L'Oreal was founded in 1909 by Eugene Schueller, a young French chemist and today has become the world’s leading cosmetics and beauty company. Schueller's first product was an innovative hair-colour formula called Aureole that he sold to Parisian hairdressers. This early creative spark has become L'Oreal's guiding principle: research and innovation in the interest of beauty. The company's research team is 2000 strong and operate in 5 full-scale R&D labs in France, the US, Japan and China. Although starting with hair care products L'Oreal made a rapid expansion into a broad range of other cleansing and beauty products. Its brands fall into three broad product categories: consumer, professional and luxury.