Sephora is betting big on augmented reality for beauty

Bridget Dolan and her team at Sephora’s Innovation Lab, based in San Francisco, were a year into developing a new virtual reality tool for the retailer’s mobile app when the technology used to power the experience saw a breakthrough.

“When it comes to augmented and virtual reality, it can only be successful if it’s truly useful,” said Dolan, Sephora’s head of innovation. “We weren’t interested in just buzzy. A lot of things like technical accuracy and timing had to come together, and there was a time last year when, during testing, we hit a tipping point.”

Sephora’s team and its technology provider, augmented reality platform ModiFace, had pushed facial recognition technology to a new point of sophistication. After months of development, the technology can break down one virtual makeup application into a step-by-step layering process, while maintaining critical accuracy and reaching mass scale.

https://digiday.com/?p=227782

More in Marketing

The case for and against organic social

Digiday has delved into the debate, weighing the arguments for and against marketers relying on organic social.

Inside Google’s latest move to postpone the cookie apocalypse

Despite Google’s (most recent) assurances that it would stick to its (newest) game plan, there has been a lot going on as of late.

While Biden signs the TikTok bill, marketers still aren’t panicking

No one seems convinced (yet) that an outright ban will happen anytime soon.