Christine Esposito, Managing Editor02.02.22
Consumers’ lives were upended during Covid-19. As a result, even luddites became more comfortable with technology. They mastered the art of ordering everyday staples through an app—and are re-ordering what they need online rather than venturing into the store.
In the beauty business, companies have been incorporating technology to make their products more embedded in the lives of their customers. But in 2022, it’s not just AR and VR. Beauty brands are creating their own NFTs and others are accepting cryptocurrency for purchase.
Further, mirroring the evolution in other categories (like TVs and smartphones), the democratization of tech is happening in personal care and beauty. Procter & Gamble, for example, not only announced a more souped-up version of its Oral-B iO toothbrush at CES, but has additional models of the connected toothbrush that will be sold at more affordable price points. Smaller players offer their own gadgets. For example, Baesix Limited’s Look Ma, No Hands LED mask (see this month’s cover) helps stimulate collagen production, reduce blemishes and promote cell renewal.
Beyond devices, new alliances are aimed at increasing access to health experts, which in turn will have a greater impact on improving health and wellness overall. In January, Oral-B revealed a new alliance with tele-dentistry company Grin. Beiersdorf last month purchased a stake in Dermanostic, which offers app-based dermatological diagnosis (see p. 52 for more).
See You in The Metaverse
At CES this year, P&G Beauty unveiled BeautySphere, billed as its first step into the metaverse. The platform enables visitors to virtually interact with P&G Beauty’s portfolio of brands through live and simulated content. During CES, BeautySphere was a hub for six livestream panels featuring discussions with P&G researchers, brand experts and innovators as well as metaverse expert Cathy Hackl, who advised P&G on the strategy for BeautySphere, and Twitch streamer Kelsey Impicciche. Through BeautySphere, consumers can virtually visit the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to learn how P&G scientists partner with Kew’s experts to verify that the botanicals used in Herbal Essences bio:renew products are legitimate and of high quality.
For Procter & Gamble, BeautySphere is about engagement, not commerce.
“We built it to be an immersive, rich experience to learn about responsible beauty, not to push a product,” Alexis Schrimpf, vice president of design, global skin and personal care, told Happi in a video interview held during CES.
The digital space is the future of brand building and consumer engagement, according to the P&G executive.
“We believe that consumers will only increase their experiences in this digital world,” she said.
Of Bots and Bathrooms
In January, Amorepacific’s “mind-linked” Bathbot and Myskin Recovery Platforms were named CES Innovation Award honorees. It was the third consecutive year the beauty giant received accolades at the show.
The Bathbot analyzes human emotions through brain wave signals and instantly makes a bath bomb with the color and fragrance being selected based on the results of the analysis. Users wear a headset with eight sensors to measure brain waves in real time. Data from these sensors is analyzed to find the right fragrance and color for each individual user, and a robot makes a personalized bath bomb on site in about a minute.
Amorepacific’s Myskin Recovery Platform enables users to measure their skin condition daily, presents a personalized solution and monitors how the skin improves. Users observe changes in their skin surface using the digital camera built into their phone, together with a lighted mirror, and measure the moisture level and the firmness of the skin with a small sensor. With the help of AI, the device analyzes skin data and cosmetic formulas and provides next-generation personalized services that present continuously updated solutions for skin improvement, according to the company.
Gathering data in real time from real consumers helps beauty brands on many fronts—but typically only when a consumer engages with connected devices like a smartphone. Companies such as Baracoda Daily Healthtech want to make those connections seamless and less obtrusive. The company used CES to showcase its newest range of connected devices inside its “Bathroom of the Future”—a fully connected ecosystem of products that collects data from smart devices to make it easy for individuals to track their self-care progress through a personal dashboard.
Why the bathroom? Because it’s a place where everyone spends a considerable amount of time where they reveal their true selves in a way like nowhere else, according to Thomas Serval, CEO and cofounder of Baracoda.
Baracoda’s concept incorporates products such a connected bathmat with AI and footprint recognition, a connected thermometer; a smart mirror; and a connected oral care device (Hum by Colgate’s Smart Rhythm toothbrush, which rolled out in Q4 to Walmart stores). Quantified metrics will be waiting for whenever the consumer is ready to take a look, according to Baracoda. For instance, the bathmat would track weight loss while the mirror could detect a color change on a mole that could warrant a visit to the dermatologist.
Toto, the fixtures company, sees potential in the loo, too. The company released details on its so-called wellness toilet, which uses sensing technologies to support consumers’ wellness by tracking and analyzing their mental and physical status. When users sit down, it scans their bodies and key “outputs,” providing recommendations to improve their wellness. Toto contends toilets and people have two unique touchpoints that cannot be found elsewhere–the skin and human waste.
Healthcare Connections
Connected devices can assist with quantitative data necessary for clinical studies—and experts insist we are only at the start of a movement in which data from integrated tech will greatly benefit healthcare and preventative care.
Colgate-Palmolive formed an alliance with Verily (part of Alphabet). Under the agreement, which was announced last August, Colgate’s dental clinical team will partner with Verily to conduct an innovative oral health study as part of Verily’s ongoing Baseline Health Study that will aim to improve understanding of connections between oral health and overall human health. The study’s goal is to see how oral health practices, including intensive non-surgical periodontal therapy, as well as a Colgate home oral hygiene regimen monitored through its Hum smart toothbrush, affect health more broadly.
“Colgate is at the forefront of oral health research, and this innovative partnership with Verily will advance our understanding of and quantify the link between improved oral health and control of systemic conditions,” Maria Ryan, DDS, PhD, VP and chief clinical officer at Colgate-Palmolive, said in a statement. “Oral health is a window to overall health. It can provide signals of new or worsening disease as exemplified by the connection between periodontal disease and elevated C-reactive protein, a marker of systemic inflammation, complicating diabetes control and increasing risk of cardiovascular disease. We look forward to conducting this study with Verily and incorporating the learnings to advance oral and overall healthcare.”
Oral-B’s pact with tele-dentistry platform Grin will provide consumers with a way to capture high-resolution images of their mouth on their smartphone and securely transmit dental scans to the dentist for an at-home consultation. The goal is to transform at-home oral health by giving consumers access to personalized oral health insights and at-home professional consultations with orthodontists who can recommend products and behaviors.
L’Oréal closed out 2021 by signing a multi-year research and tech partnership with BreezoMeter, the Israel-based climate tech company that powers the air quality index on Apple’s weather app. BreezoMeter and L’Oréal have worked together since 2017 on projects including Perso and the My Skin Track UV. In the new accord, the companies will combine their expertise in the science of aging and the environment with the aim of developing an exclusive beauty-driven exposome platform.
And, just as this issue headed to press, L’Oréal announced a major new accord with Verily, exclusive in beauty, to advance skin health. The first-of-its-kind partnership in the beauty industry is expected to entail two programs aimed to better understand and characterize skin and hair aging mechanisms and to inform L’Oréal’s precision beauty tech strategy and product development, according to the beauty giant. The first is a strategic research collaboration to establish a longitudinal biological, clinical and environmental view of skin health. It combines L’Oréal’s deep scientific knowledge of skin and Verily’s comprehensive clinical science capabilities, to decode and discover the links between exposome, skin aging and deep biology of the skin. The second is a partnership with Verily’s R&D team and L’Oréal’s Active Cosmetics Division, to explore the development of new technologies and tele-diagnosis solutions such as sensors, and AI algorithms for dermatology and skin care, that can form the basis for new services.
Hair Apparent
L’Oréal has also unveiled its newest tech tools—this time in hair color. The beauty giant released details on Colorsonic, a handheld device that uses a mess-free process to mix hair color and apply it evenly for consumers at home, and an AI-connected color system for salons called Coloright.
L’Oréal is leveraging tech and its rich heritage in the color industry—it invented the world’s first safe, synthetic hair color formulation more than 100 years ago—to tap deeper into the $10 billion at-home hair color category. In recent years, this DIY category has been impacted by DTC disruptors like Madison Reed and more recently, the pandemic. Salons were shuttered across the US, leaving consumers stuck at home with their gray roots; that fueled 6% growth in the at-home hair color business, according L’Oréal.
A key attribute of Colorsonic is the improved user experience at home; it addresses the messiness of hair dye and the difficulty of applying it. L’Oréal worked over a five-year period to create a custom mixer mechanism that combines a precise amount of developer and formula to create the haircolor, dispense the right dose and then aid in application. After placing the cartridge in the device where it is mixed, consumers brush it on from roots to ends as an oscillating nozzle of bristles moves in a zigzag pattern to evenly distribute color on the hair. Users can remove the cartridge from the device and store it for touch-ups and gray coverage anytime.
Balooch said Colorsonic is proof that L’Oréal is committed to delivering personalized beauty experiences rooted in sustainability. Colorsonic’s recyclable formula cartridge uses less plastic per application than home box haircolor and the kit comes with application gloves that can be reused up to 10 times rather than the single-use set that comes in the typical box of at-home hair color. L’Oréal plans to offer Colorsonic to US consumers in early 2023.
For the professional market, L’Oréal unveiled Coloright, which uses virtual try-on to project desired shades, and an algorithm that leads to an on-demand, customized haircolor with more than 1,500 custom shade possibilities. The AI-connected system features a reader that analyzes the client’s hair, measuring factors that influence color’s effectiveness (like hair color, gray percentage, length and density) and a dispenser that contains dry beads consisting of hair dye, accompanied by cartridges of base creams, developers and diluters. Together, the dispensed components create a personalized haircolor recipe. Balooch stressed that the colorist/stylist remains at the helm of the artistry of the process—applying the color for the client.
Tech is being used elsewhere in hair care and hair styling. The roster at Aseir Custom, for example, includes a topical treatment Auxano Grow V2 Hair Growth Formula, which utilizes Copper Peptide GHK-Cu and carbon 60 (C-60) biomolecules to reverse hair loss and promote new growth, and a brush built with red and blue LED light waves and various vibration modes that help improve hair quality, density and strength.
A company called Zuvi says it has given the hair dryer a makeover by replacing traditional heat coils. Its Halo hair dryer uses light energy to dry hair at top speeds while maintaining lower hair and scalp temperatures for healthier, smoother, shinier hair. Zuvi says Halo has been tested (internally and by SGS) to be better for hair across key metrics:
Luluab was also an Innovation Award winner in the Software & Mobile Apps category for its Lumini app—a total care service based on deep learning and AI technologies that uses a smartphone and an independent camera to conduct in-depth analyses of the user’s skin, based on skin type and other categories. The app recommends tailored skin care products and skin care strategies for the user.
Growing Appetite for Apps
App usage is multiplying at a rapid pace. According to Statista, people downloaded 218 billion apps from Google Play and the App Store in 2020—26 billion more than in 2018 and 78 billion more than in 2016. The number is expected to swell to 258.2 billion this year. It is estimated the average smartphone user has 40 apps installed on her mobile phone.
There’s always room for another—like the LoveMySkin app, which was created by an Ivy League-bound high-school student. Audrey Ajakaye, a senior at The Village School in Houston, TX, built the app to be a global platform that promotes skin positivity and overall skin wellbeing.
Powered by Autoderm API, the LoveMySkin app offers several features to help users better understand their skin. Features range from screening for diseases to educational content.
Ajakaye developed LoveMySkin to give a voice to those suffering as she had—she often donned large jackets, even in the Texas heat, to cover her eczema. The wellness elements were inspired by Ajakaye’s real-world experience with skin issues and insecurity, and her mom’s practice of leaving daily affirmation notes in her school uniform each morning.
The app is centered in the rising field of pyschodermatology, the intersection of dermatology and mental health.
Mental health is a critical part of LoveMySkin, according to Ajakaye.
“I know that the two go hand-in-hand,” she said.
Currently in beta version, future iterations of LoveMySkin will incorporate chat groups, tele-dermatology and ecommerce, according to Ajakaye, who will graduate with IB Diploma in the Spring and head to the University of Pennsylvania in the Fall.
Older & Wiser
Wellness tech isn’t just for the young; there is growing contingent of older consumers that are much more comfortable with tech. Gen Xers raised on Pong and video games—that’s you!
According to a recent AARP Tech Trends report, tech use by people 50-plus skyrocketed during the pandemic. The new habits and behaviors may be here to stay, including video chat, making online purchases and engaging in health services. AARP says that health-related innovations and daily objects that automatically track health measures are also of top interest—even though 42% of older adults feel tech is not designed with them in mind.
Joylux is designing for this market. It sells high-tech devices that address menopausal-related health concerns like pelvic floor strength. The company is tapping into the changing landscape of menopause, according to Founder Colette Courtion.
Leveraging her background in cosmetic devices, Courtion founded Joylux in 2014 and three years later rolled out her first device—a home-use vaginal rejuvenation tool that uses red and infrared LEDs, thermal energy and sonic technologies. The company’s range of products has expanded to include related topicals like a 100% aloe-based/no-water intimate wash with mandarin orange blossom oil and arginine; a pH-balanced serum formulated with coconut oil, beeswax and antioxidants to soothe, soften and rejuvenate intimate tissue and hydrate skin; and a French-milled, soap-free bar containing coconut, argan and avocado oils.
Joylux recently unveiled an app, and users are growing every month, Courtion told Happi.
“Women are engaging in the app; they are going back daily,” she said.
Joylux participated in AARP Innovation Labs incubator program. According to Andy Miller, AARP senior vice president of innovation and product development, AARP Innovation Labs holds pitch events every year for startups in all kinds of product and service categories. The well-known advocacy group formed the AgeTech Collaborative, a new platform to help innovators generate new ideas and send products into what is estimated to an $8.3 trillion economy driven by those who are age 50 and older. Among the first 50 participating startups is Attn: Grace, a sustainable wellness brand that offers protection for bladder leaks (liners, pads and briefs) as well as wipes, deodorant and an all-natural barrier cream for skin.
It appears the future of tech in beauty, wellness and personal care looks bright for consumers of any age.
In the beauty business, companies have been incorporating technology to make their products more embedded in the lives of their customers. But in 2022, it’s not just AR and VR. Beauty brands are creating their own NFTs and others are accepting cryptocurrency for purchase.
Further, mirroring the evolution in other categories (like TVs and smartphones), the democratization of tech is happening in personal care and beauty. Procter & Gamble, for example, not only announced a more souped-up version of its Oral-B iO toothbrush at CES, but has additional models of the connected toothbrush that will be sold at more affordable price points. Smaller players offer their own gadgets. For example, Baesix Limited’s Look Ma, No Hands LED mask (see this month’s cover) helps stimulate collagen production, reduce blemishes and promote cell renewal.
Beyond devices, new alliances are aimed at increasing access to health experts, which in turn will have a greater impact on improving health and wellness overall. In January, Oral-B revealed a new alliance with tele-dentistry company Grin. Beiersdorf last month purchased a stake in Dermanostic, which offers app-based dermatological diagnosis (see p. 52 for more).
See You in The Metaverse
At CES this year, P&G Beauty unveiled BeautySphere, billed as its first step into the metaverse. The platform enables visitors to virtually interact with P&G Beauty’s portfolio of brands through live and simulated content. During CES, BeautySphere was a hub for six livestream panels featuring discussions with P&G researchers, brand experts and innovators as well as metaverse expert Cathy Hackl, who advised P&G on the strategy for BeautySphere, and Twitch streamer Kelsey Impicciche. Through BeautySphere, consumers can virtually visit the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to learn how P&G scientists partner with Kew’s experts to verify that the botanicals used in Herbal Essences bio:renew products are legitimate and of high quality.
For Procter & Gamble, BeautySphere is about engagement, not commerce.
“We built it to be an immersive, rich experience to learn about responsible beauty, not to push a product,” Alexis Schrimpf, vice president of design, global skin and personal care, told Happi in a video interview held during CES.
The digital space is the future of brand building and consumer engagement, according to the P&G executive.
“We believe that consumers will only increase their experiences in this digital world,” she said.
Of Bots and Bathrooms
In January, Amorepacific’s “mind-linked” Bathbot and Myskin Recovery Platforms were named CES Innovation Award honorees. It was the third consecutive year the beauty giant received accolades at the show.
The Bathbot analyzes human emotions through brain wave signals and instantly makes a bath bomb with the color and fragrance being selected based on the results of the analysis. Users wear a headset with eight sensors to measure brain waves in real time. Data from these sensors is analyzed to find the right fragrance and color for each individual user, and a robot makes a personalized bath bomb on site in about a minute.
Amorepacific’s Myskin Recovery Platform enables users to measure their skin condition daily, presents a personalized solution and monitors how the skin improves. Users observe changes in their skin surface using the digital camera built into their phone, together with a lighted mirror, and measure the moisture level and the firmness of the skin with a small sensor. With the help of AI, the device analyzes skin data and cosmetic formulas and provides next-generation personalized services that present continuously updated solutions for skin improvement, according to the company.
Gathering data in real time from real consumers helps beauty brands on many fronts—but typically only when a consumer engages with connected devices like a smartphone. Companies such as Baracoda Daily Healthtech want to make those connections seamless and less obtrusive. The company used CES to showcase its newest range of connected devices inside its “Bathroom of the Future”—a fully connected ecosystem of products that collects data from smart devices to make it easy for individuals to track their self-care progress through a personal dashboard.
Why the bathroom? Because it’s a place where everyone spends a considerable amount of time where they reveal their true selves in a way like nowhere else, according to Thomas Serval, CEO and cofounder of Baracoda.
Baracoda’s concept incorporates products such a connected bathmat with AI and footprint recognition, a connected thermometer; a smart mirror; and a connected oral care device (Hum by Colgate’s Smart Rhythm toothbrush, which rolled out in Q4 to Walmart stores). Quantified metrics will be waiting for whenever the consumer is ready to take a look, according to Baracoda. For instance, the bathmat would track weight loss while the mirror could detect a color change on a mole that could warrant a visit to the dermatologist.
Toto, the fixtures company, sees potential in the loo, too. The company released details on its so-called wellness toilet, which uses sensing technologies to support consumers’ wellness by tracking and analyzing their mental and physical status. When users sit down, it scans their bodies and key “outputs,” providing recommendations to improve their wellness. Toto contends toilets and people have two unique touchpoints that cannot be found elsewhere–the skin and human waste.
Healthcare Connections
Connected devices can assist with quantitative data necessary for clinical studies—and experts insist we are only at the start of a movement in which data from integrated tech will greatly benefit healthcare and preventative care.
Colgate-Palmolive formed an alliance with Verily (part of Alphabet). Under the agreement, which was announced last August, Colgate’s dental clinical team will partner with Verily to conduct an innovative oral health study as part of Verily’s ongoing Baseline Health Study that will aim to improve understanding of connections between oral health and overall human health. The study’s goal is to see how oral health practices, including intensive non-surgical periodontal therapy, as well as a Colgate home oral hygiene regimen monitored through its Hum smart toothbrush, affect health more broadly.
“Colgate is at the forefront of oral health research, and this innovative partnership with Verily will advance our understanding of and quantify the link between improved oral health and control of systemic conditions,” Maria Ryan, DDS, PhD, VP and chief clinical officer at Colgate-Palmolive, said in a statement. “Oral health is a window to overall health. It can provide signals of new or worsening disease as exemplified by the connection between periodontal disease and elevated C-reactive protein, a marker of systemic inflammation, complicating diabetes control and increasing risk of cardiovascular disease. We look forward to conducting this study with Verily and incorporating the learnings to advance oral and overall healthcare.”
Oral-B’s pact with tele-dentistry platform Grin will provide consumers with a way to capture high-resolution images of their mouth on their smartphone and securely transmit dental scans to the dentist for an at-home consultation. The goal is to transform at-home oral health by giving consumers access to personalized oral health insights and at-home professional consultations with orthodontists who can recommend products and behaviors.
L’Oréal closed out 2021 by signing a multi-year research and tech partnership with BreezoMeter, the Israel-based climate tech company that powers the air quality index on Apple’s weather app. BreezoMeter and L’Oréal have worked together since 2017 on projects including Perso and the My Skin Track UV. In the new accord, the companies will combine their expertise in the science of aging and the environment with the aim of developing an exclusive beauty-driven exposome platform.
And, just as this issue headed to press, L’Oréal announced a major new accord with Verily, exclusive in beauty, to advance skin health. The first-of-its-kind partnership in the beauty industry is expected to entail two programs aimed to better understand and characterize skin and hair aging mechanisms and to inform L’Oréal’s precision beauty tech strategy and product development, according to the beauty giant. The first is a strategic research collaboration to establish a longitudinal biological, clinical and environmental view of skin health. It combines L’Oréal’s deep scientific knowledge of skin and Verily’s comprehensive clinical science capabilities, to decode and discover the links between exposome, skin aging and deep biology of the skin. The second is a partnership with Verily’s R&D team and L’Oréal’s Active Cosmetics Division, to explore the development of new technologies and tele-diagnosis solutions such as sensors, and AI algorithms for dermatology and skin care, that can form the basis for new services.
Hair Apparent
L’Oréal has also unveiled its newest tech tools—this time in hair color. The beauty giant released details on Colorsonic, a handheld device that uses a mess-free process to mix hair color and apply it evenly for consumers at home, and an AI-connected color system for salons called Coloright.
L’Oréal is leveraging tech and its rich heritage in the color industry—it invented the world’s first safe, synthetic hair color formulation more than 100 years ago—to tap deeper into the $10 billion at-home hair color category. In recent years, this DIY category has been impacted by DTC disruptors like Madison Reed and more recently, the pandemic. Salons were shuttered across the US, leaving consumers stuck at home with their gray roots; that fueled 6% growth in the at-home hair color business, according L’Oréal.
A key attribute of Colorsonic is the improved user experience at home; it addresses the messiness of hair dye and the difficulty of applying it. L’Oréal worked over a five-year period to create a custom mixer mechanism that combines a precise amount of developer and formula to create the haircolor, dispense the right dose and then aid in application. After placing the cartridge in the device where it is mixed, consumers brush it on from roots to ends as an oscillating nozzle of bristles moves in a zigzag pattern to evenly distribute color on the hair. Users can remove the cartridge from the device and store it for touch-ups and gray coverage anytime.
Balooch said Colorsonic is proof that L’Oréal is committed to delivering personalized beauty experiences rooted in sustainability. Colorsonic’s recyclable formula cartridge uses less plastic per application than home box haircolor and the kit comes with application gloves that can be reused up to 10 times rather than the single-use set that comes in the typical box of at-home hair color. L’Oréal plans to offer Colorsonic to US consumers in early 2023.
For the professional market, L’Oréal unveiled Coloright, which uses virtual try-on to project desired shades, and an algorithm that leads to an on-demand, customized haircolor with more than 1,500 custom shade possibilities. The AI-connected system features a reader that analyzes the client’s hair, measuring factors that influence color’s effectiveness (like hair color, gray percentage, length and density) and a dispenser that contains dry beads consisting of hair dye, accompanied by cartridges of base creams, developers and diluters. Together, the dispensed components create a personalized haircolor recipe. Balooch stressed that the colorist/stylist remains at the helm of the artistry of the process—applying the color for the client.
Tech is being used elsewhere in hair care and hair styling. The roster at Aseir Custom, for example, includes a topical treatment Auxano Grow V2 Hair Growth Formula, which utilizes Copper Peptide GHK-Cu and carbon 60 (C-60) biomolecules to reverse hair loss and promote new growth, and a brush built with red and blue LED light waves and various vibration modes that help improve hair quality, density and strength.
A company called Zuvi says it has given the hair dryer a makeover by replacing traditional heat coils. Its Halo hair dryer uses light energy to dry hair at top speeds while maintaining lower hair and scalp temperatures for healthier, smoother, shinier hair. Zuvi says Halo has been tested (internally and by SGS) to be better for hair across key metrics:
- Retains 109% more internal hair moisture than traditional hair dryers;
- Holds dye 57% longer;
- Results in 17% smoother hair;
- Leads to hair being 9% stronger; and
- Enhances shine 37% after use.
Luluab was also an Innovation Award winner in the Software & Mobile Apps category for its Lumini app—a total care service based on deep learning and AI technologies that uses a smartphone and an independent camera to conduct in-depth analyses of the user’s skin, based on skin type and other categories. The app recommends tailored skin care products and skin care strategies for the user.
Growing Appetite for Apps
App usage is multiplying at a rapid pace. According to Statista, people downloaded 218 billion apps from Google Play and the App Store in 2020—26 billion more than in 2018 and 78 billion more than in 2016. The number is expected to swell to 258.2 billion this year. It is estimated the average smartphone user has 40 apps installed on her mobile phone.
There’s always room for another—like the LoveMySkin app, which was created by an Ivy League-bound high-school student. Audrey Ajakaye, a senior at The Village School in Houston, TX, built the app to be a global platform that promotes skin positivity and overall skin wellbeing.
Powered by Autoderm API, the LoveMySkin app offers several features to help users better understand their skin. Features range from screening for diseases to educational content.
Ajakaye developed LoveMySkin to give a voice to those suffering as she had—she often donned large jackets, even in the Texas heat, to cover her eczema. The wellness elements were inspired by Ajakaye’s real-world experience with skin issues and insecurity, and her mom’s practice of leaving daily affirmation notes in her school uniform each morning.
The app is centered in the rising field of pyschodermatology, the intersection of dermatology and mental health.
Mental health is a critical part of LoveMySkin, according to Ajakaye.
“I know that the two go hand-in-hand,” she said.
Currently in beta version, future iterations of LoveMySkin will incorporate chat groups, tele-dermatology and ecommerce, according to Ajakaye, who will graduate with IB Diploma in the Spring and head to the University of Pennsylvania in the Fall.
Older & Wiser
Wellness tech isn’t just for the young; there is growing contingent of older consumers that are much more comfortable with tech. Gen Xers raised on Pong and video games—that’s you!
According to a recent AARP Tech Trends report, tech use by people 50-plus skyrocketed during the pandemic. The new habits and behaviors may be here to stay, including video chat, making online purchases and engaging in health services. AARP says that health-related innovations and daily objects that automatically track health measures are also of top interest—even though 42% of older adults feel tech is not designed with them in mind.
Joylux is designing for this market. It sells high-tech devices that address menopausal-related health concerns like pelvic floor strength. The company is tapping into the changing landscape of menopause, according to Founder Colette Courtion.
Leveraging her background in cosmetic devices, Courtion founded Joylux in 2014 and three years later rolled out her first device—a home-use vaginal rejuvenation tool that uses red and infrared LEDs, thermal energy and sonic technologies. The company’s range of products has expanded to include related topicals like a 100% aloe-based/no-water intimate wash with mandarin orange blossom oil and arginine; a pH-balanced serum formulated with coconut oil, beeswax and antioxidants to soothe, soften and rejuvenate intimate tissue and hydrate skin; and a French-milled, soap-free bar containing coconut, argan and avocado oils.
Joylux recently unveiled an app, and users are growing every month, Courtion told Happi.
“Women are engaging in the app; they are going back daily,” she said.
Joylux participated in AARP Innovation Labs incubator program. According to Andy Miller, AARP senior vice president of innovation and product development, AARP Innovation Labs holds pitch events every year for startups in all kinds of product and service categories. The well-known advocacy group formed the AgeTech Collaborative, a new platform to help innovators generate new ideas and send products into what is estimated to an $8.3 trillion economy driven by those who are age 50 and older. Among the first 50 participating startups is Attn: Grace, a sustainable wellness brand that offers protection for bladder leaks (liners, pads and briefs) as well as wipes, deodorant and an all-natural barrier cream for skin.
It appears the future of tech in beauty, wellness and personal care looks bright for consumers of any age.
LumixUV is a company offering robotic disinfection technology to prevent the transmission of illness-causing germs at the retail point-of-sale (POS) through ultraviolet-C light energy. After the customer completes a transaction as they normally would, the lumixUV system passes UVC LEDs over the POS terminal to disinfect its surface after each transaction. It effectively kills any germs left behind by the customers’ hands. “Eighty percent of illness-causing germs are spread by our hands and POS terminals are touched by hundreds of people—if not more—on a daily basis. UV-C disinfection is effective in maintaining cleaner, safer, high-touch surfaces. Human behavior is difficult to change—it took over 100 years for hand-washing to become commonplace after it was discovered to be effective in reducing the transmission of illness. Implementing effective and automated disinfection systems in high-risk areas—that doesn’t rely on humans—is critical in preventing the spread of disease,” said Mark Lyle, co-founder. Lyle’s partner in the venture is Nevin Jenkins, who is best known for the creation of the first medical alert system for seniors, made famous by the commercial slogan, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” |