Tech-savvy health and beauty care spots in Tokyo that easy and affordable to use
Whether it’s an AI-empowered gym or a DIY beauty-treatment salon that allows you unlimited access to equipment, we’re now seeing a rise in health and beauty facility services that are quick to use and affordable. What they share in common is their use of technology to reduce unnecessary elements and economizing of human resources, which translates into low prices, and a business model where staff is able to concentrate on areas where a human touch is needed.
Smart Health Inc., a subsidiary of the pioneer of social media services in Japan, Mixi Inc., has launched a new type of health facility business. Going by the name “Cococize”, it’s a conditioning exercise studio exclusively for women.
Cococize’s approach aims to maintain the functionality of body parts that are prone to dysfunction. This “conditioning” is uniquely defined by the facility as exercise and ways of moving designed for reworking the body’s flexibility, muscular strength, and overall balance.
What Cococize uniquely brings to the table is their analysis system that utilizes AI (artificial intelligence). Using a combination of the FMS tool (Functional Movement Screen), one of the latest physical evaluation techniques, with the expertise of famous sports trainer Kunihide Saito, Cococize’s original algorithm is able to create a visualization of the condition of a human body both efficiently and with a thorough level of detail.
What originally drove the creation of the technology was the awareness of how important it is to encourage self-led health improvement in the prevention of diseases. The aim is to raise your “healthy life years” (that is, the period of your life where you can live without disease), and this is particularly of interest in Japan as the average age continues to get older.
Conditioning at Cococize starts by first checking the current state of your body with the help of AI. Patrons stand in a space surrounded by three cameras that take pictures of their posture, body movements, movement while walking and other physical aspects. AI then analyzes these images and videos, and within minutes converts in numerical form the state of certain body parts, including shoulders, thoracic and lumbar vertebrae, hip joints, knees, and feet.
The grounds for limiting to female patrons is that, compared to men, women tend to have a larger gap between healthy life years and average lifespan and their physical problems tend to increase at an ever-accelerating pace as they go through childbirth, child-rearing, menopause, and all the other stages of life. In particular, many women after entering their senior years tend to suffer from locomotive syndrome and symptoms such as bad knees, sore shoulders and bad backs.
Another area of importance for Cococize is having facilities where proper face to face human contact can occur. This is to help realize all three elements of which are the foundations of extending a person’s healthy life years: exercise, nutrition, and social interaction. With AI being used as an alternative to personal trainers — effectively automating their work — a more reasonable price tag of 7,000 yen per month (approx. US$64) becomes possible, allowing users to feel free to come any day they wish.
Unlimited visits at a reasonable price
These types of facilities that allow unlimited access throughout the month for a reasonable fee are on the increase. FÜRDI is a women-only studio equipped with popular fitness machines with built-in AI, that was adopted to 550 shops in nine different countries, mainly within Europe. In March this year, they opened their first facility in Setagaya Ward in Tokyo. Their pricing includes unlimited visits for 6,980 yen a month (approx. US$63) when you sign up for a year.
We’re also seeing this type of business model in beauty-treatment services. One of these is “Jibun de Esthé” (or “self-esthétique”), which has come up with lower pricing by cutting staff as much as possible. Tablets are used instead to explain to patrons the service and usage methods. Also, patrons themselves operate the high-performance beauty devices, which are not unlike those found in high-grade beauty salons, rather than the staff doing it for them.
What all these businesses have in common is how they’ve opened up facilities that have either reduced human resources as much as possible or have automated specialist expertise.
Having an actual store has the benefits of social interaction, communication with staff, and the chance to use products in the flesh. But on the other hand, for store managers, one of the largest issues to work with is human resources. While trying to make your business succeed there are many aspects of HR to handle — staff expenses and hiring, the cost of training, and retention rate.
But businesses in the beauty and health-related industries have started cottoning on to this solution for achieving low-cost and high-quality. Leaving the professional expertise to AI and machines, automating their stores and economizing manpower can allow them to cut pricing down to bargain levels so that users can say yes to their services.
