Smart beauty: Brands advance AI-driven platforms for personalized hair and skin analysis

19 Jan 2023 --- AI-enhanced personalized beauty solutions are in the spotlight, with Myavana’s new platform catering to textured hair analysis debuting alongside Bulldog Skincare and Revieve’s virtual advisor tailored for men’s skincare. Smart solutions have been steadily advancing over the past year as personal care brands innovate to avoid missing out on the opportunity to use machine learning as a tool to engage with digital-savvy consumers.

Next to that – with the trend of “less is more” having a moment among beauty consumers – leveraging data to could be key to paring down complex beauty regimes in favor of “skinimalism.”

These are just the latest in a string of developments driving a technological revolution in the beauty sector, which builds on recent brand activities, including transporting cosmetic brands into the metaverse and rolling out virtual reality shopping experiences.

“AI-driven beauty solutions are certainly elevating the customer experience through different channels with capabilities like virtual makeup, foundation shade finders, hair color experimentation, virtual hair style try-ons and skin analysis, as AI technology has advanced significantly over the past four to five years,” Candace Harris, a computer scientist, founder and CEO of AI-backed hair analysis company Myavana, tells PersonalCareInsights.

Myavana has introduced a scientific hair analysis tool that provides personalized hair care recommendations to global consumers (Image credit: Myavana).“A great example is Hello Ava which provides personalized skincare solutions using AI technology.”

While AI beauty software has made significant strides over the last decade, most of its limitations are encountered in designing an intuitive interface so that customers use the technology correctly and limit human error, Harris notes.

“Minor things such as lighting and camera angles can affect the output and accuracy so we are spending a lot of time there at the moment to leverage the breakthrough capabilities that AI can offer.”

Simplifying textured hair science
Myavana has introduced a scientific hair analysis tool that provides personalized hair care recommendations to global consumers. This AI tool allows users to take a close-up image of their hair for an analysis of the strands to conveniently determine the right products to use.

The platform advances Andre Walker’s Hair Typing System – a classification system also known as The Hair Chart – by identifying the unique combination of textures and types that a person has and introducing a Unique HairID and digital hair profiles for every consumer.

An AI Layer in the software detects whether the user has any combination of straight, wavy, curly, coily or kinky hair type and fine, medium or coarse hair texture, including the percentage combination of each. “This solves a frustrating problem for those with multiple textures that follow a mostly trial and error process,” highlights Myavana.

After this, it passes on the attributes to a recommendation engine to suggest the best products, ingredients, and regimens for their hair type and texture combination. The company claims over 76% have purchased their recommended products, with over 90% achieving successful results with their hair.

“We recommend over 200 hair care brands ranging from mass market retail, professional products and small, indie brands,” says Harris. “We started building our product database by scraping the internet for all products carried on the market because the goal with our positioning is to be neutral, unbiased and brand agnostic when providing product recommendations.”

Myavana also offers a Hair Strand Analysis Kit, which it refers to as “23&me for your hair.”“We plan to continue expanding our range weekly as new products launch, and also globally to account for products carried in different global markets.”

Myavana has also begun product performance testing to further verify which combination of hair textures and types performs best for each product. “Another key factor is distribution and our market data, which will help close the gaps there as well to confirm availability and accessibility to purchase the products we recommend,” Harris highlights.

23&me for your hair
Myavana also offers a Hair Strand Analysis Kit, which it refers to as “23&me for your hair,” which offers a comprehensive healthy hair care plan by physically analyzing consumer’s hair strands in a lab to identify the hair’s condition – comprised of its porosity, elasticity, density and overall health.

The company’s team of Healthy Hair Experts – comprising cosmetologists, trichologists and dermatologists – offer virtual consultations and education.

Myavana was recognized as a pioneer of personalized hair care in 2016 on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List and saluted as this generation’s “Madame CJ Walker of Tech.”

Over the years, Myavana has collaborated with several brands and recently launched a global partnership with Unilever, which licenses its personalized hair care technology.

“When I started going natural in college – which is the transitioning process of no longer wearing chemical relaxers – I had a really hard time figuring out the right products to use for my hair, in addition to my hair texture and type changing over time,” details Harris.

“I was trying a lot of different products, and it quickly became a cumbersome trial and error process that led to further dryness and breakage.”

As a computer science major at Georgia Tech, Harris had a lightbulb moment in class and came up with the idea for Myavana.

“I thought to myself, there should be some type of app or software that can recommend the right products for your hair. I started researching the science of hair, analyzing hair strands in a lab on campus, and entered my first pitch competition as an entrepreneur.”

In the skincare segment, Bulldog Skincare has launched an AI Skin Advisor on its UK website, developed in partnership with Revieve (Image credit: Bulldog).After her first year out of college, Harris received a seed investment from a startup accelerator program to start Myavana over a decade ago. 

Myavana will launch its B-B Hair & Beauty Network at the International Beauty Show in New York City, US, this March to deploy its technology and retail its hair analysis kits through salons, retailers, beauty supply stores and other hair product e-commerce companies.

AI skin advisor tailored for men
In the skincare segment, Bulldog Skincare has launched an AI Skin Advisor on its UK website, developed in partnership with Revieve, a global company developing personalized brand experience solutions.

The company aims to “make the skincare journey more engaging and accessible to men,” offering an AI-powered selfie analysis experience designed by Revieve that analyzes the user’s skin condition and provides a personalized skincare routine and care tips to customers in less than one minute.

“We have a unique methodology to combine complex algorithms with statistical methods to deliver accurate product recommendations. Revieve’s algorithms tap into information from brands’ inventories and have evolved into a database of more than 100,000 SKUs with the needed product data accessible to all our partner brands,” Sampo Parkkinen, CEO & co-founder at Revieve, tells PersonalCareInsights.

“Our mobile skin diagnostics analyze skin metrics such as redness, acne, texture, hyperpigmentation, melasma, wrinkles, skin sagging, pore dilation, smoothness, radiance and melasma, among several others. Introducing new skin metrics is possible as long as they are widely recognized user concerns in the dermatology field.”

Men’s attitude toward skin care products has been changing, representing both a challenge and an opportunity for brands and retailers to unlock this untapped potential. “The most significant opportunity is to entice men to start learning and taking care of their skin; a personalized digital experience can help,” comments Parkkinnen.

“Our data shows a significant engagement from this group wanting a personalized skincare routine. For example, based on Revieve’s proprietary data in 2022, 73% of people that identified as ‘male’ searching for skincare products via our partners’ websites completed the digital skincare experience and received a personalized skincare routine and product recommendations.”

Meet your skin coach
In the first stage of using Bulldog’s skincare advisor, the customer is prompted with questions such as skin type and concerns to help the AI product recommendation engine learn more about customers’ needs and expectations of a skincare routine.

Next, customers are prompted to share their location to gather insight on the UV index, humidity, and pollution levels, as these environmental factors impact how a user’s skin performs and the best matching products for them.

Last September, Revieve partnered with JCPenney to introduce an AI skincare advisor.As a final step, the customer can take a selfie analyzed by Revieve’s proprietary mobile skin diagnostics that helps measure more than 100 different metrics from a user’s face. At this stage, the selfie analysis image is not saved and thus deleted immediately after the analysis.

Revieve has further plans to expand its applications. “Some recent projects that we are proud of have been our Skin Coach launch with expert skincare brand Babor,” says Parkkinnen.

“Skin Coach is an entirely new solution in the beauty industry that delivers an engaging and loyalty-building experience post-purchase,” he continues. “It helps consumers receive a personalized skincare routine, set skincare goals and track their progress over time while building a deeper relationship with their favorite brands.”

“Looking into the future, we see our company as the leading enabler in pushing relationship commerce in the beauty industry through our beauty and wellness platform that delivers personalized brand-experience cross-category, cross-channel and throughout the customer journey.”

Last September, Revieve partnered with JCPenney to introduce an AI skincare advisor and a hyper-real augmented reality (AR) makeup try-on technology to personalize the customer shopping experience. The company has also formed a strategic alliance with Google Cloud to further accelerate omnichannel digital transformations toward personalized solutions.

Revieve also recently released a complete metaverse playbook for beauty brands to take full advantage of virtual spaces, outlining the future of the metaverse and giving advice on how personal care companies might better navigate it.

By Benjamin Ferrer