Who’s the fairest of them all? — Ask the Skin diagnosis app by Meitsu.
In the cosmetics market in China, demand for skincare products surpasses that of color cosmetics. Not surprisingly, new skin diagnosis services that make use of the latest image-processing and AI techniques have been popping up in different forms. We picked out the most interesting examples to take a closer look at.
Skin diagnosis apps for sales promotions
First, we’ll look at BtoC skin diagnosis smartphone apps, of which several have emerged recently.
One app with a large number of users is Ni Jintian Zhen Haokan, or “You look so good today”, which launched in August 2016. Its iOS version was downloaded up to 300,000 times within the first five months of release. In the app, you take a photo of your face and within 20 seconds it presents you with your skin-age and an overall score, as well as a radar chart made up of six attributes, such as skin “healthiness” and “smoothness”, rated on a scale up to 10. On selecting the attribute of “skin quality”, for example, the dryness and greasiness of each part of the face — the T-zone, cheeks, and jaw — are each graded out of 100. Also, you can see products recommended based on the results of the analysis organized by category, which you select from a menu, and those products you’re interested in can be purchased through Taobao.
Selling beauty appliances through skin diagnosis
In competition with the above “You look so good today” is the app “Skin Secret” that was first released in January 2018 by C-Life (of Shenzhen H&T Home Online Network Technology Co., Ltd). Similarly, Skin Secret gives a score representing the diagnosis results after ‘measuring’ your skin, however, Skin Secret’s analysis is more thorough and the results are explained in detail through passages of text. In line with the diagnosis, it recommends products, although it doesn’t have categories to choose from a menu nor user comments or links to where you can purchase the products. C-Life owns the beauty appliance brand Rongyao and products of the brand can be accessed from the Skin Secret app — tap on the banner on the page and you’re taken directly to Rongyao’s Taobao store. All in all, the purpose of Skin Secret is to sell beauty appliances.
High performance in a compact, palm-of-your-hand size
Another example of bringing together skin diagnosis and beauty appliances is MeituKey, released by Meitu in May. Originally, Meitu’s main business was their photo-editing selfie app, but their foray into making smartphones ended in failure and led to having to sell their phone-making business to Xiaomi. However, since then they’ve newly entered into the field of beauty appliances — their second venture into selling physical goods. In the lead up to this, they also announced in April the face-washing device MeituSpa.
MeituKey is an egg-shaped device that fits in the palm of your hand and by placing it up to your face, skin diagnosis results will be displayed on your smartphone. MeituKey is apparently able to detect symptoms that would normally require a visit to the hospital to discover, such as inflammation of the hypodermis. The device doesn’t just measure the condition of your skin but also gives advice through AI. It’s become popular on Weibo a little less than 3 months since its release, garnering over 4,000 comments with the hashtag “meitukey” and a total of 400,000 views.
Readily-available skin diagnosis in shopping malls
Taking a completely different route than the above three companies is the smart skin-measurement booth AI Skin that is being installed in the thoroughfares of shopping malls. AI Skin conducts skin diagnoses with a video game-like interface and sends the results directly to users via WeChat, with a session costing around US$3. According to the company’s website, AI Skin has already been deployed to several hundred locations in Chinese cities.
The blue ocean of skin diagnosis devices for businesses
In the BtoB category, the SkinRun brand of devices has gotten in there early. Research and development began in 2013 and devices are currently being promoted for implementation in makeup stores and beauty salons. Indeed SkinRun V3 has already been adopted within 1,500 stores. They’ve also recently developed an easier-to-use version that targets everyday consumers.
In 2018, the company behind SkinRun began joint AI research with Zhejiang University of Technology. Together they’ve been able to improve the precision of the diagnosis through gathering large numbers of data samples in the range of 500,000. As a result, the level of accuracy of SkinRun’s diagnoses is now equivalent to 96% of those by experts from medical institutions. SkinRun V4, the latest version that was announced in July, comes with a 25-million-pixel camera, allows online payments and connections to POS systems, and features a design that takes into account the New Retail trend in stores.
In rivalry with SkinRun is Meicet. Meicet has already been supplying the stores of 500 domestic and overseas companies, including the Chinese skincare brand Dr. Plant, with their beauty devices.
Also in the BtoB market is MeituEve, which Meitu announced at the China Beauty Expo held in Shanghai in May this year. It has a built-in high-performance camera and integrates proprietary technology along with Meitu’s own 3rd generation AI skin-measuring technology. This allows MeituEve to output diagnoses that are much more accurate than the general consumer-targeted MeituKey.
Although there are around 190,000 retailers in China that sell skincare goods, stores with skin-measuring devices installed are said to be no more than 20,000. It means that this BtoB industry is a blue ocean for those ready to ride the wave of skin analysis. From here on it’s likely we’ll see an increase in players from neighboring industries making their way into the field, similar to what Meitu is doing.
Text: Ching Li Tor
Original text (Japanese): Team Roboteer
