L’Oréal invests in the Replika Software social commerce platform

PARIS — L’Oréal enters the e-commerce market by acquiring a minority stake in social selling platform Replika Software Inc.

The world’s largest cosmetics maker made the investment through its venture capital fund, BOLD Business Opportunities for L’Oréal Development. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Social commerce is the use of social media to reach out to communities and promote and sell products and services. It’s a trend that’s already popular in Asia, where e-commerce platforms like Taobao and Little Red Book are successfully integrating user-generated content.

“Social commerce is an exciting new form of e-commerce that enables consumers, influencers, experts, sellers or retailers to sell brands and products on social platforms through formats such as live shopping or live streaming,” she said in a statement by Lubomira Rochet, chief digital officer at L’Oréal.

“Today, e-commerce already accounts for 25 percent of L’Oréal’s revenue,” she continued. “The growth of social commerce is a great opportunity for our brands to reinvent the beauty experience for consumers around the world.”

Rochet called Replika Software a pioneer in this space and said L’Oréal is excited about the opportunity to create social commerce at scale.

“Our ambition is to break this new channel and create a healthy, vibrant ecosystem of social sellers for the beauty category,” she said.

Replika Software is a turnkey sales platform that enables brands to launch and scale social media networks to sell online and connect with consumers. Kareen Mallet, a former fashion executive at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, and Corey Gottlieb, an advertising, marketing and technology entrepreneur, founded the company in 2016. The company is headquartered in New York City with offices in Paris.

“As an industry, we are just scratching the surface of how powerful social commerce can be when combined with the enormous scale offered by a global online community,” Mallet said.

She added that L’Oréal’s financial support and expertise allow Replika to realize its vision faster and more broadly.

See also:

Social beauty startup Agora raises $6.6M

Cosmetics review platform Supergreat raises Series A led by Benchmark

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