Unilever Invests In IOMA Luxury Skin Care, Diagnostics
This article was originally published in The Rose Sheet
Executive Summary
Unilever enters a strategic investment alliance with Paris-based skin-care company IOMA, which uses skin-analysis systems at point of sale to offer personalized regimens and demonstrate product efficacy.
Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods firm Unilever PLC has entered into a strategic alliance with French luxury skin-care company IOMA, with the goal of building its skin-care portfolio and expanding the brand’s reach.
“IOMA is a brand that Unilever believes has all the ingredients required for success – a unique proposition, a superb team and inspiring products that really work,” said Dave Lewis, president of Unilever Personal Care, in a November release.
Lewis expressed confidence that the alliance will help advance Unilever’s personal-care business, which includes the Dove, TRESemme and AXE brands, among others. The division reported modest growth in an August second-quarter earnings call, but with a flat performance overall, Unilever’s CEO noted a need to “raise our game” (Also see "Unilever Innovation, Speed To Market Drive Q2 Gains In Personal Care" - HBW Insight, 5 Aug, 2013.).
The firm saw double-digit growth in 2012, both in personal care and overall (Also see "Unilever Hits €50 Bil. Mark, Growing 10.5% In Fiscal 2012" - HBW Insight, 28 Jan, 2013.).
Unilever’s investment will make the company a shareholder but not a controlling partner, while Paris-based IOMA expects the deal to improve its capability for development, distribution and expansion.
IOMA's Youth Booster features NASA technology in its cap that measures skin moisture and recommends via LED indicators how frequently the formula should be applied.
The collaboration “increases IOMA’s financial capacity, opens the doors to [Unilever’s] research centers, brings its knowledge of beauty usage and attitudes … and enables IOMA to benefit from its strong roots in major markets for the future of the brand,” says IOMA founder and CEO Jean Michel Karam in the release.
In a statement on its website, IOMA projects that “this alliance will enable us to rapidly and sustainably establish IOMA as a leading brand in the skin-care and beauty landscape.”
Launched in 2002 by Karam, IOMA entered the skin-care realm with skin-analysis products.
These include the IOMA Sphere, IOMA Link and IOMA Beauty Diag which evaluate skin’s condition at sales counters and “beauty rooms.”
The company launched its topical skin-care line in 2010 and uses the imaging-analysis tools to promote those products and their benefits. The technology enables IOMA to offer personalized skin care and compelling evidence that its products work, according to the firm.
“IOMA is the first and only skin-care brand to prove the effectiveness of each of its products at the end of each treatment, on every woman using them,” the company states on its website.
Skin Analysis For Customized Treatment
Over the summer, IOMA introduced Bespoke Youth Rituals in Saks Fifth Avenue stores in the U.S. Priced at $410, the offering consists of a night cream and day cream that are mixed in-store to meet individual needs identified via IOMA Diag.
Bespoke formulas are built on a base containing 18 active ingredients, to which drops of one or more high-performance serums can be added for enhanced moisturization, skin tightening, redensification or other benefits. IOMA says there are 864 possible permutations of the regimen.
In addition to systems used at point of sale, IOMA incorporates skin-analysis technology into packaging. The firm’s Youth Booster product features NASA’s MEMS technology, employed by the Curiosity robot of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission in its search for water, according to the company.
In Youth Booster, the technology is embedded into a sensor in the product’s cap and enables consumers to measure their skin’s hydration levels, indicating by LED lights how frequently the formula should be applied.
IOMA’s facial skin-care collection, Beauty Pro Line, includes seven product ranges of cleansers, masks, toners, lotions and creams targeted to specific skin problems such as fine lines, sun damage, redness, oily skin and dark spots. The firm also markets the Body Pro Line, encompassing body scrubs, soothing and slimming gels and cocoon creams for hands, feet and elbows.
On its website, the company claims that IOMA products employ a “selection of the best-performing active ingredients available in dermo-cosmetic science,” and Lewis said they “contain extremely high concentrations” of those actives.
IOMA products are paraben- and silicone-free and sold through department stores, specialty stores and perfumeries in the U.K. and U.S., pharmacies and parapharmacies in Spain and other retailers throughout Europe.
Excluding Bespoke, products range from $75 to $220 at saksfifthavenue.com.