L’Oréal has unveiled “a mini skincare laboratory” that enables skincare professionals to create customised serums for their clients in just five minutes.
Developed by L’Oréal in partnership with its SkinCeuticals brand, CUSTOM D.O.S.E (DOSE) scans and evaluates clients’ skin needs and then combines active ingredients into a custom-made serum for them.
Guive Balooch, vice president of L’Oréal’s Technology Incubator, says DOSE “acts like a mini skincare laboratory by combining lab-grade formulations and factory-grade manufacturing into a machine that sits on the counter”.
Featuring a production-quality compounder that operates at 1200 rotations per minute to mix ingredients precisely “drop by drop”, DOSE is able to combines active ingredients that were until now “unmixable outside of a factory setting”.
He says L’Oréal scientists spent 12 months developing the formulations that would be most efficacious for consumer needs and ensuring the technology could dispense them accurately.
“More than 250 unique skin types were considered when researching and selecting active ingredients to include in DOSE in order to provide dozens of combinations through over 2000 algorithms.
“[In addition] 500 subjects were clinically tested to assess safety, efficacy, and perception.
“Now skincare professionals can administer a single DOSE serum with multiple active ingredients that address the appearance of multiple skin concerns.”
SkinCeuticals general manager Christina Fair says the brand’s customers are consistently concerned with “various skin conditions that require a personalised approach to address them”.
“The DOSE technology empowers skincare professionals to co-create personalised formulas that address patients’ unique skincare needs on the spot.”
The DOSE experience begins with a one-on-one consultation during which the skincare professional completes an assessment of the client’s skin on a tablet which transfers the data to the DOSE machine that then mixes and dispenses the customised serum.
A custom label, which includes an expiration date and a bar code for easy reordering, is then printed and applied to the serum bottle.
Fair says each DOSE evaluation takes three to five minutes and the serum takes about five minutes to dispense.