In just a few years from now, the Swedish beauty tech startup aims to shake up the beauty business as we know it. In fact, it’s already happening.
Selah Li has a background in Human-Computer Interaction and Innovation Entrepreneurship. She’s now the co-founder and CEO of Swedish startup Ellure.
— The company was born as an idea at KTH Innovation (an innovation hub at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Ed’s note). I sensed that our society is valuing more and more inclusivity and diversity, I got very excited about this and wanted to be an enabler of it as well. Especially with the launch of Fenty Beauty which provides 50 shades of foundation instead of 10, I started questioning, how can they sell all the products? How much waste is produced because of unsold products? How can the industry be more sustainable while providing more inclusive products? I chose the tech way to answer my questions. After a lot of validations, I started Ellure in 2019, she says, continuing,
— Back then, the first generation of our lipstick printer was just a wooden shell to test if people were interested in buying custom lipsticks. During the past 4 years, we have quantified the problem of over-production and have indications on how customization can increase the usage rate of products. Our research shows that 7% of cosmetics in general and 14% of lipsticks are unsold at retail levels because customers’ demand cannot be 100% accurately estimated. By producing custom-made products on-demand, unsold products can be reduced to 0% while all ranges of colours can still be provided.
