Personalizing Brand Experiences in the Beauty Industry: Our Investment in Revieve

We are excited to share our latest investment in Revieve. The company personalizes brand experiences for Beauty brands and retailers across a wide range of online and offline customer journey touchpoints. Revieve was founded by Sampo Parkkinen (CEO), Gavin Weigh (COO), and Samuli Siivinen (CTO) in 2016 and employs over 70 people from their head office in Helsinki (Finland) and branch offices in Valencia (Spain) and Chicago (United States).

What & Why

In the past, people went to a physical store to try out and get advice on different make-up, skincare products, etc. This was traditionally how consumers bought products and how brands and retailers developed relationships with consumers. However, times have changed. With the growing adoption of smartphones and social media platforms like Snapchat, and the proportional increase of millennials and generation Z-ers on the total population, consumer preferences have changed. Consumers are interested in trying out and buying products online, and technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and computer vision enable this.

Virtual try-on solutions exclusively focused on consumers (e.g., Meitu) have emerged in the past ten years. However, enterprises did not have the tooling available to provide solutions like virtual try-on and digital recommendations. Revieve was founded to solve this issue for them.

Revieve helps enterprises by delivering AI- and AR-driven technology to personalize their target audience’s brand experience across customer touchpoints. The so-called Digital Beauty Advisor provides consumers the option to virtually test products in a manner that is both personal for the consumer and scalable for the brands and retailers. In addition to having a positive effect on conversion, these personal touchpoints furthermore allow brands and retailers to gather customer insights and preferences on their products. This data can then be leveraged to personalize the shopping experience even further across all distribution channels, e.g., by enhancing product recommendations and providing tailored advice on beauty products.

Moreover, this experience educates the consumer about the brand and its products and establishes a relationship, which ultimately boosts customer loyalty and retention, conversion rates, basket sizes, and engagement rates. In the long run, the data provides brands and retailers essential insights to improve and optimize their product development.

The relevance of technology for the Beauty sector has ever since the outbreak of COVID-19 dramatically accelerated. Although 80% of the $1.5 trillion annual spend on Beauty products still takes place in physical stores, younger generations increasingly browse-to-buy online where Revieve can secure a personalized brand experience for this group of people.

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Investment Thesis

Providing personalized brand experience to consumers has become increasingly crucial for Beauty brands and retailers to engage their audience and establish a relationship. Revieve’s technology offers a solution to both challenges. Our investment thesis was driven by: 

• Market: The global Beauty market has an astonishing size estimated at $1.5 trillion in 2021 and consists of numerous sub-industries that share the same market developments. The market is essentially greenfield since only a fraction of the market has adopted technologies like Revieve’s. We were surprised to learn that there seems to be only one other relevant contender in this market. This is highly unusual in today’s SaaS market. Revieve is positioned to land and expand within verticals, geographies, brands, and retailers, thereby securing an attractive position in this market.

• Value Proposition: Revieve delivers both top-of-the-funnel and bottom-line value to its customers that is directly measurable and quantifiable. For example, at Ulta Beauty, the company has increased conversions by 3.6x and engagement by 80%. At Murad, the company increased the basket size by 38% and the conversions by 3.4x.

• Momentum: Revieve provides brands and retailers the tools to continue personalizing the omnichannel brand experience. Adoption by ''innovators and early minority'' puts pressure on the ''late majority and laggards'' to follow, creating attractive market dynamics.

• Team: Sampo, Gavin, and Samuli are serial entrepreneurs in Retail Tech and have previously exited a company in the same space. Moreover, we like their passion for the product and their frugal and revenue-growth-obsessed mindset.

• Traction: Revievereceived market validation by servicing some of the biggest brands andretailers in the world leading to some extraordinary growth numbers.

We’revery excited to support Sampo, Gavin, Samuli, and the team on their journey!

More information about Revieve can be found on their website: https://https://www.revieve.com/

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