LuxeCO Intelligence: Panoramic Research on Beauty Incubators and Accelerators

The global beauty market has not slowed down since the pandemic. As a matter of fact, it is evolving faster than ever. Facing fierce competition in the industry, every company/brand is accelerating its innovation process, not only to overcome current challenges such as slowing demand in the COVID market, but also to seize future opportunities.

The research team at Luxe.CO Intelligence has been obsessively tracking innovation trends in the global fashion and beauty industry. After 500 hours of in-depth analysis and careful editing, we bring you this exclusive 70-page research report - through 31 beauty brands and 134 investment stories, you can have a comprehensive understanding of the global beauty industry’s incubation/acceleration process, and access our unique analysis and business insights. This is the world's first panoramic research report on beauty incubators and accelerators.

We have found that starting from 2020, global beauty giants have increased their investment in R&D in the Chinese market. Multiple cases have shown that China is becoming the hottest source of innovation in the global beauty industry:

• In January, Shiseido Group opened the "Shiseido Zhimei Innovation Center" in Shanghai.
• In March, Unilever's incubator for the Chinese market, the Unilever Excubator, was officially launched.
• In June, L’Oréal China held the first BIGBANG Beauty Tech Startup Challenge, focusing on three key areas - consumer experience; supply chain operations; and future products with new forms, new effects, and new experiences.
• In July, Nivea’s parent company Beiersdorf AG announced that it would open an R&D center in Shanghai, which is also its largest R&D center besides its Hamburg headquarters.

In addition to incubators/accelerators created by large corporate groups, platform-based companies with incubation/acceleration as their sole operational purpose are also emerging. Many of our familiar "it" brands are created by them, such as:

• Seed Beauty, the incubator behind the Kardashians’ beauty brands KKW Beauty and Kylie Cosmetics.
• Deciem, the parent company of The Ordinary, the favorite skin care brand of skincare gurus.
• Los Angeles beauty incubator Hatch Beauty - its incubated men's shaving and grooming brand Dollar Shave Club was acquired by Unilever for approximately $1 billion USD in 2016.

Guive Balooch, global vice president of the Connected Beauty Incubator at L'Oréal Research and Innovation, once said, “many R&D people in large beauty groups will say that 10 - 20% of their time is spent on innovation. But in fact, in the field of beauty technology, we need to focus 100% on innovative projects."

As Balooch said of the beauty industry, incubators/accelerators not only signify a company's commitment to innovation, but also show how an organization understands, explores, and practices innovation. Behind a successful beauty incubator/accelerator must be a combination of capital, industry insights and resources, clear vision, and accurate grasp of the growth pattern of startups.

The content above is taken from the latest "Global Beauty Incubator/Accelerator Research Report" released by “Luxe.CO Intelligence”.

Please click here or scan the QR code in the picture above to download the Chinese report for a fee.

| By Jun Liu & Lydia Zhang