Blank Beauty revolutionizes the foundation market with on-demand personalized shades, using cutting-edge facial scanning technology to offer customization.
ALCOA, Tenn. — A beauty tech company is aiming to change how people find their foundation match by creating it on demand.
Blank Beauty, known for its custom nail polish, has expanded into foundation with a new system that scans a person’s face and produces personalized shades in minutes. The company’s headquarters are located in the basement of the JFG building.
Co-founder and CEO Charles Brandon said the move was driven by customer demand.
“Even when we’re putting nail polish devices out there or selling bottles online, we heard from all of our customers that they all want custom foundation,” said Brandon.
The system uses scanning technology to analyze a person’s skin tone and undertones. From there, it creates five different foundation shades: an exact match, along with warmer, cooler, lighter and darker variations. Ji Lee, the company’s chief technology officer, led the project.
Jenny Lam, the company’s chief science officer, said the goal is to give users flexibility.
“Someone’s personal preference plays a role. The first one, it may like, match their skin actually, but say, ‘Oh, it’s summertime, I wanna actually appear a little tanner than I am,’ so they might go for the darker version,” said Lam.
The company said the platform can currently produce around 400 different shades, offering a level of customization beyond traditional foundation lines.
“About 10 years ago, a lot of foundation brands only had 13 shades, and then we had pioneers like Fenty, take it to 35 and now 50, but there’s more than 50 skin tones in the world,” said Brandon.
The technology was developed in about six months through a partnership combining cosmetics expertise with robotics and automation engineering.
Ben Nibali, president of APTUS DesignWorks, said the collaboration helped bring the concept to life quickly.
“The partnership with Blank has been amazing. They brought the color science, the cosmetics knowledge, and the knowledge of the market and what the customer needs, and we were able to bring the Epson robotics and the machine design expertise to make all of this happen just in a matter of months,” said Nibali.
Blank Beauty recently showcased the system at a major beauty convention, where Brandon said demand exceeded expectations. He said they had a line the entire time, and they even took appointments, but had to turn people away because of the popularity.
The company is now working to bring the technology to retail stores, where customers could walk in and have their face scanned for a custom product. It is also exploring options for at-home matching using a smartphone.
Brandon said the long-term goal is to move beyond recommending products already on shelves.
“If you can create a system that actually makes a custom product rather than pointing a customer towards a product on the shelf, it’s way more important to the customer and it means far more to them,” said Brandon.
As the system develops, Blank Beauty said it hopes to expand customization even further, including adjusting coverage levels and potentially adding skincare ingredients.
The company believes the approach represents a shift in the industry toward fully personalized beauty. Company leaders said this is just the beginning and they are actively speaking to brands to find partners to launch their product online and in stores.
