L'Oréal Acquires Water Tech Startup Gjosa

L'Oréal announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the outstanding shares of water technology startup Gjosa.

The beauty giant aims to expand the use of the Swiss company's water-saving solutions in the beauty industry.

L'Oréal said the move also strengthens its environmental goals and aims to improve the company's water management systems and technologies.

"The acquisition of Gjosa further strengthens our ability to integrate sustainability directly into our products and services, allowing us to seamlessly integrate water-saving technologies into new formulations and beauty technology innovations," said Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of L'Oréal Group.

"Together we can quickly scale sustainable beauty solutions, improve performance, reduce resource intensity and introduce them to the broader beauty ecosystem." Nicolas added.

L'Oréal has been working with Gjosa since 2015 to develop shampoo rinse technology designed to save water.

L'Oréal has partnered with Gjosa to launch the L'Oréal Professionnel Water Saver professional shower head, which is designed to use 1.5 liters of water to rinse shampoo, compared to 8 liters for regular shampoo. The patented water fragment technology in the L'Oréal Professionnel Water Saver professional shower head enables salons to reduce back-bar water use by up to 69% while still providing clients with a pleasant and thorough hair washing experience. Sustainable shower heads have been rolled out to more than 10,000 professional hair salons across Europe and the Middle East since 2023, helping to save more than 182 million liters of water, equivalent to 72 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The plan is to continue the rollout to more than 200,000 salons worldwide over the next few years.

Gjosa also helped create L'Oréal water-saving shower heads, in-salon hair care systems and at-home beauty tools in 2021. That same year, L’Oréal made its first minority investment in the startup through its corporate venture capital fund BOLD (Business Opportunities for L’Oréal Development).

"L’Oréal has always been our most important partner and becoming part of the L’Oréal Group of companies makes perfect sense as we seek to build on the early success of Water Saver and bring it to new use cases, form factors and markets." , added Amin Abdulla, co-founder and board member of Gjosa.

"With Gjosa officially joining L'Oréal, we can accelerate research and innovation and deliver more innovative and sustainable beauty technology solutions to the professional and consumer markets. We are delighted to welcome Gjosa to our family." added Barbara Lavernos, L’Oréal Group Deputy CEO for Research, Innovation and Technology.