L’Oreal, the brand manager Zainab, conducted by Fashion Central.
1. When you’ve joined the company; you must have worked with other companies previously?
I’ve been the part of this company since July 2009; and yes I worked with Unilever before this. I was working as a brand manager on Lux, when I quit the job. When I joined the company L’Oreal, I have discovered a huge range of variety here, and more interesting work to do.
2. What educational background you have, to work in this field?
I am a foreign graduate and that four years professional study helped me a lot to work for such serious & sound post.
3. People with 60 different countries are working with L’Oreal and one of them is Pakistan now, are there more people working with it?
Oh, yes L’Oreal Company is pre-dominantly a Pakistani. In our neighbor country, they have hired a French chairman and In Pakistan we have all Pakistanis. Few people know here that Pakistanis are handling such a big company.
4. The products you are handling in L’Oreal, as like you have skin care, hair care, etc, what is the order of preference? Would you like to comment on it that what’s on the top?
Globally, L’Oreal Paris was formed in 1907 by a French chemist, and developed the ever first synthetic hair color formula. So in 1907, the first hair color was formed by the honor of our company.
The French chemist did this under the name L’Oreal Paris. Now L’Oreal owes many different products across the globe. We don’t make other products like the food, the detergents etc, we are pure beauty dealers and have many luxury divisions. Armani, Diesel & L’Oreal professionals; also we have salon’s range, then we have from our retail divisions, we have body shop etc. In our mass retail divisions, in stores, we have Garnier, etc. The commonality between these brands is that they deal only with beauty. We distribute them in different ways as well; we have many selling techniques and many distribution methods. We also have brands those are very saloon centric, they are recommended by dermatologists and pharmaceuticals, etc. So we acquired some of those brands over there, and it shows that L’Oreal is a pure beauty company.
If you search on a Google, you will find our beauty brand on number first and it’s a very proud statement. Its only because we have so many brands, we have celebrated 100 years of beauty. It has been in the market for over 100 of years, the company has technical innovations too and it always leads to trends. Our company has changed consumer’s behavior and habits; we have so much availability in terms of new ways of bringing new lines. In terms of philosophy, we say that we change consumer’s dreams and translate into products.
5. You are in skin research, as there are many types of skin in the world, so do you have some system to differentiate and to make products accordingly?
Yes, we do Zone massing; as there are many cross-cultural marriages happening across the world, it’s becoming a global thing. So because of that we have mart according to zone and within the Zone we study the morphology of the skin and also hair; everything is coupled what we do from our research. Based on Zone and based on demography of that particular society and that’s how we develop our mixes, in terms of product. I’ve told little bit about the history as our company has started with the hair mixes so hair color is our forte.
6. Now if we talk about the quality of skin, there are certain things that disturbs like decaying, so how do you prevent those? Is there any permanent solution or you use various beauty product to save your skin form decaying?
The way we look at the skin, skin has different life journey, as our whole body face different journeys. So when we are at our teen-age we notice that our skin has different skin conditions, like oily skin, blemishes, open skin pores, black heads, etc; so we need system that helps to take care of skin and in terms of benefits that they seek is skin free from blemishes, oil-free, etc. When we move into our higher age group, like between 22 and more, the aspiration we observe is whitening, brightening, even skin tone etc. There are different ways we communicate across the world, even tone skin is the demand all around the globe and whiting is more demanding in Asia and in South East Asia.
However, even-tone, brightness and less pigmentation is a universal problem. So for all that we have developed is mixes to help combat this. We have also developed anti-aging process; especially after 40 your skin become drier and drier and then you need more moisturizer and more hydration care. Furthermore, the day and night environment are totally different in terms of atmosphere in which we live. Our day time routine is very hectic & stressed with pollution; our women work a lot in day timings, entirely different from our grandmothers, they were very happy. (Laugh)
So the environment affects us both internally and externally, also the food brings change to us. All it affects on our level of collagen, which helps us to make our skin elastic; so we have creams that helps us to tackle that segment almost like to fight the first sign of aging and then we have developed anti-aging creams according to the growing age. Particularly after 45 of age, we have advanced care which is called age perfect, which we don’t have right now in Pakistan because here women do not care too much about their creams after 45, besides fewer groups.
We are younger generation that’s why I’m talking about aging process and we care for it. If you start now, you will have the better benefits later on; and my message is, in terms of aging is to use both day time and night creams.
7. When you talk about hair, in terms of curly hair, straight hair, and of course different colors that you give to the hair now so have your research help to solve these mysteries and do you have some helpful product?
Of course, research is a good change and it’s the good thing about our company; about 3000 of our researchers are working worldwide and introducing new products. For example we have recently launched new Excellenceon pro keratin hair color; this is actually the ever first developed hair color of its own type that is made up of hair and gives you even better color. It gives you triple protection, first before you use it, then while doing the coloring process and then it gives you protection after the coloring process. Coloring hair is a very exciting process to many people and they want the safe & sound hair color as they are going to leave their original hair color so its bit risky.
8. You are having the maximum range of hair color & hair care product line, so it’s a big claim, how do you justify it?
Yes, we do have many hair & care types, like as you see American one, which is extremely thick, and only in America we have many types; as in many parts of the America, women are dominantly blond. So we take care across the globe that we customize our product mix, for the particular audience & area.
9. Of course it is not easy to invest on such huge company, lots of investment and man power & research work is required; and smaller companies can’t even think to invest in such kind, so how do you deal if someone tries to prepare duplicate of your product?
We develop copy rights, so over the years we develop something like 17000 packages, so you can’t really copy all that; so we have to protect & take care of this aspect and the technology that we have developed in this competition.
10. What is the security aspect that you developed in the development of the beauty product?
We do two trials, we normally use researched based ingredients, so we have mode to make sure and to protect our product.
We being Pakistani congratulate you and appreciate you on getting selected for this post.
L'Oreal is an amazing brand of the cosmetic range, with lots of beauty products. Here comes the interview with the central figure of the L’Oreal beauty producer, the brand manager Zainab, conducted by Fashion Central.
