Augmented Beauty – Cosmetics eCommerce with Augmented Reality

Anybody who ever bought makeup knows that there are countless options of brands and products. The broad choices make your head dizzy and it is hard to find out what products are the best match with your skin.

Customers brace with two annoying options when they go to a huge beauty store: ask beauty consultant staff for their recommendation or buy the product, test it out on themselves and hope for the best.

None of these options are gratifying: staff at the store may be very busy, may not be very helpful or patient… So, people go for the second option and purchase the makeup without consultation and little try on as cleaning up several lipsticks with tissues quickly gets anno

ying.

Guess what? “the average woman buys the wrong color foundation seven times before she finds the right shade” (Weinswig, 2016).

To solve this problem, face and augmented reality technology companies like MoodMe and fashion brands are working together to try to bring a customized online experience to all

customers. Once makeup customers know what brands and colors they like, they typically stick with them and are loyal to their Brand. Then, they stop going to stores and buy online.

This is where Augmented Reality and Face Sensing enters.

The purpose of these technologies is to project the desired product on your face as on a Magic Mirror where you are the model, to reduce the risk of gap between expectation and reality.

Asking a series of detailed to get a better handle on the user’s preferences, such as “what’s your skin type?” and “what’s the one makeup item you can’t live without?”, Augmented Reality Face applications identify and analyze face shapes, skin tones as well as eye, hair and lip colors, and based on the analysis, users receive product recommendations and makeup application instructions.

Augmented Reality is revolutionizing the Fashion Industry and some brands such as L’Oréal and Sephora already recognized its potential.

Cosmetics is a 160 B$ market, growing fast in emerging Nations. What percentage of these repeat sales will happen online with AR technologies?

This is the future of Cosmetics eCommerce: empowering consumers with all the tools they need to gain control over their image and reach their purchasing decisions with real time sharing of Augmented Reality videos with their “most significant other”, unlocking the true purpose of cosmetics: expressing one’s ideal self.