LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics Unveils Asia R&D Center in Shanghai
LONDON — Doubling down on its commitment to the Chinese market, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton last month unveiled its first high-end cosmetics R&D center in Shanghai, days before Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH, met with Wang Wentao, China’s minister of commerce, at Dior’s Avenue Montaigne flagship in Paris.
With a mission to “take root in Asia and China and create the beauty of the world,” LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics’s Asia R&D Center will enable maisons under the group’s beauty business to gain insight into local consumers’ shopping behaviors, cutting-edge technology, and raw materials development, formula innovation, as well as working with the French R&D center to localize new concepts.
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Billed as the biggest R&D center for LVMH in Asia, it takes up more than 23,000 square feet. It comes with skin care, makeup and color development laboratories, product testing rooms, and workshop space in Jinqiao on the outskirts of Shanghai. The center also has a consumer hub that’s equipped with several testing areas. It sits together with LVMH’s China head office at Plaza 66 in downtown Shanghai.
Andrew Wu, president of LVMH Greater China, feted the opening of the center with Bruno Bavouzet, executive vice president of LVMH Recherche, the group’s research and development arm; Jean-Michel Moutin, chief operating officer at LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics; Thibaut Teisseire, chief operating officer China at LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics; Nathalie Renaudeau, human resource director at LVMH Recherche, and Amanda Chen, Asia R&D director at LVMH, among others.
Wu said during the ceremony that LVMH will bring the concept of high-end brands and the group’s research and development strength to present beauty products that are more innovative and better meet the diverse needs of Asian consumers, and improve the consumer beauty experience to better serve the Asian market.
The inauguration of the center also demonstrates LVMH’s determination to strengthen its ties with Asia, Wu added. He believes that the R&D center marks an important opportunity for the group to learn from Chinese consumers.
“China’s market is becoming more and more important, and so is Asia’s. I believe that the world will be better with the development of China’s market, and China will become stronger and stronger in its interaction with the world,” Wu said, adding that it is one of LVMH’s social responsibilities to actively endorse “the new connection between the Chinese market and the world.”
Bavouzet noted that there are around 700 scientists at the moment who provide research and development services for all beauty brands under the LVMH umbrella, such as Guerlain, Fresh, Make Up For Ever, Christian Dior, Fenty Beauty, and Cha Ling.
Including Shanghai, LVMH Recherche now operates in five locations. The other four are in Seoul, Tokyo, Paris and Saint-Jean-de-Braye, France.
In the first quarter of 2023, LVMH’s perfumes and cosmetics logged a 10 percent improvement in organic revenue growth.
Jean-Jacques Guiony, chief financial officer of LVMH, said during an earnings call that cosmetics remained “a little under pressure in mainland China” in the period, compared to the nation’s robust appetite for fashion, leather goods and jewelry.
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