From virtual stores to tech that can detect how different fragrances affect your brain, the world of beauty retail has always been ahead in adopting the latest trends in technology. Retail Week takes a look at some of the recent tech innovations helping beauty retailers drive sales.
As the pandemic accelerated investment in technology, most beauty retailers found new ways to engage with homebound customers through new features such as augmented reality and the metaverse. Post the pandemic, that momentum has carried on as customers find the right balance between in-person and online shopping.
As legacy beauty conglomerates like L’Oréal and Estée Lauder Companies led the way in tech innovation and its use in the retail world, beauty retailers such as Lush and THG followed by participating in the inaugural edition of the Metaverse Beauty Week.
As a channel, beauty has come a long way: from one dominated by in-person trying before buying to one where technology is playing an increasingly important part in a retailer’s strategy to continue to serve old customers and acquire new ones.
As the ways in which customers engage with the health and beauty category continue to evolve, here are some of the most significant tech innovations shaping the future of tech in retail.
Virtual stores: Elizabeth Arden, Charlotte Tilbury
For those who can’t fully commit to the idea of going shopping in the metaverse, virtual stores offer something in between.
Consumers can walk down aisles of makeup, browse through the latest products and try on shades of the newest lipstick all from the comfort of their homes.
Charlotte Tilbury and Elizabeth Arden are the latest brands to open virtual stores with inbuilt gamified experiences to incentivise customers and drive sales.
Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk World takes customers through an abstract mauve-coloured space station housing the brand’s iconic Pillow Talk collection, where users get the chance to unlock a special price by collecting hearts scattered across the space.
Elizabeth Arden’s virtual store on the other hand takes a much more conventional approach, with three storeys of a 2D animated store housing some of the brand’s latest collection. Here, too, visitors get a chance to collect five ceremide pods spread across the store to unlock a special discount.
Assist tools: Boots, Superdrug and Estée Lauder
Superdrug was the latest retailer to introduce accessibility features on its website as it noted that 70% of disabled consumers abandon their shopping carts due to various difficulties.
Boots offers similar features on its website, which include high-saturation, dark and light contrast and inverted colours for people with impaired sight or colour blindness, as well as tools to help people with learning difficulties to mute sounds, stop animations and activate a highlight focus to help them concentrate on sections of text.
Superdrug’s ecommerce, customer and marketing director, Matt Walburn, said: “We are thrilled to be updating our ecommerce site with these accessibility tools. We believe that true accessibility needs to be both offline and online and are proud to be one of the major high street retailers who are making ecommerce shopping more inclusive.
“This technology will allow our customers to modify the website to their own personal needs, helping them to navigate the thousands of health and beauty products we sell with ease and overall have a more enjoyable online shopping experience.”
Estée Lauder’s one-of-a-kind voice-enabled makeup assistant app takes things one step further by using AR and AI to offer audio feedback on foundation, eyeshadow and lipstick application to create a more accessible beauty experience for the visually impaired.
Fragrance: YSL Scent-Sation
Similar to how buying foundation online once seemed like an impossible task, the fragrance category has undergone rapid transformation to emerge as one of the fastest-growing categories online.
Though some of the growth can be attributed to the virality of certain fragrances on TikTok, here is where the positive effect of technology is most evident.
Yves Saint Laurent’s Scent-Sation is an in-store experience that uses neuroscience to give personalised fragrance advice to customers.
It uses a neuro-connected headset to register how each fragrance note stimulates emotions by measuring the electrical impulses they trigger in specific areas of the brain. For example, if a citrus note leaves one feeling relaxed, focused, less stressed, stimulated or energised, it then uses this data to match customers to various YSL fragrances.
Virtual try-on: Mac Cosmetics, L’Oréal and Sainsbury’s
At the height of the pandemic, brands such as Mac Cosmetics and the Very Group launched virtual try-on options for a range of their makeup collections using augmented reality.
The largest cosmetics brand in the world, L’Oréal, partnered with Sainsbury’s to launch in-store skincare consultations in over 100 stores across the UK using its AI-driven skincare technology, ModiFace.
L’Oréal acquired ModiFace in 2018, making it the first tech company to be acquired by the conglomerate. ModiFace uses AR and AI to drive tech innovation in beauty, including virtual try-ons and smart mirrors in stores.
Lex Bradshaw-Zanger, chief marketing and digital officer, L’Oréal UK and Ireland, says: “More than ever, we know that our consumers want to be sure they are spending their money in the right place, and the increased interest in their skin health and skincare needs is no exception.
“L’Oréal Groupe’s acquisition of ModiFace in 2018 is a key enabler for our BeautyTech ecosystem allowing us to develop services that help create the future of beauty, which means you can now shop for tailored skincare in the supermarket aisles for the first time.”
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