L’Oreal to buy Canadian beauty technology company ModiFace
16 Mar 2018
French cosmetics group L’Oreal today struck a deal to buy Canadian beauty technology company ModiFace, as part of its digital acceleration strategy to provide the group's 34 international brands with innovative technologies.
L’Oreal did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.The acquisition comes a year after the Paris-based company spent $1.3 billion to buy three skincare brands - CeraVe, AcneFree and Ambi from Canada's Valeant Pharmaceuticals. (See: L'Oreal to buy three skincare brands from Valeant for $1.3 bn)
Founded in 20017 by Parham Aarabi, ModiFace has developed advanced technologies of 3D virtual make-up, colour and skin diagnosis services using proprietary know-how, which track facial features and color, and are used by nearly all the major beauty brands.
The Toronto-based company employs nearly 70 engineers, researchers and scientists and has registered over thirty patents.
L'Oréal said that ModiFace will be part of its Digital Services Factory, a dedicated network to design and develop new digital services for the group's brands. ModiFace will work in close collaboration with L'Oréal's Advanced Research.
ModiFace will remain based in Toronto close to the University with which it has established many research partnerships.
Lubomira Rochet, chief digital officer of L'Oréal, said, "ModiFace will support the reinvention of the beauty experience around innovative services to help our customers discover, try and chose products and brands. We at L'Oréal and ModiFace want to pioneer this new page of the beauty industry and serve our customers with innovative services and experiences."
Parham Aarabi, founder and CEO of ModiFace, said, "L'Oréal's acquisition of ModiFace provides an incredible opportunity to innovate on beauty augmented reality (AR) and artifical intelligence (AI) at an unprecedented scale, the results of which will shape the beauty industry for the decades to come."