Thea Care, a Berlin-based AI company, is enhancing the skincare and beauty e-commerce experience with dermatologist-developed skin analysis technology. This innovation allows online shoppers to take a selfie on a brand's website and receive personalized product or routine recommendations within seconds, addressing a significant sales gap faced by e-commerce brands.
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Many skincare brands offer extensive product ranges tailored to various skin concerns, but customers often struggle to select the right items for their needs. In physical stores, beauty advisors assist in making these choices, but the absence of such guidance online leads to abandoned carts, low conversion rates for first purchases, and higher return rates due to incorrect items.
Thea Care's technology mitigates this issue by enabling shoppers to submit selfies for immediate skin assessments. The AI models employed have been trained on over 50,000 images annotated by dermatologists, ensuring accuracy in recommendations. Co-founder and CMO Dr. med. Suzan Helen Stürmer, a board-certified dermatologist, played a critical role in developing the annotation process and reviewing the models. The system evaluates eight skin parameters, linking each to specific product recommendations from the brand’s catalogue. Notably, the analysis occurs on AWS servers in Frankfurt, maintaining compliance with EU data privacy regulations.
Unlike traditional quiz-based skin finders that rely on self-reported data, Thea Care's assessment utilizes actual photo analysis for greater accuracy. Shoppers can view the image used for their recommendation, enhancing transparency and trust in the process.
For brands considering the technology, Thea Care offers a streamlined implementation process that is fully white-label. The AI skin analysis integrates seamlessly into the brand's website, providing a cohesive user experience. The setup typically spans from two days to a month, eliminating the need for extensive platform migrations or development cycles.
Thea Care tracks each skin consultation's impact at the order level, documenting both immediate purchases and subsequent sales attributed to the consultation, thereby allowing brands to gauge the revenue generated from this tool.
Current partners report significant increases in conversion rates, with lifts ranging from 90% to 258%. For instance, Physiogel, a dermocosmetics brand, observed that shoppers who completed a Thea Care skin consultation converted 3.6 times more frequently than the average visitor, marking a 258% increase. Similarly, Judith Williams Cosmetics experienced a 107% rise in average order value following the consultation.
The premise behind Thea Care is clear: customers often abandon their purchases due to uncertainty about product suitability. By providing quick, dermatologist-developed recommendations on their own devices, Thea Care effectively addresses this challenge.