Shiseido’s skin care discovery unleashes predictive facial analysis tech for 2024 inner beauty business
30 Nov 2023 --- Beauty expert Shiseido discovers a way to predict future skin concerns by analyzing facial images. The key to this “preventive care” innovation lies in deciphering the nasal skeleton bone structure, enabling the forecasting of skin conditions like wrinkles, sagging and internal skin characteristics that may manifest.
By examining facial shape features and skin characteristics of 424 Asian women aged 40 to 59 years, the study identified correlations between the nose’s root, bridge, wings and skin issues such as wrinkles and sagging. This discovery forms the basis of Shiseido’s predictive technology.
Challenges: From discovery to prediction
Shiseido faced a problem in translating these findings into a practical tool. The difficulties lay in capturing accurate nose shapes from smartphone images.
Unlike eyes and mouths with distinct contours, the nose shape presented a hurdle due to its 3D nature being the same color as the skin.
To resolve this issue, the company focused on the shadows cast by the nose in facial images. This led to developing an image processing technology that precisely calculates nasal skeleton features based on 16 types of classification.
Face type B has a higher wrinkle score than Face type A, and Face type B has a higher capillary density score than Face type A.
This technology enables Shiseido to provide improvement-type care for existing skin issues and introduce prevention-type care. By addressing potential problems before they arise, Shiseido aims to offer a holistic skin care approach, encompassing cosmetics, food, exercise and sleep.
2024 and beyond
The new technology will play an essential role in Shiseido’s inner beauty business, which officially launches next year.
As Shiseido strides toward its 2030 vision of being a “Personal Beauty Wellness Company,” it hopes the predictive skin care technology will propel it toward greater personalized and holistic beauty solutions.
Recently, Shiseido made “full use” of data science to capture people in their totality to help understand the relationship between skin, body and mind — a concept of Eastern philosophy the business wanted to study scientifically. The algorithm built as a result was also used to create the predictive technology.
In other developments, Shiseido developed “Water Sensing Technology” for lipsticks that pull together pigment compounds within the product when applied to the lips as the water evaporates.
Japanese companies face headwinds from China
Despite its innovations and discoveries, the Japanese business is struggling. Last month, Shiseido suffered its most significant decline in 16 years and was forced to dramatically cut its full-year profit forecast due to weakened demand from China.
In August, Personal Care Insights reported on Chinese consumers championing a viral boycott against Japanese personal care brands. The backlash was due to Japan’s controversial release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
Shiseido’s Travel Retail business segment continues to feel the impact of “retailer inventory adjustments in light of the tighter regulations.” Sales in the first nine months of fiscal year 2023 dropped 5.3% year over year to ¥722.4 billion (US$4.7 billion).
Other prominent beauty players, including Beiersdorf and L’Oréal, reported similar losses in Travel Retail sales this year, blaming the emergent “daigou” surrogate shopping culture in China.
By Venya Patel
