To personalise or not? Singapore’s Yours says innovation decision needs to be made at ‘category level’

The Singapore-based brand uses computer vision and machine learning technology combined with inputs from a lifestyle questionnaire and suggests a skin care routine.

Since its launch in March 2018, the company has launched three additional products in efforts to round-up its range of key essential products.

Despite launching with a personalised beauty range, the company’s 2020 launches were non-personalised products. Its latest launch was the Cloud Factory Gentle Foaming Cleanser,

Co-founder and CEO Navneet Kaur told CosmeticsDesign-Asia ​that since its launch, the company has evolved from being a personalised skin care brand into a brand that “aims to make skin care simple and sustainable.”​

“In line with the mission, we focus on what the customer is looking for. What are the problems that have not been solved? What are the formats that will make it easier to use? We’ve really been listening up close to all our customers to gather this insight.”​

Kaur said that the company has become careful not to launch personalised products too frivolously.

“The decision to develop a personalised or non-personalised product is at the category level. After all, we want to bring people skin care that is effective and affordable. If we can produce a non-personalised formulation that works, I can provide a quality product at $20 instead of $200.”​

However, even though a product may not be personalised, she stresses that the development process gets as close to the consumer as possible.

She added: “We create our products with the consumer – our real customers – they are part of the process from beta-testing to development feedback. That’s how up close and personal we get even with our non-personalised products.”​

For instance, the firm does not rule out the possibility of developing a personalised cleanser in the future.

“Some people may like a different format, such as a gel, or some people may need a cleanser that can be used on eczema-prone skin. As we go along understanding more about how the consumer needs are evolving, we will definitely look at revising formulations and making it part of the personalised range as well,” ​said Kaur.

Diving deeper

Such developments are part of the firm’s 2021 goals to develop products that focus on specific skin needs of its consumers.

“We're always working on creating new products people would love. We still have a long way to go to develop more products to fit the routines. We just got started on the essentials and we have more coming in skin care. Essentially, for us 2021 is going to be about going deeper into the skin care journey.”​

Kaur remained coy about what the kind of products the firm has in its development pipeline but told us it would leverage on the consumer insights it has gathered since the start.

Since 2018, the company has amassed a database of consumer insights numbering hundreds of thousands and spanning across the globe from Singapore to the US.

“Through this, we are really able to identify the consumers we want to speak to and understand. For example, we can look into consumers with eczema and go deeper into the segment and find out what they really need,” ​said Kaur.

In the case of its latest launch, the company uncovered that many consumers were using cleansers that were wrong for their skin.

“The biggest insight was that people weren’t even sure about what kind of cleanser to look out for. For example, people with oily skin tended to go for harsher cleansers designed for oily skin, but some of them may actually have dehydrated skin that is overproducing oil to compensate for the dryness,” ​said Kaur.

This information led the team to develop a gentle cleanser that was suitable for all skin types. The formula is soap-free and uses a sugar-based cleansing agent to produce cloud-like foam.

The product also contains five fruit-based acids including lactic acid from bilberry and glycolic acid from sugar cane. These natural alpha-hydroxy acids (AHAs) ensures that the gentle cleanser also had cleansing power.