South Korea’s top cosmetic maker Amore Pacific Group is seeing an increase in visitors at its flagship store helped by the popularity of its service that recommends makeup products based on artificial intelligence.

A monthly average of 10,000 customers visit Amore Seongsu, located in Seoul, a flagship store with hands-on cosmetic experiences, according to multiple industry officials on Sunday. The services offer recommendations to customers about lip shades optimized for skin tones and even blend lip products that work well with the outfit worn by the users.

The store offers services, including base picker, which manufactures customized foundation and cushions tailored to individual customers, and lip picker, producing lipsticks and lip tints specific to each customer. The service, which is only available for those who make reservations, takes 30 minutes to one hour for a customer to get the product and the popularity is so huge that the reservation is always full.

As many as 8,000 customers over the past two years have used base picker, which ended its service in March, according to Amore Pacific Group. At the start of the launch, the service provided a total of 100 base makeup colors, but the options increased to 600 colors to reflect a broader range of base colors, textures and types.

Applied with a program based on patent technology by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, base picker enabled customers to measure their skin tone and to get tailored product produced by the machine right after the measurement. Amore Seongsu is providing a similar AI-based service for lip shades called lip picker by color tailor, which gives a total of 756 recommendations on lip shades to customers depending on their skin tone.

Amore Pacific Group earlier unveiled a new technology, bespoke essence, via its personalized skincare brand CUSTOM.Me. Bespoke essence, an AI program based on a million data on skin type, wrinkle analysis, pores and sensitivity levels on the face presented in selfies and produces optimized products that reflect the different lifestyles of individual customers.

Global cosmetic companies are also seeking the potential of customized beauty services for long-term growth. Yves Saint Laurent launched its lipstick-making device, named rouge sur mesure custom lip color creator. While being developed by AI color recognition and algorithms, the device produces thousands of customized shades using a set of color cartridges consisting of four colors: red, nude, orange and pink. Customers can make lip products in the right shade for their outfits and skin tone by using the device.

According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the market value for customized cosmetics industries is expected to reach 3 trillion won ($2.2 billion) in 2023 and 5.24 trillion won in 2025. The market is also forecast to grow at a rate of more than 30 percent per year.

By Chung Seul-gi and Han Yubin

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