Could AI technology be key to building the perfect beauty brand?
The US-based tech firm launched its artificial intelligence (AI) insights program earlier this year, providing granular insight on real-time online consumer engagement with beauty for existing brands, manufacturers and retailers in the market. Call it an “insurance policy” for product development.
But, part of Cherry Pick’s longer-term vision is to use these insights to build up brands from scratch – one of the “more exciting” aspects of the business, said Justin Stewart, co-founder of Cherry Pick AI.
Speaking to CosmeticsDesign-Europe, Stewart said: “The differentiator between Cherry Pick and everyone else doing trend forecasting is Cherry Pick is literally putting our money where our mouth is. For the brands we’re participating in the creation of, we’re taking revenue shares; we’re aligning our incentives in the long-term brands we’re trying to build.”
Cherry Pick would launch its first brand in the second-quarter of 2020, he said, and had already kick-started production. He said the company had a further 12 beauty brand ideas in the pipeline that would also be fleshed out in the next 15 months.
Starting with talent – ‘reverse engineering’ product development
All of Cherry Pick’s beauty brands would be talent-led, Stewart said, either with celebrities or beauty influencers– identified as best-suited through its AI technology. Stewart had just returned from a business trip, meeting with every major talent agency in LA as part of this.
“We’re running the talent through the AI program to understand who has the biggest opportunity to launch a new brand. It’s like entirely reverse engineering the product development process.
“…The way that brands have developed in the past is almost the opposite to what we’re doing. What we’re doing is saying: ‘what are the opportunities on the market?’. Maybe we know there’s an opportunity in textured hair care or skin care for the African American consumer that retailers have the need to fill. What Cherry Pick is doing is looking at the influencers around the world and trying to understand which talent has the audience that is best-positioned to execute and drive demand for that specific opportunity,” he said.
Cherry Pick was constantly looking at influencers and talent in the beauty market, he said, and there were plenty to choose from for new brand launches. “Realistically, everyone wants to do a brand.”
The next Pattern Beauty, times ten…
Asked what the biggest challenge would be in building up these beauty brands, Stewart said: “For us, the biggest challenge is creating the operational network to actually execute it. Cherry Pick will not own these brands in full, so what we’re building now is a network of operational partners – it might be a retailer or brand incubator or brand or someone else.”
The issue was capacity-related, he said, because building up numerous brands at once required a broader network – it couldn’t be done with just one provider.
“We’re looking to build the next Pattern, the next ten. How do you do those at scale?”
