Signed back in December 2019 and effective since January 2021, L’Oréal entered the long-term license agreement with Prada to create, develop and distribute luxury beauty products under the Prada brand. At the time of the deal, Partrizio Bertelli, CEO of Prada, said the agreement would take the luxury fashion house beyond its “well-established fragrance identity” and into a “variety of new projects”.
And the first product launch under the global partnership was a men’s fragrance: Luna Rossa Ocean, fronted by US actor Jake Gyllenhaal, that launched last month. The new product, Prada said, offered a “sophisticated yet avant-garde approach” to modern fragrances for men.
‘Strengthen and reactivate’ plus ‘novelty and excitement’
So, as the global rollout of the new fragrance went into full swing, what else could be expected from the L’Oréal-Prada tie-up?
Yann Andrea, international general manager at Prada Beauty for L’Oréal, said it would be a mix of innovation in old and new.
“On one side, our strategy in 2021 is to strengthen and reactivate Prada’s existing fragrance business. It is a very rich and balanced portfolio that we have inherited which enables us to address all the fragrance categories – feminine and masculine, selective and niche – and on which we are focusing on top business drivers to amplify desirability and awareness with high media, social and trade visibility,” Andrea told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.
“On the other side, of course, our strategy is to bring novelty and excitement to the market and consumers with strong product launches, of which Luna Rossa Ocean is the first, with others to come in the near future,” he said.
Innovating to bring a ‘code-disruptive’ approach to beauty
The overarching goal of the long-term license agreement, Andrea said, was to ultimately build a “global beauty brand to be among the top players of the selective market with a code-disrupting approach to beauty”.
The brand aimed to be not only “engaging and relevant” but also address consumer expectations on the new vision of luxury which was “more essential, more meaningful and driven by tech”.
This mirrored ideas presented by L’Oréal’s Technology Incubator Guive Balooch back in December last year, outlining that inclusivity, prevision and sustainability would be the future of personalised beauty.
And, for L’Oréal, luxury was also an increasingly important sector of its global business. Fragrance sales within the company’s Luxe division were up 40.9% for Q2 of 2021 and up 24.9% for H1.
