As a beauty lover and innovator, the founder and CEO of Perfect Corp., Alice Chang, identified a need and use for AR and AI to improve the consumer shopping and product trial experience for beauty products. From Chang’s early days as CEO of Cyberlink, she saw an opportunity to integrate this AR and AI technology to curb consumer pain points in the beauty shopping journey, like messy and unhygienic product swatching, and replace them with hyper-realistic virtual try-on experiences that rivaled the physical try-on.
Alice Chang also saw a place for beauty tech to integrate across all touchpoints, including mobile, online, and in-store. The emergence of a future “Beauty Tech” category motivated her to be one of the first to launch into space. Her goal was to develop and provide digital-first solutions to enhance the beauty shopping experience for beauty brands, retailers, and consumers alike. With over 300 brand partners worldwide and 900 million YouCam app downloads, it is safe to say that was a game-changing and trailblazing vision.
Perfect Corp. was recognized as one of the 50 Innovative Companies of the year 2021. “The Perfect Corp. brand is rooted in innovation, and the benefits of its advanced beauty technology have never been more clear. As consumer shopping behavior shifts to contactless, virtual try-on and beauty tech solutions are proving fun and convenient ways to shop for beauty and are quickly becoming essential to businesses’ success online and offline. Beauty tech is no longer a “nice to have”—it’s a “must-have,” said Alice Chang, CEO, and Founder. Perfect Corp. has recently raised $50M Series C from Goldman Sachs, which will help fund global expansion and develop more AI-driven Beauty Tech Solutions that will continue to shape the consumer beauty shopping experience.
Consumers have become accustomed to the convenience of try-before-they-buy shopping experiences, yet as global health concerns spike surrounding COVID-19, physical sampling is quickly being replaced by virtual try-on. Digital try-on technology has become so accurate that consumers now rely on beauty tech to make the most confident purchase decision possible. It’s been a way to provide personalized, tailored shopping experiences online and heightened interactive ones in stores. It also helped bring the pages and faces around us to life in a completely new way that calls for experimentation, discovery, and sharing.
Perfect Corp. is always pushing the envelope on what’s possible and seeking creative ways to improve and enhance the consumer shopping experience for brands, retailers, and consumers alike. While AR and AI have become beauty tech staples, next-generation facial simulations and interactive technologies will be the advancements re-shaping the future consumer experience. Cool new improvements in Generative Adversarial Network (GAN Technology) now deliver an advanced facial simulation that allows consumers to discover the effects of facial aging and anti-aging results. This type of past or future skincare simulation introduces a whole new realm of discovery and personalization that can help brands best cater to the modern-day beauty shoppers’ needs. It’s this type of outside-the-box thinking that continues to propel Perfect Corp. forward and lead the way for beauty tech innovation.
Every entrepreneur will always have a set of business goals in his/her mind to leverage the organization, but there may be many challenges in their way. One of the biggest challenges for potential clients looking to enhance their consumer journey with beauty tech was budget thresholds and technical capabilities. In identifying a growing demand for small and medium businesses looking to leverage beauty tech’s power, Perfect Corp. designed a more accessible subscription-based service—YouCam for Web. The easy-to-use, self-service solution allows brands to integrate virtual try-on experiences across their websites with no advanced coding or tech requirements necessary. This challenged the organization to find creatives ways to offer its services and solutions to more partners than ever before (over 320 global brand partners and counting).
In terms of technological advancements, Beauty 3.0 is the supercharged combination of hyper-realistic augmented reality (AR) and machine learning artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The combination of AI + AR unlocks a whole new realm of personalized beauty experiences that show you true-to-life digital beauty trials, while also recommending specific products and styles based on your personal preferences and facial attributes. It’s this unique combination that elevates beauty tech from reactive to proactive. This powerful technology is at the root of Perfect Corp.’s Skincare Diagnostic, which delivers an instant skincare analysis and product recommendations based on your skin health.
Perfect Corp. will continue to provide services worldwide, expanding to all markets to meet the growing demand. Beauty tech and digitally enhanced consumer experiences are no longer a bonus. They are now an essential component for all beauty businesses and one that consumers have come to expect in their shopping journey. New patented AgileFace Face Tracking technology has improved 3D mesh with 200% improvement in tracking stability and 20% improvement in tracking accuracy to provide the most accurate and most inclusive virtual makeup experience.
Skin Tech is a top priority for Perfect Corp.’s next phase of development, both for its business and technical roadmaps. With advancements in AI technologies and mobile camera lens tech, Perfect Corp. is just breaking the surface of how technology can benefit the consumer’s skin health journey. AI skin diagnostics is the most requested new service with new technology that detects a dozen common skin health concerns, built on EDGE computing to deliver ultra-fast analysis in less than 2-seconds for a seamless user experience.
Digital experiences are also an area of focus, and the organization is introducing new ways for brands to connect and engage with their consumers online. The new one-to-many AR live stream video service helps beauty brands quickly enable Livestream e-commerce and build on their direct-to-consumer strategy through interactive live shows hosted on their websites. Additionally, Beauty Advisor 1-on-1 for Web is an on-demand, one-on-one beauty consultation powered by YouCam’s market-leading virtual try-on technology, which provides personalized beauty advice from your phone.
As we return to in-store shopping, Perfect Corp. has reimagined the digital try-on experience through touchless mechanisms using gesture and voice-activated digital try-on controls, as well as virtual lipstick swatching on the arm to help with virtual color try-on while wearing a mask. The organization also believes AI will bring the next significant upgrade to the consumer digital journey. Advancements in AI innovation make personalized recommendations possible and remain the powerful beauty tech engine driving virtual try-on experiences online and offline.
