Premium Beauty News - Why did you take part in the Open Innovation event as a manufacturer/supplier?
Laurent Dodet - We aimed to break the mould! It was the first time a designer and producer had taken part in it as a key player! We felt like sending a strong message by standing beside major market brands and suggesting an approach and solutions that stood out, compared to the usual proposals. Innovation can also come from manufacturers – like P&B. We were there to offer project initiators our agility, reactivity, and adaptability, which are at the core of our daily lives, but also our means, know-how, and resources: we develop these by working on a daily basis in an ever-denser, more dynamic environment. As a reminder, every year in our six plants, we work for over 200 brands, on about 1,000 projects.
Premium Beauty News - How successful was it?
Laurent Dodet - It was very positive and instructive. It helped carry out a comprehensive watch review by screening core issues, as well as all issues requiring reflection and creating emulation in the beauty ecosystem. We are still discussing a few specific subjects with project initiators to go ahead and actually set up support-based partnerships, the objective being to offer these innovations to our portfolio of customers.
It is a win-win situation: project initiators get some support, we take advantage of a new innovation, and our customers have access to real differentiating solutions.
Premium Beauty News - What are the main innovation solutions you noticed?
Laurent Dodet - Most core and reflective issues are focused on sustainability, whether they regard ingredients, packaging, processes, or the product use. Also, new consumer gestures are usually correlated to real industrial challenges – the microbiome, a key issue right now, and the importance of technologies in beauty!
Premium Beauty News - Can you tell us about your innovation or R&D projects?
Laurent Dodet - As part of Open Innovation, we aim to acquire new formulation and industrial skills to offer our customers highly innovative solid solutions that create new gestures. Right now, we are discussing terms with the different players that caught our attention, so we cannot tell you more. But we are crossing our fingers for these partnership projects to come to fruition.
Otherwise, our disruptive innovations include Advanced Water S-100, a new generation of ionized water. We strongly believe in this technology, because it keeps surprising us in increasingly diverse fields and applications. There is also our UHT technology to produce preservative-free cosmetics. And we support the Progelife and Calysens startups specialized in medicine and cosmetics. We believe in their projects and strategies and work hand in hand with them to develop anti-ageing ingredients.
