An acronym for “Business Opportunities for L'Oréal Development”, the fund was created specifically to invest in innovative start-ups in the sustainable beauty sector, both financially and through mentoring programmes.
It helps start-ups attract additional funding by offering expert advice on developing new strategies for marketing, research and innovation, digital, retail, communications, supply chain and packaging.
In its latest venture, BOLD and its partners invested a whopping $34 million in a biotech company called Debut. Peering into its state-of-the-art San Diego-based labs, Debut appears to be one of the most promising producers of sustainable beauty ingredients of the future.
L'Oréal leaders believe this could be the beginning of a new era for the beauty and skincare industry, with Debut's technology knocking other brands off the totem pole and introducing a new standard of ingredients.
The company biotechnological vertically integrated was formed in 2019 and is dedicated to the research of sustainable ingredients, their large-scale production, the creation of new formulas and the conduct of its own clinical trials.
Debut received a $22,6 million investment in August 2021, enabling it to scale up its ingredient development model, establish its in-house brand incubator, and expand into a 26.000-square-foot facility.
In the lab, his 60 full-time employees conduct cell-free fermentation to develop his ingredients. This is a process that does not require cultivation, chemical synthesis or agrochemicals, making it much more sustainable than traditional methods.
The Debut team references a database of over 3,8 million preclinical data to discover new formulas and ingredients, curating a total of 250 handpicked and validated ingredients so far for future use.
The company is reportedly planning to launch its own beauty brand later this year, while also partnering with other companies who are looking to use its new ingredients and formulas.
In a press release, Barbara Lavernos, deputy CEO of research, innovation and technology at L'Oréal, said: “Debut addresses one of the fundamental challenges of the beauty world: driving innovation without the resource intensity and impact environmental that result from relying on traditional production alone.'
From the moment sustainability conversations entered the mainstream, the beauty and skincare industry has been criticized for contributing immensely to the destruction of our environment.
The most obvious problem is the production of plastic waste by industry and, more recently, the use of harmful "forever chemicals" in mass-produced formulas. Today these problems persist but are hidden behind manipulative greenwashing tactics.
Many well-known brands have also been found guilty of depleting natural resources by integrating rare ingredients into large-scale products. These include flower essences and oils extracted from endangered species, which are added to luxury skincare products such as serums and oils for their wellbeing and anti-aging properties.
With consumers increasingly concerned about the impact of their daily habits on the planet, consumer tastes have grown for no-nonsense brands like The Ordinary and The Inkey List.
These brands have found success by exclusively creating formulas that use only necessary active ingredients with no fillers or add-ons.
Judging by Deubt's science- and sustainability-based approach to formula creation, it's likely the company's brand could become a competitor to these two companies, as well as others that share a similar branding philosophy.
Speaking about the new investment partnership, Debut CEO and Founder Joshua Britton said: “We are just at the beginning of beauty and biotech. [Our] ambition is to turn the manufacturing process of active ingredients upside down.'
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