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1/14/2016

Opening our doors to our best suppliersDeepening close and trusting collaborations

We firmly believe that great products come from great minds, whether they are internal colleagues or external specialists.
Over the years we’ve developed close and trusted partnerships with a number of suppliers, universities, research institutes, individual inventors and innovators.

To develop these relationships even further, we hosted our first Supplier Fair in November 2015 with three longstanding strategic partners, in the field of functional raw materials.

Dubbed “A day with our best suppliers” the internal fair was an opportunity for these businesses to meet with our researchers face-to-face. They were able to present ideas, concepts and innovations and could bring along samples for our teams to examine.

“The event was a complete success for both Beiersdorf and our partners”, says Dr. Volker Kallmayer, Head of Raw Material Scouting. “More than 200 of our researchers learned a lot through intensive discussions and there have already been many requests made to exhibitors for formulas that are of interest for our innovation pipeline.”

Our first Supplier Fair focused on special cosmetic textures and promising trends in skin care. “We are excited how well prepared our partners were for this day and how many ideas and formulas, specially tailored to our brands and consumers, they brought with them”, continues Dr Kallmayer. “Our employees in turn spoke very openly about innovation ideas and concrete questions. This made it possible to further deepen our already close collaborations and we are very confident that with this bundled innovation power we will be able to surprise consumers all over the world with attractive products.”
A second Supplier Fair with additional close strategic partners is being considered for 2016.

Beiersdorf has always been open to outside innovation and collaboration and our emphasis on integrating external knowledge is greater now than ever before. In January 2011, we launched our international open innovation initiative ‘Pearlfinder’ to further increase our ability to innovate and to confidentially integrate external partners. Later that year, the leading German language business newspaper Handelsblatt gave us the “Best Open Innovator Award” for the initiative.

Since then, Pearlfinder has developed into a global network with 270 registered international partners from diverse industries and since the re-launch of the platform in December 2014 it is now even easier to submit innovation ideas and to get in touch with Beiersdorf researchers.

Another example of our approach to Open Innovation is the Beiersdorf Innovation Pitch at the annual international cosmetics trade fair “In-Cosmetics”. Since 2014, we have invited external partners from all over the world to meet with us to present innovative ingredients and submit concepts.

In order for the initiative to continue, we intend to develop and host further formats and events, such as the Supplier Fair and the Innovation Pitch.

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