Skincare is huge. Even if we ignored the expected growth in the global market – $185.5 billion by 2027 – it is still a phenomenon in its own right.
With every sun-kissed picture or video across social media, there’s the expectation that someone in the replies or comments will ask the poster to “Drop the skincare routine”. In some cases, people do. But do you ever wonder if people don’t have skincare routines to drop? No, you don’t, you only think about yourself.
It’s clear I’m in the group of people who can’t drop skincare routines – mostly because “vaseline” is apparently not a valid response. Well, I’m happy to announce that this might be changing soon.
I recently stumbled on an Instagram video where an influencer told her followers about a ‘skin quiz’ where all you would have to do was ‘talk to a robot.’
As you can imagine, this tickled my fancy greatly as someone who combines being interested in good skincare with being too lazy to actually get the right products. Add to that she mentioned robots so I thought; why not?
A couple of clicks and I was on BARE’s web app where a large button welcomed me to ‘START SKIN QUIZ’.
The bot pops up and asks my name and from there the ride begins.
The most notable moment for me was standing by my window and trying to get optimal sun-kissed pictures of my face and side profiles. At the end of the test, I was told that I would get my result in 24 hours. And I did but I want to chat a bit about bots before we get into my skin profile because clearly, that’s the real reason we are all gathered here.
I’ll admit when I heard about AI-powered skin analysis I got ahead of myself and imagined a more immediate test, where I would give responses to questions, upload pictures of my skin, and immediately the AI would tell me what I needed to make my skin “pop”.
If that’s what you are expecting, slow your roll.
BARE does a good job of explaining how things work in their FAQs.
In response to “Why do I need to take a skin quiz?” BARE says:
“Our skin quiz helps us build a skin profile that is personalized for you. Also, our skincare consultant uses your quiz responses to build a skin history for your skin before making recommendations.”
At their roots, bots are simply tools for automation. They sometimes have AI mechanisms integrated and can make our lives a whole lot easier; from banks providing chatbots for their consumers to websites with bots that interact with you sometimes erasing the need to chat with a human being.
This is how BARE uses bots; Your skin profile is built based on your answer to pre-programmed questions with a set number of responses.
This data collection is done with a bot in a few minutes and in the comfort of your home. Following this, a skin consultant can then recommend products for you based on your profile.
BARE does encourage and even provide extra consultation via video calls with their skin consultants. However, with your preliminary skin analysis, you have some product recommendations that you can start with. At least, I plan to start with the ones on my profile.
And now for an excerpt from my skin analysis report. Drum roll, please…
“Luckily for you, you have the best skin type.”
I mean, what more is there to even say.
Another nifty part of the skin analysis is that it links you to a Flutterwave store where you can actually shop for the products that have been recommended to you.
I can’t say my bank account is happy about this pending purchase, but by God, the next time I’m asked to drop a skincare routine, it will be dropped.
I will be speaking to BARE’s CMO & Co-founder, Oluwaferanmi Ogundipe soon so keep your eyes peeled, and please let me know what your skin analysis says.
