Guive Balooch is no longer a newbie in Las Vegas.

Ten years ago, when many still associated the world's largest trade fair for consumer electronics CES, which ended this Sunday, with corporations such as Microsoft and Samsung, he traveled to the desert city with a L'Oréal delegation.

Since then, Balooch has been a regular guest there and, as head of the group's own technology innovation room, he has new products in his luggage year after year as well as all sorts of car manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and sporting goods manufacturers.

Niklas Zaboji

Economic correspondent in Paris

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At the start of CES last week, L'Oréal presented an automatic eyebrow pencil and a spoon-sized makeup device for customers with limited mobility in their arms or fingers - products, says Balooch, that combine physical and digital technology to produce results that can be used with people are inaccessible to bare hands.

They should be on the market at the end of this year or early next year.

For the industry leader L'Oréal, but also other representatives of the cosmetics industry, such applications are becoming increasingly important beyond analogue lipsticks, perfumes and hair care products.

It's true that not everything that makes the inventor's heart beat faster becomes a blockbuster.

Testing and learning are often in the foreground – while the question of commercial benefit takes a back seat.

"If we were just looking through that lens, we probably wouldn't be innovating," says Balooch.

More precise and tailor-made

As far as the make-up device is concerned, the American-born biologist, who was trained at the University of Berkeley, still has no question about the market potential.

Around 50 million people worldwide suffer from motor impairments such as tremors, a form of muscle tremors, and as the population ages, such problems are becoming more common.

The chances of success for the eyebrow artist, who is supposed to enable an individual, professional look within a few seconds for a device that is expected to cost around 200 euros, are not much worse.

The customer has to use an app to scan their face, then select the desired shape and thickness of the brows, apply primer and finally the printer to the brows and finally only apply the top layer, explains Balooch.

The L'Oréal manager's team has around 60 members, almost half of whom are based in Paris, the rest in the USA, Japan and China.

Their task: to position the 114-year-old company at the forefront of the technology boom in the cosmetics industry and thus, in cooperation with partner companies and the more than 85,000 group employees, to arouse and satisfy increasingly individual customer needs.

Translated for the customer, this means: With new technical means, the special features of the respective skin and hair should be able to be identified more precisely and tailor-made product recommendations should always be possible.