By Brian Womack, The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — Mary Kay wants to introduce you to your new personal styling guru: artificial intelligence.
In a bid to appeal to younger makeup users, the storied North Texas-based brand has unveiled a new AI-powered digital service to help users pick the ideal foundation for their beauty routines, according to Lucy Gildea, chief brand and scientific officer. The service provides some simple technology tools to take the guesswork out of the process of selecting the right shade by just looking into a camera on a device.
“Beauty is very personal; shade matching is very personal,” Gildea said in an interview. “And so finding the right foundation match is a really key piece. And so being able to utilize a proprietary tool that’s scientifically developed using a broader scale for shade ranges was really, really important.”
The AI Foundation Finder was unveiled recently, and it’s getting some positive feedback. Of the users who chose to like or dislike the tool, less than 5% chose the negative option early in the rollout of the service at last check, Gildea said.
Mary Kay, the cosmetics company known for its consultants and pink Cadillacs, is extending its reach to more youthful generations as it seeks to evolve and expand amid competition from massive rivals around the world. The new tool helps reach customers who are more accustomed to using their smartphones and other devices to figure out what they want to buy.
“We’re about enabling women entrepreneurs no matter where you are and no matter what age you are; and so it’s really important for us to connect with a more digitally sophisticated consumer no matter … their age,” Gildea said. “Younger consumers grew up as digital natives, and so that is just like a default point of entry with them.”
May Kay isn’t a stranger to technology that can enhance makeup choices. For more than a decade, it’s offered “Mirror me,” a service that lets users try on makeup options to see what they will look like. Folks can look at different color-based products that are not necessarily the foundation shade matching.
The company has been working on the AI Foundation Finder service for over a year with help from multiple teams, including technology and research and development, along with marketing.
The effort involved thousands of images to get the best option for users and help the system better understand skin tones. Another key step was multiple tests internally with company consultants in five markets.
With the new AI-enabled service, users don’t have to download an app to use it, but can log into marykay.com — and the smartphone will scan their face. The service was designed to be inclusive of a wide range of skin tones.
The tech takes about 150 different points of a face with the scan to figure out the facial hues — and then crunches what the best shade can be for the customer. There are more than 50 shades of two finishes among the options.
AI has been getting investments and attention elsewhere at Mary Kay in areas such as the supply chain, research and development and creative ad and marketing campaigns. It also has prompted the creation of a committee to help ensure new ideas are held to a high standard, including questions around privacy.
“There’s just so many different ways that we are using it internally to really just help improve our efficiency but also give us some novel insights that we wouldn’t have had before,” Gildea said.
©2025 The Dallas Morning News. Visit at dallasnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
Originally Published:
0 Comments