L'Oréal announces start-ups for beauty tech accelerator

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Oct 10, 2017

L'Oréal and London-based Founders Factory have announced the two start-ups that have been selected to take part in the second edition of their beauty tech accelerator.

Canadian company Sampler, which has helped hundreds of brands manage and measure their product sampling strategies through a more effective and targeted approach, and US start-up Riviter will join the 6-month accelerator programme.

Riviter is a company providing a visual search engine that uses patented AI technology to recognise products in images and matches them to products online, detecting both precise location and detailed attributes of the products.

The start-ups will be joined by Alegra, an existing start-up within the Founders Factory accelerator. The L'Oréal Founders Factory partnership was announced in 2016 and unveiled the first start-ups selected in January this year.

Lubomira Rochet, Chief Digital Officer L'Oréal, commented: "Merging the innovation capacities of L'Oréal with those of beauty tech start-ups creates a powerful synergy which helps to address the aspirations of our consumers and to build a new generation of personalised and smart digital services.

“In this "test&learn" approach, we are supporting the development and growth of promising young entrepreneurs by sharing our expertise and network, and in the meantime we invite them to bring new ideas to the digital projects of our brands. Open innovation is a win-win strategy that fosters disruptive thinking and pushes forward our digital leadership in beauty."

L'Oréal became a strategic investor in the London-based Founders Factory in May 2016. The partnership sees the companies invest and scale early stage start-ups and co-crate two new companies from scratch each year.
The start-ups receive hands-on support and advice from the in-house team of experts at Founders Factory and L'Oréal to jointly build and launch new products and services.