Check how your makeup looks – before you put it on
WHEN JEAN-PAUL Agon put on makeup at a L’Oreal board meeting last month, the biggest surprise wasn’t how the French company’s chairman looked in its lipstick, blush and eyeshadow. It was how easy it was to take it off.
Agon, 58, used L’Oreal’s Makeup Genius app on his iPhone to virtually don the cosmetics maker’s wares.
The free software turns a mobile device into digital mirror, giving users a sense of what various products will look like on their faces. Women – and men – can try on cosmetics, share images on social media and order, all without leaving the sofa.
Makeup Genius, downloaded more than 1 million times since May, shows how the company is seeking to engage consumers amid slowing sales.
The technology is the result of almost two years of research by L’Oreal to find ways to stand out in
New look: Now you can see your lipstick without putting it on. the cosmetics market, which it estimates will swell as much as 4% to about US$ 250b ($ 292b) this year.
‘‘ Digital is going to boost the business of beauty,’’ Agon said in an interview in Paris. ‘‘We think it’s going to change everything.’’
The world’s largest cosmetics maker has a market value of about 71b ($NZ111.5b). The internet has already changed the way people shop for cosmetics, turning video bloggers into arbiters of what sells, according to Geraldine Cohen, chief executive officer of Paris- based online retailer TheBeautyst.
YouTube videos mentioning a beauty brand have been viewed more than 3 billion times, software company Pixability estimates.
Even so, it’s hard for people to discover new products for themselves, said Cohen. The 75- plus hours of beauty- related content uploaded daily to YouTube is packed with opinions that are often conflicting or irrelevant, so shoppers must visit stores to find what works for them, she said.
‘‘It’s a headache,’’ which helps explains why less than 10 per cent of makeup sales in France are made online, Cohen said. Yet the Web offers companies ‘‘ a huge opportunity to connect with consumers in a more personalised way.’’
L’Oreal in 2012 set up a digital incubator with offices in San Francisco and New Jersey. The unit developed Makeup Genius, partnering with software maker Image Metrics to provide facialanimation technology for Academy Award-winning movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The application lets users try on L’Oreal makeup, experiment with curated looks, share images on social media, and order online. The company says it’s the first of many technology projects it’s developing.
Makeup Genius also allows users to scan products in- store and test their look via the app.
L’Oreal’s offering beats rival applications, which requires uploading photos and often aren’t as accurate in the look of products, says Vivienne Rudd, a beauty analyst at researcher Mintel.
‘‘With some them you end up looking like a painted doll,’’ she said.