EXCLUSIVE: L’Oréal Dermatological Beauty Takes on Dandruff With CeraVe Hair, Vichy Dercos Launches
L’Oréal Dermatological Beauty is taking on new territories — starting with the scalp.
The division of L’Oréal that houses CeraVe, La Roche-Posay, SkinCeuticals and other brands, is tackling hair care with two simultaneous launches in the U.S. market. CeraVe is debuting five products in hair and scalp care, while Dercos, the European dandruff range under Vichy, will also introduce itself to U.S. shoppers.
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Both ranges are launching Friday. Prices for CeraVe’s hair products, which encompass shampoos and conditioners, range from $8.97 to $9.97 on Walmart’s website. The Dercos products are priced from $19.99 to $48.99 and will debut on Vichy’s U.S. website.
“This hair discussion is very timely,” said Christina Fair, president of L’Oréal’s dermatological beauty division in North America. “We’ve established leadership and skin expertise, and when you think about the scalp, it’s an extension of your skin. We’re looking at it as a healthy scalp giving you healthy hair.”
Unanimously, dermatologists see dandruff as the third-most common concern among patients, Fair said, and it took time to dissect pain points from both medical professionals and consumers. “This wasn’t overnight,” she said. “We spent a while understanding what the right offer would look like, and understanding the patient profile as well as dermatologist needs.”
As a part of that research, Fair uncovered that 40 percent of users with dandruff don’t use products that target the concern. Even if they start, Fair reasoned, they seldom continue using them. “They’re looking for treatments that leave their hair soft, smooth, shiny — all of those end benefits,” she said. “We saw both a dermatologist need gap and a patient need gap.”
Fair assembled a board of dermatologists to work on the CeraVe products, and also assembled a separate sales team to tackle hair care.
“We didn’t have the perfect solution in our portfolio. We asked dermatologists what product they would create, and it’s essentially free of sulfates and parabens but with pyrithione zinc. When they treat patients, a lot of them have high sensitivities on their scalp,” Fair said. “The whole idea is that when a treatment is prescribed, that they adhere to it.
“The other piece, on the moderate and severe side of it, are stronger treatments that don’t leave hair quality worse,” Fair continued, nodding to Dercos. “We now have a portfolio where you have the treatments, and more holistic products for days you’re not treating.”
Among the ingredients in the products are hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and ceramides. “We look at what ingredients consumers understand, and what’s most important for us is safety and efficacy,” said Sanford Browne, L’Oréal’s president of research and innovation in North America. He also took cues from other brands in adjacent L’Oréal divisions.
“Redken is the top professional hair care brand, we’ve created a lot of technologies. We’re able to leverage that deep expertise, which allows us to ask what the consumer wants. We map the entire consumer sensory journey, we spend a lot of time studying consumers from an ethnographic and cognitive science standpoint, and effects of the environment,” Browne said.
Ensuring the products’ performance across hair types was also critical. “The dandruff market is a big market, and it’s products that have been out for a while. One in five consumers suffers from scalp issues,” he said. “One in two Gen Z [consumers] has curly hair, and this is designed to meet their needs.”
L’Oréal’s dermatological beauty division globally missed analyst expectations in the most recent quarter, as reported, posting only 0.8 percent growth in the most recent quarter. At that time, chief executive officer Nicolas Hieronimus said the division still gained share, and a statement from the company cited Dercos as a key growth driver at Vichy. CeraVe “continued to outpace the market across all regions,” per the statement.
As of earlier this year, CeraVe was the second-biggest skin care brand in the mass market, and the fourth-largest mass beauty business across categories, per Circana.
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