Taiwan’s HiMirror evolves to offer next-generation skin counseling with face proportion measuring
The IoT mirror HiMirror Professional is not only able to analyze skin but also measure facial proportions. It converts the look of a face into numerical data and conducts fixed-point observations. This allows it to express the changes that occur in a face through numbers, similar to how changes in a person’s weight can be tracked, and reportedly even measures the effectiveness of the cosmetics you use.
Featuring proprietary technology that can measure a person’s facial proportions, the new smart mirror HiMirror Professional is scheduled to be released in department stores in Japan before going on general sale.
HiMirror Professional is the result of a joint development initiative by the New Kinpo Group, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturing services (EMS) and original design manufacturing (ODM) company, and Japanese firm B-by-C Co. Ltd. In this partnership, New Kinpo Group, which owns the HiMirror brand, handles product development, while B-by-C creates the proprietary technology and manages sales within Japan.
B-by-C, which initiated the collaboration, created the concept of a device that allows a smart mirror to diagnose a user’s skin condition in an easier-to-understand format and foresaw the product’s use in beauty salons and department stores. It approached New Kinpo Group to become a partner in the venture, and the Taiwanese firm also saw a chance to completely overhaul the functions of its existing product HiMirror.
The outcome of the partnership, HiMirror Professional, is distinguished by its state-of-the-art functions that are industry-firsts. These include measurements based on the “4V” face-measuring technique, as well as of skin redness and spots and blemishes at different stages.
Devised by B-by-C, which in Japan operates 350 beauty salons and studios, the 4V technique turns skin aging concerns and issues, including sagging, blemishes and wrinkles, into 50 different data categories. Using data of more than 600,000 salon users over the past ten years, B-by-C diagnoses skin aging problems that manifest as changes in facial proportions, such as the positioning of the eyes, nose, and jawline. B-by-C salons have developed facial techniques that target facial muscles and tissue to improve the positions of these aging points. The repeat customer rate of the salons is over 90%.
This partnership is significant for B-by-C as the smart mirrors digitalize the measuring techniques, which were originally applied and verified manually by salon trainers. For the New Kinpo Group, it’s a chance to incorporate beauty theory and solution suggestions into HiMirror for the first time.
To develop HiMirror Professional, New Kinpo Group mobilized 120 engineers, who were able to improve HiMirror’s skin diagnosis functions after applying deep learning to the enormous volume of face proportion data owned by B-by-C. The level of precision has grown to be on a par with specialized measurement equipment used by beauty dermatologist clinics. HiMirror Professional now uses the industry-first 4V face-measuring technique, measures the stages of blemish depth and skin redness, and finds sensitive skin and future blemish areas.
Looking towards the future, by connecting both business use (in salons) and personal use (at home), HiMirror Professional allows for the possibility of richer customer communication. This includes remote skin counseling for customers using video chat, customized skincare product recommendations, as well as targeted sales and advertising. Analytics and deep learning technologies could also be used on HiMirror Professional data to improve the precision of measurements and provide increasingly better suggestions.
In Japan, HiMirror Professional will be introduced in B-by-C salons by the end of the year; this professional version for salons is also scheduled to be a permanent feature at the Hankyu Umeda department store in Osaka from January 2020.
In terms of pricing, the professional version will be sold for 135,000 yen (US$1,240) and the personal at-home version for 39,800 yen (US$366). Professional users will also pay a planned monthly fee of 3,000 yen (US$27) per unit after installation (personal users don’t have to pay any monthly fee). New Kinpo Group’s sales goal is 10,000 units within the first year. However, with an eye on expanding to neighboring Asian countries, it ambitiously aims to eventually ship an astounding a few billion units.
Text: Denyse Yeo
Original text (Japanese): Lina Ono
