Sephora Pioneering Personalization

Personalization lies at the heart of this tech revolution because one size does not fit all in beauty, especially when it comes to complexion products. Technology, data, and AI are at the center of Sephora's customer's omnichannel experience. For cast members, tech is an enabler that enhances the customer journey by providing a personalized experience for each and every customer. “We believe in technology enriching the relationship and not replacing the relationship,” said Sephora Global President and Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Motte. The store experience is “the heartbeat” of Sephora, which involves integrating technology in stores to support cast members and improve the customer experience.

The underlying technology behind Sephora Mobile Color IQ and Digital Skin Guide is Fitskin. The skin diagnostic and color-matching tools enable cast members to provide scientific-based advice to ensure customers get the right products for their specific needs. According to Motte, globally Sephora staff conduct 200,000 skin diagnostic sessions a week, or 10 sessions every minute.

As Ulta Beauty struggles, Sephora continues to deliver results. One of the secrets to its success is solving one of the biggest pain points in beauty for consumers: knowing what to buy. Fitskin technology addresses the limitations of even highly trained beauty advisors' ability to analyze skin, color, and hair accurately.

Sephora continues to win the battle for the beauty consumer with broad-based growth that outperforms the market. A standout in the LVMH portfolio, it delivered double-digit growth in revenue and profit in 2024, consolidating its position as a global leader in beauty retail with 3,000 stores and 52,000 team members operating worldwide.

“We didn’t slightly beat the markets, we smashed some of the numbers. We grew twice to six times faster than the prestige beauty market in most geographies,” Motte shared at the World Retail Congress in Paris. Skin and hair analyses are the “icing on the cake,” which drive further sales growth. Skin analysis occurs simultaneously with shade match, leading to important cross-selling opportunities.

Human Inability To Color Match Accurately 

When it comes to skin tone analysis and foundation shade match, Fitskin has no competitors; before FitSkin, there wasn't a device that could measure skin color accurately.  If you look at the problem of finding the right foundation shade, it is a challenge that humans cannot do well without technology.

“Foundation shade match is THE biggest pain point in beauty because it simply cannot be done well by eye. This is FitSkin’s entry into retailers and brands,” Rattner shared.

Sephora conducted a study in which they discovered that humans cannot match skin tone consistently and without bias, especially if it differs from the color of their own skin. An Ulta Beauty subreddit reinforces this research. Shade Match Rant beauty advisors openly discuss the challenges of understanding undertones and color matching for darker skin tones. Everyone sees color differently, and we are better at distinguishing color among people with skin tones similar to ours. This means we are not good at doing foundation shade matching by eye, which creates a perfect application for technology.

FitSkin technology is based on a professional device called the dermascope, which dermatologists use to analyze skin. A dermascope has three essential elements: magnification, dedicated lighting, and moisture detection. Without these elements, there is no possibility of accurately analyzing skin, color, or hair. FitSkin analyzes what the eye cannot see, leveraging a data set of over 40 million lab-grade images and growing by over 50,000 per day. Before FitSkin, there wasn't a device that could measure skin color accurately.

Typical color analysis is done using a spectrophotometer, but these devices cannot adjust for visible blood vessels or variations in skin tone. The devices are also relatively large and heavy and change skin color when pressed onto the body. Someone with fair and light skin will come out with a brownish overall skin color using a spectrophotometer.

Color-matching technology that uses a selfie camera on a smartphone cannot measure color accurately because digital cameras are notoriously bad at compensating for different light sources. For example, with a selfie, your skin will look more blue under fluorescent lighting in a store or office and more red in sunlight. Smartphone software automatically adjusts color to make images look good, but this is the opposite of what you need for a foundation shade match. It is physically impossible to achieve accurate color without dedicated lighting. This is not something that can be solved with just “AI”.

The FitSkin technology has already been granted 16 international patents, with another 16 patents pending. All its measurements are validated by external R&D labs and benchmarked against lab-grade equipment.

Bringing Dermatology Grade Technology To Retail

Creating innovation at scale is no small task. Walgreens Boots Alliance has a 170-year heritage and employs over 325,000 people across nine countries. Its size has not impeded its ability to pioneer the changing marketing landscape with a laser focus on targeting lifelong relationships with its customers. The global conglomerate tapped Fitskin through its No7 brand to develop The Pro Derm Scan service with the assistance of Dr. Rod Hay, one of the world’s foremost clinical dermatologists and FitSkin Advisor.

The biggest issue that surfaced was a lack of understanding of skin issues, making it difficult for customers to identify the right products. This friction at the very beginning of the customer journey became the problem to solve. Six years in development, the game-changing, dermatologist-grade diagnostic tool with 20 million skin areas analyzed per scan provides scientifically validated analysis of skin tone and five skin parameters: fine lines and wrinkles, pores, oil balance, hydration, dark spots, elasticity, Transepidermal water loss (TEWL), and sensitivity.

The Pro Derm Scan improved revenue, cross-category sales, and basket size, as well as return bookings, and increased consumer and advisor satisfaction. Customer conversions increased by 3.6 times and average order value increased by 48%.

Staying Ahead of the Curve 

One of the benefits of pioneering a category is the ability to maintain a head start by continuing to evolve. In its third generation, the FitSkin SkinScanner offers new skin measures, including TEWL (skin moisture barrier analysis), elasticity, sensitivity, and radiance/luminosity. These measures are not available anywhere else. The company has also introduced a neural network that automatically coaches users to optimize how they analyze skin and hair. For example, it detects if a customer has a tattoo, is wearing makeup, and a variety of other features, and also provides real-time user feedback.

Beyond the personalization aspect of its tech, FitSkin can aid brands in determining which foundation shades are missing from their lineup by mathematically assessing differences in regional skin tones versus their product offering. With a deep pipeline of exciting new products, FitSkin will continue to keep its partners ahead of the technology curve, customizing its solution to fit each client's unique needs. The underlying technology is the same, but the experience is totally different.

Some beauty tech companies are loud and flashy, leaning into the hype cycle with look-at-me marketing. Fitskin helped create and define the skin and hair analysis category, but it's never been about them. It is all about their partners seamlessly operating in the background with diagnostic tools to solve friction points and deliver personalization. Fitskin’s technology is quietly powering consumer experiences at the largest retailers in beauty, including Sephora, Walgreens, and Boots.

Advances in technology are changing the world as we know it, creating new consumer expectations and pushing the boundaries of what's possible in beauty. Technology is creating a seismic shift across the beauty landscape, transforming every touchpoint in the customer journey leaving brands and retailers to decide to build, buy, or borrow when it comes to strategic decision making around technology.

The size of the prize has led to the emergence of an ecosystem of companies with flashy solutions focused on servicing the beauty sector, projected to reach $590 billion in 2028, with an annual compound growth rate of 6% according to McKinsey & Co.

In the beauty tech arms race, FitSkin has built a reputation with its stealth model that puts retail partners and their consumers' journey at the center of everything; it's not about them, it's about their clients. They are perfectly happy operating out of the public eye, allowing their partners to take the limelight on codeveloped tech solutions that improve shopping experiences and conversion rates.

FitSkin provides personalized skin, color, and hair product recommendations by analyzing what the eye cannot see. This empowers beauty advisors and consumers with technology that reshapes the in-store and online experience to deliver an integrated, personalized experience, making the omnichannel promise a reality—all while delivering remarkable sales growth and enhancing customer engagement.

“Common feedback from all clients is that customers are mystified by the huge variety of choice in the industry and do not know how to select the best products for their skin and hair,” says Sergio Rattner, the CEO of FitSkin.