L’Oréal invests in start-up Prinker Korea

The operation was made possible by the venture capital fund BOLD (Business Opportunities for L'Oréal Development), the financial tool that allows the multinational to facilitate partnerships with investment funds and incubators.

The start-up Prinker Korea Inc, born in 2015, is known for its products and machines designed to create ephemeral tattoos: its technicians have made the first digital temporary tattooing device, which is now sold in thousands of units worldwide. The success of the young company has been impressive and has been rewarded with several international awards such as the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Award and the iF Design Award.

The collaboration between Prinker Korea and L'Oréal has resulted, after several years of research, in the development of the L'Oréal Brow Magic, a portable eyebrow make-up applicator, which is very popular with young consumers and has just won an innovation award at CES 2023.

The software that accompanies the device scans the face and then artificial intelligence algorithms are used to choose the desired eyebrow shape, adapted to the physiognomy.

Since the creation of the BOLD fund in 2018, L'Oréal has entered into several collaborations with investment funds aimed at start-ups, such as Raise Venture or innovative companies such as the Station F incubator in Paris, imagined by Xavier Niel. 

The multinational is increasingly investing in cosmetic products and solutions formulated using artificial intelligence. It has already participated in the development of Sillages Paris, a company specialising in the creation of customised perfumes using digital software, as well as in the Canadian company Modiface, which offers applications for trying on different hairstyles and make-up with the help of digital avatars.

For L'Oréal, innovation accounts for 15% of annual sales, estimated at EUR 27.94 billion as of 30 September 2022.

In recent years, tattoos have become one of the most desired beauty trends among the younger generations of consumers, teenagers and millenials. In the United States, the tattoo market has a turnover of nearly 1.4 billion dollars, in constant growth, now helped by the development of the temporary tattoo sector.