Brand Founded By Former L'Oréal Executive Has Entered China!

Following L'Oréal, Shiseido, LVMH and other large group brands continue to making profit in the beauty competition track; another dark horse clean beauty brand La Bouche Rouge began to increase its input in the Chinese market.

Recently La Bouche Rouge, a French beauty brand founded in 2017 by former L'Oréal executive Nicolas Gerlier, has received a new round of financing. La Bouche Rouge, known as the "Hermes of the lipstick world”, is positioned as a luxury high end clean beauty brand.

In order to increase the input in the Chinese market, at present La Bouche Rouge has settled in high-end department stores and shopping malls such as Lane Crawford and SKP in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an and other cities, and has opened overseas official flagship stores. La Bouche Rouge also plans to open the first brand boutique in the Chinese market.

01

Focus on High-End Clean Beauty,

In Five Years It May Exceed 700 Million Yuan

The La Bouche Rouge brand latest round of financing was jointly funded by investors Mirabeau Asset Management, the Chalhoub Group and BPI for a total of 10 million euros (about 71.1498 million yuan). The new financing will be used to expand the e-commerce business as well as the US, Chinese and French markets.

This is La Bouche Rouge's additional round of financing after receiving an investment of 2.5 million euros (about 17.7874 million yuan) in 2020. The difference is that this time La Bouche Rouge has received 4 times the amount of investment it received in 2020. Obviously, its rapidly growing commercial value has been recognized by the market.

In 2017 La Bouche Rouge was founded by former L'Oréal executive Nicolas Gerlier. The brand started with a range of lipstick products and has now been extended to other facial and eye cosmetics, including mascara, eyeliner, shadow powder and more, with a total of more than 22 products.

As a pioneering French clean beauty brand, La Bouche Rouge's mission is to produce a high-end luxury beauty product that is pollution-free, non-destructive and not harmful, creating the world's first cosmetics brand to ban the use of micro-plastics and plastics in product formulation, production and sales.

In addition, La Bouche Rouge extends its eco-friendly philosophy to a wide range of the brand makeup products, including mascara using 100% recycled glass bottles, eyeliner from natural formulas and an eyebrow product. La Bouche Rouge's new metal refillable makeup compact case created in August 2020 also allows products such as contour, highlighter, eyeshadow and others to be refilled for repeat use.

Although Nicolas Gerlier did not disclose the brand’s sales amount, it is estimated that within the next five years La Bouche Rouge can generate 100 million euros (about 711 million yuan) of annual revenue. 

02

Created by Former L'Oréal Executives,

It Was a Key Brand of LVMH Beauty Incubation Project

In fact, the la Bouche Rouge brand's vegan claims and product concepts to reduce pollution and to be free of plastics are inextricably linked to the founders' vision.

Founder Nicolas Gerlier is a pioneer in the vegan environmental sustainability concept. He has worked at L'Oréal Group as Global Product Manager in Lancôme Makeup and International Marketing Manager in Armani Perfumes. He has always believed that "true luxury products should use sustainable formulations and packaging materials".

△Nicolas Gerlier

It is worth noting that La Bouche Rouge also received the support of luxury giant LVMH Group at the end of 2017 for its environmental protection concept, and became a key incubation object of LVMH Group's Cosmet'up beauty incubation project.

Nicolas Gerlier said: "French makeup brands have reached 70% of the global beauty market, but no brand has yet been able to truly integrate environmental protection concept into makeup products, and I hope La Bouche Rouge can call on everyone to join the environmental protection action."

According to a survey published by La Bouche Rouge, about 1 billion lipsticks are thrown away each year, and these discarded lipsticks cause a lot of water pollution. That's why La Bouche Rouge promises clean vegan formulas in refillable, recyclable cases, free from plastics. Meanwhile, for every lipstick sold, La Bouche Rouge donates the equivalent of 100 liters of drinkable water to Eau Vive Internationale association, supporting a program dedicated to children in Kemerida region of Togo.

In 2020, the brand launched a new sustainable beauty collection – crafted from clean formulas, free of micro plastics and refillable. The collection is based on the brand's four main values: environmental responsibility, recyclable and sustainable use, traceability and creativity.

Thanks to its vegan product concept and professional makeup products, La Bouche Rouge is currently expanding globally in Europe, the United States and Asia.

03

Refillable Lipsticks Are Popular Among Chinese Consumers,

Increase Presence in Chinese Market 

with Multi-Channel 

La Bouche Rouge obviously would not miss China, the “gateway” of the global cosmetic market. At present, the brand has opened up 8 offline sales outlets in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an and Hong Kong, all in high-end department stores and shopping centers such as Lane Crawford and SKP.

“We are going to continue to develop in China, and develop our current business in e-commerce,” Nicolas Gerlier continued, referring to e-commerce distribution that’s currently La Bouche Rouge’s largest market, followed by the US, China and France. In the future, the brand will further expand in these areas.  

Attaching importance to the Chinese market, La Bouche Rouge plans to open its first Chinese boutique in the next 12 months. At the same time, perfumes and skin care products will be launched one after another.

It is worth noting that La Bouche Rouge is also the first brand to propose the concept of a refillable lipsticks. A set of La Bouche Rouge lipsticks consists of a lipstick case and a lipstick core. The lipstick cases are made of fine leather or vegan alternative. The fine leather refillable cases are made with upcycled leather from the Tanneries du Puy in France, that counts Hermès as a client, and they are timeless objects that can be used for multiple generations. The Vegan leather refillable case is made from a unique, recycled material created by Stella McCartney.

In order to reach Chinese consumers, in addition to entering shopping malls offline, La Bouche Rouge has also opened overseas flagship stores online. According to the data, the flagship store has nearly 10,000 fans, and the largest sales in the store is a lipstick refill core with a monthly sales volume of 400+, with a price of 320 yuan / piece. The Little Red Book also has nearly a thousand recommendation notes of the brand.

Although the price of a set of "lipstick" + "leather case" of 1,000+ yuan makes ordinary consumers hesitate slightly, the lipstick refill core comes with a price of 300 - 400 yuan, with environmental friendly & vegan concept and professional quality, and these all make consumers quite tempted to purchase.

Behind this "temptation" is the consumer market's favor for clean vegan cosmetics in recent years.

According to data from Grand View Research, a US market research and consulting firm, the vegan skin care market is booming globally with the help of social media, and the global vegan cosmetics market size will achieve USD $20.8 billion by 2025, progressing at a CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period (2020-2025).

Many cosmetics companies have seen this trend and have begun to planning or to transform to vegan brands. In December 2018 German consumer goods giant Henkel Group launched the vegan beauty brand Nature Box; in 2019 Shiseido announced the acquisition of Drunken Elephant For US$845 million (about 6.03 billion yuan); in 2021 L'Oréal announced the acquisition of California-based vegan skin care brand Youth to the People; P&G launched the affordable vegan brand DermaGeek.

With the growth of millennials and the popularization of environmental protection concepts, the consumer market has been further educated. The expansion of vegan brand La Bouche Rouge into the Chinese market is a great strategic choice.