Beauty is a $440-billion global industry, especially in the Middle East. Now the Japanese cosmetic maker, Shiseido is making it easier for customers to get perfect skin, with support from their smartphone app.
For a $92 per month subscription, customers will gain access to the brand’s Optune Internet of Things device, which uses their smartphone app to analyse their skin and deliver with five serum cartridges with the “most appropriate skincare formula for women.”
Optune’s cylindrical device mixes and dispenses a personalised formula twice a day, with as many as 80,000 different combinations. The product’s software, available as an iPhone app, takes photos of the user’s face in order to detect skin conditions. The data is analyzed together with sleep rhythms and menstrual cycles, as well as external factors such as weather and air pollution, in order to deliver the right mix of serums.Business World
The latest to beauty brand to leverage technology to upscale its presence in the world.
Annual sales of Optune could reach 67.9 billion yen, according to Shima Yamanaka, an analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities.
[Women face] the dilemma of valuing skincare but struggling to find the time to find the perfect formula.”Shigekazu Sugiyama, president of Shiseido Japan
Currently, the Optune service is only available in Japan. However, depending upon its success, the service could be expanded to be offered abroad.
We are not too certain of how the app would work to dispense the formula correctly, considering different mobiles have different setting for front cameras, colour and automatic “beauty” effects.
Would you embrace technology and give the expensive beauty app a go?
