Beauty programme
After six months of thinking, innovations and testing, the country’s first-of-its-kind beauty startup tech project promotes the achievements of its five APTechUp+ startup teams.
The beauty and cosmetics giant partnered with Korean startup accelerator, FuturePlay, to run and manage the startup programme. Together, the duo whittled the original 110 startups down to a shortlist of five in November.
AmorePacific believes that these new technologies and services represent the future of the beauty industry in Korea and Asia-Pacific as a whole.
Demo Day
To mark six months from the APTechUp+ selection, the South Korean conglomerate held a APTechUp+ Demo Day on 21st July at MARU180 in Seoul, Korea.
In January this year, APTechUp+ picked five new beauty startups — virtualive, Biovit, Trove, Paffem, and Reziena — to explore the future of digital in the beauty sphere. The Demo Day provided a stage for them to present their innovations and developments over the past six months.
The APTechUp+ Demo Day “provided them with the opportunity to experience first-hand demonstrations of groundbreaking technologies aimed at driving future growth in the beauty industry with new and innovative ideas,” AmorePacific stated in a recent press release.
Beauty advancements
The five beauty tech startups are utilising on-trend innovations including augmented reality, diagnostics, personalisation, at-home devices and bio-analysis to appeal to growing consumer demands.
- Virtualive set up Hairfit, an augmented reality-based hairstyling information platform that enables consumers to try out different hairstyling experiences. Leveraging the popularity of selfies, Hairfit has developed an accompanying app that simulates natural hairstyles.
- Trove markets its skin diagnosis service as ‘deep-learning’. Using a single tool, the Trove team can collect images of the user with a mobile phone to analyse and diagnose skin. Going forward, it is looking to partner with beauty names to promote product recommendations based on certain skin conditions.
- Paffem uses algorithms to provide personalised perfumes. The startup has developed a new service, Perfume Teller, which uses proprietary algorithms to find the user a perfume based on their unique preferences. Potential customers can try before they buy by receiving a trial kit that offers three sample perfumes.
- Rezeina has created an at-home anti-ageing device built on Internet of Things (IoT) technology. By utilising high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), users can do their own anti-ageing treatments safely and reliably, without the supervision of a clinic. Rezeina offers a personalised service through connecting the device to a mobile app that examines and measures skin conditions.
- Biovit is working on anti-infection coating technologies that utilise human immune systems. The coatings contain proteins that are naturally created in the human skin. These can then be replicated safely and simply to other existing products to suit other applications.
Next steps
To harness these technological findings, AmorePacific will continue to help the five startups on matters relating to attaining financial and operating independence to prepare them for a long-term future in the beauty industry.
The next stage of development will see AmorePacific analyse their performance and developments to decide which of the five startups will receive a second round of investment and strategic collaboration opportunities with the company.
AmorePacific plans to continue innovating the beauty market by “actively converging beauty and digital technology”, said Paul Kang, Executive Vice President of AmorePacific’s Marketing Strategy Unit.
“We are happy to collaborate with innovative startups who are pioneering a new category in the beauty market using future forward technologies,” encouraged Jung-hee Ryu, CEO of FuturePlay.