L'Oreal is looking to add ayurvedic beauty products to its current skin care line up through acquisition of an Indian ayurvedic brand. Although L'Oreal hasn't identified a brand that it wishes to acquire just yet, it has been aggressively pursuing the ayurvedic market in India to tap into consumer's growing desire to use exotic beauty products. It was also reported last November that L'Oreal expressed interest in acquiring Ayusoft, ayurvedic software that they approached the CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) for customization and further product development of.
As I mentioned yesterday another French company, L'Artisan Parfumeur, will be launching Jatamansi next month. Jatamansi is their first venture into the skin care market and is one that is based on the Himalayan plant used in Ayurveda, an alternative medicine practiced in India. Beauty and personal care products that are ayurvedic are organic and promote healing and health without the use of synthetics or chemicals.
In 2002 Unilever acquired an Indian brand and began Hindustan Lever Limited, which launched its ayurvedic personal and beauty care line called Ayush. The Ayush range is comprised of shampoos, hair oil, skin cream, soap and nutritional supplements. The brand also set up centres for ayurvedic care services, called Lever Ayush Therapy Centre. The first Lever Ayush Therapy Centre was set up in Chennai with services provided under the guidance of experts from the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy, Coimbatore.
While three brands venturing into Ayurvedic products don’t sound like much to report about, the fact that two of the three are major multinational brands is. Since we are seeing more brands going green in one way or another, ayurvedic beauty products are just another expansion upon this trend. It will be interesting to see if such ayurvedic products would take off in the US, and if it does, which brand would be next to launch an ayurvedic line.
What do you think?
Posted by Shannon Nelson on February 15, 2007 1:00 PM
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