Could the Future of Skincare Shopping Eliminate the Need For In-Store Beauty Consultants?

Getty for SK-II
Getty for SK-II

If you're invested in skin care — and if you buy skincare products, you know it's often an investment — there's a few shopping options we've all grown accustomed to: purchasing online after reading or watching reviews, deciding to buy after seeing a post (or more likely, #ad) on Instagram, or taking a chance in a store. The latter has been somewhat of an alleged ghost town for consumers; in 2019, we have everything we need at our fingertips. I say "alleged" because many publications like to cover the trend of "dying retail," but if you go into retailers like Sephora and Ulta Beauty, the aisles are brimming with customers. Even mass retailers like Target have upped its beauty offerings, making them a legitimate contender in the space.

Pop-ups are also a huge part of the purchasing experience — people want to be able to physically engage with a brand. Benefit launched the Roller Liner Diner pop-up in Los Angeles for 10 days in January to promote its new product, Roller Liner; the Chanel Beauty House was a four-day affair around Oscars weekend on Sunset Boulevard to celebrate the brand's new Instagram page, We Love Coco; brands Too Faced and Jouer have also presented in the pop-up space. While these short-lived shops have been sporadic disruptors in retail, plenty of brands — from Glossier to CoverGirl — have opened up their own permanent brick-and-mortar locations. Needless to say, it appears consumers crave a brand experience, which could translate to more singular brand stores in our future.

In standard shopping environments, you may feel a few emotions: overwhelmed by the breadth of offerings; annoyed by salespeople, usually marketed as consultants or cast members, pushing certain types of products on you. You might even feel embarrassed by assessments from these "experts" about your skin. Then there's that moment when you get home: you physically have the product, and you're willing to try it, but will you keep up with it over time? More importantly, will you see results?

"It's a lot of pressure to shop in the skin care aisle. It's both the pressure to buy things that you don't necessarily want to buy sometimes, and also the pressure of being judged by the beauty consultants out there."

These were the concerns SK-II thought of when it came to the retail experience. The Japanese brand, famous for the Facial Treatment Essence, decided to take a risk and try their hand in the retail space, launching the SK-II Future X Smart Store — first launched in Tokyo, then Shanghai and Singapore in 2018. Describing it as a "phygital" experience — physical + digital — the store utilizes technology like facial recognition, computer vision, and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in conjunction with SK-II's proprietary skin science and diagnostics innovation. This, along with Instagrammable photo opps, is meant to take the nerves out of shopping for a skincare regimen.

"The starting point of this is that the physical shopping environment today is quite intimidating," said Sandeep Seth, vice president, global at SK-II. "It's a lot of pressure to shop in the skincare aisle. It's both the pressure to buy things that you don't necessarily want to buy sometimes, and also the pressure of being judged by the beauty consultants out there. What we want to achieve is to really remove that pressure. That is the end goal."

Keep reading to learn more about what the Future X Smart Store has to offer.

SK-II provided POPSUGAR with travel and accommodations at CES.

A Skin Reading Like No Other

A Skin Reading Like No Other

There are several different tech-focused experiences within the store that are all accessed easily by the customer. The one that separates the store from any other retail store is the SK-II skin analysis. When you enter, you receive a wristband that tracks everything you do: your analysis results (more on that later), product recommendations based on analysis, and more. The experience commences with what the brand has dubbed the "iconic Magic Ring skin analysis," which doesn't require a device to touch your skin. Instead, you sit in a private booth while your face is scanned — even with makeup on — and rated in five different categories SK-II refers to as "skin dimensions" including texture, firmness, wrinkle resilience, spot control (hyperpigmentation) and radiance. I was nervous at first, but the entire process is private and carefully explains the characteristics of your skin. Each dimension is rated using skin averages based whether you're a man or a woman, age and ethnicity, based off skin measurements of thousands of men and women worldwide. For example, my reading said my skin texture was 75 percent better than others in my age group, but that I need help with wrinkle resilience, clocking in at 48 percent.

No Help Needed

No Help Needed

After the analysis, you travel through the store to learn more about your results, how you compare to others your age, and get personalized SK-II product and routine recommendations based on your skincare needs. The entire process does not require any associate or consultant to help you, although there were SK-II advisors on-site at CES to help guide and troubleshoot if requested.

Getting the Results You Desire

Getting the Results You Desire

To reiterate, the brand knows skin care can be difficult to shop for. There's no immediate payoff like you'd get with color cosmetics, except for the feel of bouncy skin or an instantly luminous complexion. Most products promise benefits that you can only see over time and with consistency in using the product, which is why they created Pitera Tune and a bluetooth cap for the Facial Treatment Essence.

Simulating How Skin Feels Without Touching It

Simulating How Skin Feels Without Touching It

Pitera Tune simulates skin texture without having to actually touch their skin. It's trippy, but it works. Holding a mouse-like device, you feel vibrations based on how rough or smooth the skin is, gliding it over two photos of different skin textures. It allows you to feel the results for yourself instead of depending on claims made by the packaging. The results are surprising — and convincing. In one case, a 29-year-old male had smoother skin than a 25-year-old female from using an SK-II regimen; a 47-year-old SK-II user had smoother skin than a 25-year-old.

Keeping Your Regimen on Track

Keeping Your Regimen on Track

To keep you consistent with your regimen, SK-II is toying with the idea of a bluetooth cap. Although there's no current date set to roll out it out to the public, the idea is that the cap is connected via bluetooth to an a SK-II app on your phone. When you open the cap to use the product, it's logged in the app and you are met with positive feedback from a digital assistant. If you miss a day, the cap will blink red. The idea is to keep your routine in check by using the product consistently — in this case, the Facial Treatment Essence — so that you can see the best results from it. It's a clever innovation: the consumer benefits from regular use, which in turn potentially gives the brand a repeat customer.

Plans to Expand
Getty for SK-II

Plans to Expand

The brand chose to show their innovation at CES in hopes of potentially partnering with other tech-savvy brands to help bring it to life. "We are not a tech company, so it's an obvious question: why are we at CES? We've not created this technology, but we are able to transform this technology into experiences that can really change the beauty shopping experience," said Seth. "On one side, it's going to showcase to the other tech companies what the possibilities are, but for us it's an opportunity to create new partnerships."

Unfortunately, there are no concrete plans to bring the Future X Smart Store to life as a brick and mortar in the United States, but the brand does have big plans to expand into retailers. "It's something we just started, we are dabbling with it," said Seth. "In the next six months, we have a massive plan across Asia and the U.S. in terms of how we expand. Sephora Asia is super excited with what we are doing, so they are really looking for us to expand across Asia. So you'll see a lot of this technology going into the stores."

Is Phygital the Future?
Getty for SK-II

Is Phygital the Future?

As I tried out the store for myself, I resonated with the skin analysis the most: the benefit of getting a customized routine, based on actual analytics from my skin, outweighs any opinion that could be offered to me from an in-store associate. It puts the power back into the customer's hands, and offers accuracy in an overwhelming retail environment. Having a store focused on one brand also keeps things simple.

I couldn't help but think about how interesting this technology would be in a retailer like Sephora or Ulta Beauty, where thousands of skin care brands co-exist, pairing thousands of products from hundreds of brands with each other. Could the future of shopping for a skin regimen eliminate the need for in-store beauty consultants altogether? If SK-II has any pull, it could be a strong possibility.