Retail industry makeover

BEAUTY IN 3D

Cos­met­ics at a click of a but­ton became a real­i­ty when Har­vard grad­u­ate Grace Choi unveiled the inno­v­a­tive Mink print­er ear­li­er this year. Using 3D print­ing, the Mink pro­duces colour cos­met­ics from pow­ders to lip­sticks, using the pix­el colour code derived from your cam­era, smart device or online to cre­ate any shade and will be mar­ket­ed around the $300 mark. Phill Dick­ens, pro­fes­sor of man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, says 3D print­ing is more like­ly to rev­o­lu­tionise the sci­ence of skin­care rather than the spec­trum of shades we wear. “Just as we will soon be able to print liv­ers, labs will be able to print skin to test on,” he explains.

SAMPLE REVOLUTION

Beau­ty box­es are lend­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion to sam­pling and beau­ty-curi­ous con­sumers are enlist­ing Glossy­box, Lat­est in Beau­ty and Birch­box to send them curat­ed selec­tions of sam­ple-sized prod­ucts to try each month. “Sub­scribers get to inject new prod­ucts into their regime, while brands receive direct mar­ket research from engaged con­sumers,” says Rachel Kavanagh, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Glossy­box. Sim­i­lar­ly the social-net­work whatsinmyhandbag.com send tar­get­ed sam­ples to their 120,000 mem­bers based on the pro­file of their vir­tu­al beau­ty cab­i­nets. What’s cer­tain is the appeal of sam­pling lies in exper­i­men­ta­tion as Net-a-Porter’s £30 box­es quick­ly sell out.

NEW ‘AVON’

Social sell­ing is the new door-to-door phe­nom­e­non, empow­er­ing entre­pre­neur­ial sell­ers, as well as con­sumers, who can shop from the famil­iar­i­ty of their home. Launched five years ago, NYR Organ­ic now hosts 40,000 par­ties with total sales reach­ing £40 mil­lion, near­ing that of their tra­di­tion­al stores, while Jo Malone’s house par­ties are key to their suc­cess in the Unit­ed States. “The integri­ty lies in the inter­ac­tion between groups of friends who are dis­cov­er­ing beau­ty in the same way they might encounter a new beach read at their book club,” says Nan­cy Cruick­shank, founder of MyShow­case, which has 120 inde­pen­dent styl­ists sell­ing their dis­cern­ing selec­tion of insid­er brands.

VIRTUAL MAKEOVERS

Makeovers are vir­tu­al for the “con­nect­ed” con­sumer. Launched in June, L’Oréal Paris’ new Make­up Genius app is a first, turn­ing the front-fac­ing iPhone and iPad cam­era into a mir­ror allow­ing you to vir­tu­al­ly apply any of their 300 colour prod­ucts. “With a click of a but­ton, we’ve enabled women to cus­tomise their options and make bet­ter buy­ing deci­sions,” says Guive Balooch, direc­tor of L’Oréal dig­i­tal hub, the Con­nect­ed Beau­ty Incu­ba­tor. The ease of apps is also inspir­ing change in-store. Ahead of the game, the Burber­ry Beau­ty Box has dig­i­tal make-up charts and a techy nail bar that pre­views nail colours against cus­tomers’ skin tones.

RETAIL THEATRE

Retail space is increas­ing­ly about the­atre. Sel­f­ridges set the bar with its recent Beau­ty Project, which saw the store alive with every­thing from debates to a fra­grance lab that matched scent sug­ges­tions with your psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­file. Yet a recent TNS sur­vey for Google showed the UK has the high­est per­cent­age of peo­ple mak­ing pur­chas­es with their smart­phone com­pared with18 oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, mean­ing dig­i­tal is vital to enhance in-store inter­ac­tions. The Crown Estate, which man­ages London’s Regent Street, is launch­ing an app spear­head­ing the use of iBea­cons. Using Blue­tooth low ener­gy (BLE), iBea­cons can com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with cus­tomers’ phones, alert­ing them to offers on the high street.

BEAUTY IN 3D