Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The very nature of a sale of makeup involves subtle shades of color differences, being mapped atop the widely varying contours of a customer’s face and bathed in the light of the venue where the customer most wants that makeup to be seen.

That’s a tall order for a Web audience, where dozens of different kinds—and qualities—of computer screens are being used, set to an infinitely greater number of varying settings in an ever-growing number of browsers.

And yet, if any segment of retail was underutilizing the magic of interactive E-Commerce, it’s the glossy side of facial retailing: makeup. One vendor, selling through Drugstore.com and one unidentified pharmacy chain (not one of the four largest), is about to try and address that.

The vendor is an interactive media agency called—appropriately—Daily Makeover and it will encourage customers to upload photos of themselves and the system will then project what various makeups will look like on their skin. Kiosks offering a soupled-up version of the service will be deployed in retail locations, assuming a retailer agrees to the move, said Paul Krygowski, Daily Makeover’s product VP.

(Editor’s Note: Although three executives [a VP, an Executive VP and the CEO] and a public relations person from the vendor involved, Daily Makeover, said that customers will be able to use the service and then make purchases on Drugstore.com, an official with Drugstore.com stressed that the relationship with Daily Makeover is solely through an affiliate network called Linkshare. “We have thousands and thousands of affiliates and they are not on our site. They can drive business to us and sales, but if somebody is using that technology, it is on their site,” said Anne Marshall, the public relations director for Drugstore.com, Beauty.com and VisionDirect.com. But after hearing Marshall’s comments, Daily Makeover stuck to its position, saying that visitors to Drugstore.com will indeed be able to make purchases after having used the technology on the vendor’s site.)

The need for this kind of interactive E-Commerce is significant, given that many retailers selling makeup—especially pharmaceutical chains—often have minimal mechanisms for customers to conveniently and fully try them out.

The Daily Makeover approaches uses facial recognition technology to try and show consumers what their face will likely look with various makeup options.

“When a woman uploads her photo, her face is instantly traced so that all the different application techniques such as a smoky eye shadow effect can be superimposed on her face in the correct area. Daily Makeover’s virtual try-on technology includes new rendering functionality, visualization technology and face-tracing capabilities and has the largest range of makeup finishes — satin, matte, metallic, shimmer, stained, dewy, sheer, and glossy — to reflect the true properties specific cosmetics create when applied,” according to a statement Daily Makeover issued. The service “has incorporated an option for women to adjust the placement and coverage levels of foundations, concealors, lip colors, eye shadows, mascara, and blush. The application also includes an enhanced facial recognition component.”

That’s pretty sophisticated stuff, especially when factoring in how imprecise color representations have historically been on consumer monitors, with their many setting options. Will what appears on the screen truly look like what will appear on the face? The old resolutions to this dilemma—with sites suggesting to consumers specific settings that should work best for that site—seem ineffective. Even suggesting that a better color match would be found with a good color printer (“All The Hues That’s Fit To Print”?) seems too pushy.