L’Oreal Invests in Social Selling Platform as Part of E-Com Strategy

As part of its acceleration strategy in e-commerce, L’Oreal announced a minority investment in US-American social selling platform Replika Software, Inc., made through its corporate venture capital fund BOLD Business Opportunities for L’Oreal Development.

As a turnkey social selling platform, Replika Software enables brands to activate at scale their network of social sellers to sell online, inspire on social media and connect with consumers anytime, anywhere. Founded in 2016 by Kareen Mallet, former fashion director at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, and Corey Gottlieb, advertising, marketing and tech entrepreneur, the company is based in New York and has offices in Paris.

“Social commerce is an exciting new form of e-commerce that enables consumers, influencers, experts, beauty or shop assistants to sell brands and products on social platforms through formats such as live shopping or livestreaming,” said Lubomira Rochet, chief digital officer of L’Oreal. “Today, e-commerce already represents 25% of L’Oreal’s revenues. The rise of social commerce is a great opportunity for our brands to reinvent the consumer beauty experience worldwide. We are very excited to partner with Replika Software, a pioneer in the field, to create social commerce at scale. Our ambition is to crack this new channel and create a healthy and dynamic ecosystem of social sellers for the beauty category.”

According to Mallet, the industry is just scratching the surface of how powerful social commerce can be when it’s combined with the massive scale offered by the global online community. Replika Software comes off an excellent year of growth and is powering new revenue generating social selling programs for brands of L’Oreal and others around the world.