AI is Beautifying the Beauty Industry
Artificial intelligence is making a serious splash in the beauty sector, with a new wave of entrepreneurs leveraging AI to streamline operations and boost business. These founders are harnessing the power of predictive and generative models to transform various aspects of the beauty business—from market analysis to combating counterfeiting. Here’s a look at some of the innovative companies leading the charge.
Daash Intelligence
Daash Intelligence, co-founded in 2022 by Philip Smolin, Melissa Munnerlyn, and Justin Stewart, is making waves with its predictive model. The company provides weekly insights into product, retail, segment, and ingredient sales performance, helping brands like Glow Recipe, Amika, and Ilia Beauty make data-driven decisions in near-real time.
Munnerlyn explained the genesis of Daash Intelligence, noting that brands wanted more than just raw sales figures. “Brands didn’t want to see exact dollars and categories, they wanted to see how big the category was, who was winning, by how much and how that changed over time.” The company leverages machine learning to offer weekly snapshots of competitor brands across different retailers and segments, helping clients in product development, marketing, retail sales, and finance seize opportunities and identify white space in the market.
“Brands have had zero access to this type of data before, or they’ve had really broad access, so being able to find the segments to develop in or compete against on a weekly basis helps them make faster decisions,” Munnerlyn said, highlighting the speed advantage for brands.
MarqVision
Mark Lee, founder and CEO of MarqVision, is tackling counterfeiting, a $3 trillion global criminal enterprise according to estimates. MarqVision uses AI to protect intellectual property and remove counterfeit products from the market. “We have IP brand protection products where we help companies take down infringements like counterfeits or impersonations online, and we also have an IP management product where we help companies file and manage their trademarks and copyrights globally. These two are interrelated,” Lee said.
MarqVision currently covers 1,500 marketplaces across 118 countries. Lee noted the rise of platforms such as TikTok has exacerbated the issue. The company’s client base ranges from major luxury brands like LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to smaller streetwear brands, with beauty comprising 12 percent of its clientele.
Ground
Kat Garcia, co-founder of Ground, created an AI-powered tool to predict consumer behavior and incentivize purchases. The company promises a significant sales boost following an integration process that takes around 15 minutes. Clients include RMS Beauty and Violette_FR. Ground analyzes website visitor behavior to customize offers and promotions.
Garcia said the tools analyze everything from where a website visitor is looking to the sales offers to product categories, and customize offers for them once they return. “The first time someone comes, it’s a digital black box and they’re one of hundreds of thousands of site visitors,” Garcia said. “We can change the welcome offer on the second instance with the exact creative, the exact product that the person is likely to make a first purchase for.”
Content Recipe
Sarah Jannetti, founder of Content Recipe, is using AI to solve a critical pain point in influencer marketing. Her tool generates specific briefs for creators based on their most impactful content and the products being marketed. Jannetti’s tool significantly reduces the time it takes to create briefs, and helps brands scale their creative partnership programs.
“I was working as a TikTok Shop consultant for the past year, and working with a lot of affiliates and sending generic briefs to them. Those were falling flat,” she said. “Creators didn’t want to pay attention to them a lot of the time, because they felt disconnected from their audiences. They weren’t very personalized, and they consistently needed updating.” The tool continuously analyzes creator feeds for the most engaging content and incorporates the latest trends, data, and user-generated content into the briefs.
