Image source @ Visual China
Wen | those things about the Internet
When AI was one of the top ten buzzwords in 2017, most of us thought that AI was still far from landing in major life scenarios.
Today, after playing beauty mobile through AI beauty landing, and with the rapid speed of covering up, with more than 420 beauty brands in more than 80 countries around the world, it is found that AI is existing in a way that we "can't feel".
On March 7, PlayMe Mobile and Exclusive Acquisition (PAQC.US) reached a merger, and Play America Mobile will complete the SPAC to go to NASDAQ for listing on the NASDAQ.
It is scheduled to close the deal in the third quarter, in which playing with the valuation of $1.02 billion.
The deal is expected to provide Perfect with about $300 million in revenue.
These include $230 million currently held by the Provident Trust, $55 million from forward purchase agreements, and nearly $50 million from concurrent PIPE transactions.
As AR and AI technologies have made dramatic changes in the beauty industry, from brands that are gradually bridging the gap between the real and digital worlds, and from the diversification of new sales models, we have some new thinking.
01. The trilogy of financing and listing
Play beauty mobile has a powerful commercial face recognition technology.
In June 2015, it was separated from cyberlink (the world's leading digital media research and development team) and started to operate independently, mainly focusing on the innovative services of mobile beauty APP and cloud beauty social platform.
At the beginning of its establishment, Play Beauty Mobile has successively launched play beauty mobile makeup play beauty mobile camera play beauty mobile fun play beauty mobile circle and play beauty mobile nail 5 Apps, of which play beauty mobile makeup and play beauty mobile camera in overseas markets more than 1.1 billion times a month
Unlike apps such as Meitu Xiuxiu, which are only designed to meet the needs of photos, Play Beauty Mobile wants to create an action beauty platform that allows girls to get the latest fashion beauty information at any time and buy it out.
Through AR makeup trials, social promotion and e-commerce platforms, the sales model of beauty has been changed.
In 2017, when the PlayMe Mobile APP was downloaded by 450 million, Play America Mobile received a $25 million Series A financing led by Genesis Partner Capital.
After the round of financing, Playmei Mobile began to strengthen brand cooperation and local landing to expand the global market, and completed the strategic layout of offline new retail.
Most importantly, the development of application direction has also shifted from AR+APP to AR+AI, in order to optimize the user experience, Playmei Mobile has increased its investment in AR and AI technology.
And this also gave Play America Mobile a great preparation for landing on the secondary market in the next step.
In 2019, in order to enhance the shopping experience of users, Alibaba led the B round of financing for Playme Mobile and formed a strategic partnership with Playmemobile.
To some extent, the cooperation between the two sides is obviously a typical win-win strategic partnership, because playing the United States Mobile and Alibaba cooperation, in fact, also help playing the United States Mobile to strengthen its business and network in the Chinese mainland market.
After getting the cooperation between capital and the head e-commerce brand to enhance the brand influence, at the beginning of 2021, Playmei Mobile began to press the shortcut key.
According to Tianyancha data, in 2021, Play America Mobile received a $50 million Series C financing led by Goldman Sachs. Committed to combining the most advanced augmented reality "AR" and artificial intelligence "AI" technologies with the terminal shopping experience.
In December of the same year, Playtime Mobile partnered with Snap Inc. to integrate the augmented reality (AR) beauty trial experience into the Snapchat platform.
On this basis, Playme mobile has effectively expanded its interactive AR experience while easily appealing to Snapchat's valuable Gen Z audience.
Immediately after 2022, Provident Acquisition (PAQC.US) announced that it would merge with Playmei Mobile and log on to the NASDAQ.
Nowadays, perfect movement that has been in the field of beauty visualization for 7 years seems to have thoroughly explored the advantages and disadvantages of this field, but with the continuous changes in many fields such as beauty and dressing, perfect will still face different degrees of pressure and difficulty.
02, the business dilemma brought by "AR+AI"
Beauty SaaS is not easy to walk.
At present, play beauty mobile's service solutions include 3D face and hand modeling, AI skin detection and simulation, AR image support consulting, real-time virtual product trial, and personalized face feature detection and recommendation, and the service items cover a wide range of beauty and fashion fields, such as beauty, skin care, hair color, jewelry accessories, etc.
Since the landing of the play beauty mobile APP, more than 300 virtual makeup products have been provided for global beauty brands, such as Estée Lauder, Belle, KATE, e.l.f, Ardell false eyelashes, etc.
According to the data, at present, the "Play America Mobile" series of Apps under Play America Mobile has reached up to 900 million downloads worldwide.
From the overall global data, playing the United States mobile seems to have a lot of achievements, but from the perspective of offline brand popularity, it is not ideal.
First of all, looking back at the past, ar makeup trial pre-offline brands are actually not prominent.
At the beginning of 2017, Sephora took the lead in introducing AR makeup trials to the Chinese market; then in April of the same year, Watsons launched "Style Me to Color Me" in the Shanghai Concept Store, in an attempt to enhance the store shopping experience with the help of AR makeup testing technology; in April of the following year, Innisfree launched a beauty smart store in Shanghai, which was also equipped with AR makeup trials; in September 2018, Guerlain Launched a new generation of high-end store C, which was also equipped with AR makeup testing equipment.
According to reports, when the AR makeup trial was just launched in Watson's Shanghai concept store, the flow of people who came to try on makeup was endless, many of whom came out of curiosity, and when the boom passed, users also lost their curiosity.
From more objective data, playing beauty mobile, playing beauty mobile in the entire product matrix launch more than a year ago, the download volume has already exceeded 500 million, but until 2022 five years of downloads barely doubled to more than 1 billion.
Secondly, from the current AR market, the AR+ beauty model still has certain limitations.
AR makeup trials are limited to the presentation of makeup, and consumers cannot feel the real effects such as product texture, durability, and skin use.
For example, in Watsons, there are actually two tools used to do AR makeup testing, one is an ordinary tablet computer, and the other is the AR makeup testing software installed in the tablet, which is jointly developed by Watsons and Play beauty mobile makeup.
However, Play Beauty Mobile Makeup is a start-up of online makeup trials, and its makeup trial APP can be downloaded for free with mobile phones.
That is to say, consumers only need to use their fingers to download a play beauty mobile makeup APP, you can experience the same AR makeup audition effect, so why do they have to run to the store to try?
When AR makeup trials become as common as eating and sleeping in the minds of consumers, it loses its drainage effect for cosmetics stores.
When AR beauty loses drainage and sales in cosmetics stores, Play Beauty Mobile also loses its "effectiveness" in the eyes of brands.
On the other hand, even if consumers come to a physical store, why not try out a real product but try it on virtually?
And the advantage of offline cosmetics stores has always been to try makeup for customers face-to-face and hand-in-hand. This can not only increase the interaction between BA and customers, but also reflect the professionalism of store services, thereby enhancing the stickiness with customers.
In addition, there are also inevitable problems in the field of clothing AR.
Although the rise of e-commerce live broadcasting, AR makeup trials and other forms in recent years has made up for the relatively thin viewing experience of traditional e-commerce when shopping, users still cannot try them online for non-standard categories such as clothing and other SKUs.
03, play the United States mobile AR lacks imagination
In fact, some head beauty brands in the field of AR beauty are also developing their own "AR makeup trials".
For example, Infinitus and Oriental Beauty Valley have successively introduced magic makeup mirrors and launched virtual trial services for various of their products, showing the 3D effect of cosmetics on the face in real time; makeup chain stores such as Watsons and Sephora have also placed "makeup mirrors" to provide consumers with a makeup test experience.
In order to meet the makeup trial experience of consumers and further promote the sales of beauty products, they have developed the relevant software of "AR makeup trial" by themselves or in cooperation with professional AI and AR technology development companies.
On the other hand, in addition to professional players, some cross-border players such as Meitu, SenseTime, Megvii Technology and other companies are also relying on technical strength to enter the game.
It is reported that Megvii Technology and Meitu Company released FaceStyle Beauty Cloud Solution and Meitu Magic Mirror Online on the same day last year, pointing to the virtual makeup trial field. The relevant person in charge of SenseTime also revealed to reporters that they have provided innovative applications such as beauty, beauty, sticker effects and other innovative applications for short video and live broadcast platforms, and virtual makeup trials are also included.
In the face of the synergy of technology companies, beauty companies, and e-commerce platforms, Play Beauty Mobile seems to be increasingly unimaginative.
In addition, at present, AR is only limited to the "AR try-on" and "AR try-on" level, and the effect achieved is limited to vision, which directly weakens the sense of shopping experience.
To some extent, AR can indeed achieve undisturbed shopping, but the number of consumers in focus is still limited.
In summary, there is still a long way to go before the mobile distance of playing the United States reaches brand drainage, consumer experience upgrade, AR diversification, etc.
This is not something that can be done simply by product upgrades and iterations.