Perfect Corp. founder and creator of the virtual beauty app YouCam Makeup, Alice Chang, presented Beauty 3.0 at last week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Beauty 3.0 is a retail business solution designed to transform the consumer beauty shopping experience through experiential product trials to increase conversion. Beauty 3.0's artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) solutions include AI Product Recommendations, AI Smart Shade Finder, AI Skin Diagnostic, AI Live Hair Multi-Color Effects. Beauty 3.0 enhances the customer beauty shopping journey in a completely new way.
“With the adoption of experiential shopping on the rise, we look ahead to Beauty 3.0 further elevating the purchase journey for brands, retailers and consumers alike, targeting proactive and personalized experiences that best speak to the beauty shopper,” explains Chang. “Through artificial intelligence and advanced deep learning capabilities, we are able to create smarter, more efficient, virtual experiences garnered to each individual shopper and user.”
Chang hosted a “Beauty and the Tech” speech and panel with guests Jessica Pels (editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan) and Prama Bhatt (svp digital & ecommerce from Ulta Beauty), to explain in more detail how Beauty 3.0 can be applied. The presentation looked closely at beauty retail and specifically at how Ulta Beauty is integrating AR and AI technology into its in-store and online beauty shopping experiences to better connect with consumers.
“Our partnership with YouCam will give us insight about how augmented reality experiences can complement the services we offer in Ulta Beauty stores,” explained Bhatt. “This represents a nice merging of physical, digital and emotional experiences – especially the ability for a guest to virtually try-on hair color, with an Ulta Beauty stylist, as part of their in-store salon service.
Cosmopolitan has also embraced virtual AI and AR. “My goal is to deepen the connection between Cosmo and its readers by constantly making our content more responsive to what they’re craving right now,” said Pels. “Because of who our audience is—millennials holding the magazine in one hand and their phone in the other—that means bringing interactivity to our pages through projects like our partnership with YouCam, which brings a virtual try-on experience right into our pages.”
Through the implementation of YouCam’s AI and AR beauty tech, more than 200 retailers and brands have embraced virtual beauty solutions as a way to elevate the consumer shopping journey across multiple channels. This integration proved successful with increased basket sizes, increased conversions and decreased return rates seen across the board. It appears that AI & AR experiences eliminate customer pain points and create fun, interactive virtual try-ons that promote increased sales.