Liliane Bettencourt is the majority shareholder of the beauty company L’Oreal and The Body Shop and is one of the richest women from France.
Born in Paris, France, Liliane is the son of Louise Berthed and Eugene Schuller. But unfortunately, his mother died when Liliane was 5 years old. At that time, his father Eugene had worked as an employee in a cosmetics company. Eugene was very talented in cosmetics, after graduating from college in 1907, Eugene had made a formula for hair coloring and was named Oreale, the forerunner of L’Oreal.
Then, Eugene opened his own cosmetics company, and issued cosmetic products and some shampoos. After that, 15-year-old Liliane joined her father’s company. That’s where his interest in cosmetics arises.
His father’s cosmetics company is actually not too big, used to be called Safe Hair Dye Company of France. The company opened in 1920 and the Eugene company at that time only had 3 employees, then expanded to 100 employees in 1950.
After that, in 1957, his father died and Liliane finally took over the company and changed his name to L’Oreal. But he felt something was missing from his cosmetics company and felt that there must be a change from L’Oreal.
Marketing is what makes L’Oreal lack marketing. The cosmetic brand is very good in quality, but only famous in the country. Liliane finally decided to make her company go public, and in 1974 Nestle bought a 50% stake in L’Oreal. Thus, the L’Oreal brand became famous and got the publication side from Nestle. Meanwhile, Nestle is the number 1 company in Switzerland.
After getting investment from Nestle, Liliane immediately built 6 L’Oreal beauty centers, 2 in France, China, America, Japan and India. Then in 2006, L’Oreal bought The Body Shop for 256 million dollars. Now, L’Oreal Total already has 6 beauty centers around the world and has a total of 2,000 employees worldwide.
In 2012, L’Oreal opened its biggest factory in Indonesia, precisely in Jababeka, Cikarang. The total investment of the factory is 100 million dollars. Keep in mind, L’Oreal consumers, 25% are from Indonesia. Not surprisingly, if L’Oreal dares to invest its biggest factory in Indonesia.