GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- What began as a high-tech gadget developed for manufacturing is now a tool to help shoppers avoid wasting money on the wrong makeup.
X-Rite's new Pantone product Capsure is helping women match their skin color to the right shade of foundation.
Capsure is a a spectrocolormeter that identifies the color of a customer's skin in seconds, then finds the closest matches from a library of color palettes loaded into its memory.
Sephora is testing the device in a handful of stores nationwide, including the Grand Rapids market where the color products maker is headquartered.
'It's so easy to use,' said Amy Davis, Sephora beauty leader for the cosmetics store in JCPenney at Woodland Mall in Kentwood.
Even with training, it's still difficult for the human eye to always accurately match the right foundation to skin color because of variables such as skin undertones and lighting.
Capsure was designed to take into account the translucent nature of skin, its texture and variations in color in a small measurement area.
It does that by using proprietary camera technology that illuminates the skin from three different directions while recording 27 color-accurate images within two seconds. The result is that shadows and other factors that distort the color are eliminated.
With eight different visible illuminations and one ultraviolet illumination, the instrument is able to more accurately define the location of a skin tone in color space than traditional colorimeters that typically have only three illuminations of red, green and blue light, says the company.
The color of the skin is then checked against the shades of 1,300 foundations Sephora carries to find the best matches. Capsure is even programmed so the data can be easily emailed to a customer so he or she can use the information for future purchases.
Davis estimates her team pulls out the store's Capsure 15 to 20 times a day to help customers choose the right foundation.
The handheld device received a 2013 Technology award from Cosmetics Business, a Switzerland-based media company that operates several magazines and websites.
The product is also being beta tested in Europe at 890 Boots UK stores, a drugstore chain.
The more upscale French retailer, Sephora, has branded the product as its Sephora + PANTONE Color IQ, and plans to roll out the technology to 300 stores in the U.S. and Canada this year.
One of those locations will be the new Sephora, opening Oct. 25 in the JCPenney store inside RiverTown Crossings mall in Grandville.
X-Rite also has a version of the product for the clothing industry to help apparel makers efficiently measure color accuracy across the supply chain, from materials to final products.
No comments:
Post a Comment