Omri Moran was on time for a first date, but the young
woman, inexplicably, was late. She finally arrived but skirted the question of
her tardiness, saying “Never mind, you wouldn’t get it,” Moran recalled.
اضافة اعلان
Not easily deterred, Moran, then the head of a geo-tracking
startup, persisted and discovered the reason: His date had ruined, and
unsuccessfully tried to remedy, the new manicure she had gotten in anticipation
of their meeting.
At the time of the date in 2016, he in fact did not get it,
but the moment also provided an epiphany of sorts.
“I’m one of those people when they see things that are bad,
I just start thinking of solutions,” Moran said. “And I just wondered why it
couldn’t be automated. And that’s kind of how we got rolling.”
He envisioned a robotic approach to manicures and began
working on his idea that year, which morphed into the company Nimble. The
concept, which two other startups are separately working on, essentially seeks
to offer a simple way to provide foolproof nail polish. The companies,
Clockwork and Coral, in addition to Moran’s Nimble, have developed distinct
technologies and different business models to offer customers a quick color
change.
But do not give up your regular appointment just yet. While
all three companies have secured substantial outside financing, the devices are
still being tested and altered before their full market debuts. And none of the
three are offering a full salon-type manicure with shaping and buffing. Still,
they could ultimately upend the growing nail care market.
As a market sector, manicures are a goal worth pursuing.
Estimates peg the nail care market at close to $10 billion, and it could reach
as high as $11.6 billion by 2027. While the size of the market for color alone
has not been teased out, investors find it enticing. As Julie Bornstein,
founder of the shopping app the Yes, who has invested in Clockwork, said, the
idea resonated because manicures could be time consuming.
“I personally don’t like spending 40 minutes going to the
nail salon,” Bornstein said.
The technology incorporates some hardware — such as a
robotic arm in some instances — to paint the nails, with software that relies
on machine learning to distinguish a fingernail from the surrounding skin.
Each
company uses a different approach yet essentially relies on the scanning of
thousands of nail shapes to create a database. Cameras within the devices take
photos of the nails of the individual user, a process repeated each time a
manicure is done even on the same person. During the development, all three
have tried to minimize the number of moving parts and rely more on software,
because moving parts can break down over time.
Clockwork is the first to hit the market, although in a
limited way. Friday, the company opened in a storefront space in the Marina
District of San Francisco, essentially a pop-up location expected to be open
for at least six months. Clients will pay $7.99 to test the device, which is
slightly bigger than a microwave. The soft opening follows a 2019 test run in
their office of a prior iteration with employees of Dropbox, where Clockwork
founders Renuka Apte and Aaron Feldstein first met.
The pop-up is the culmination of four years of work. Apte
and Feldstein had initially started their company in 2017, Apte said, sifting
through roughly 70 ideas before settling on what they called “minicures.”
Their tabletop device, destined for stores, offices, and
apartment complexes, incorporates a mix of computer vision and artificial
intelligence to paint nails. Rather than use a robotic arm, their machine
incorporates what’s known as a gantry, an older technology that relies on multiaxis
movements to apply polish.
They chose the corporate name of Clockwork, which is a play
on words addressing the penchant for regular manicures as well as the technical
intricacy of a clock. The two had worked without pay until late 2019, when they
secured $3.2 million in their first round of funding.
Coral, another company trying to upend the salon industry,
obtained $4.3 million in venture funding around the same time. But Bradley
Leong, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, said that because they
could not get the device’s price as low as they had hoped in its current
iteration, they were making it semirobotic to decrease the cost.
Nimble has incorporated so-called computer vision to work
with artificial intelligence and a robotic arm to offer simple, 10-minute
manicures in a device also close to the size of a toaster. To build brand
awareness, the company, which is now headquartered in New York City, recently
ran a Kickstarter campaign and has secured $10 million in seed financing as
well.
As with any robotics, there is the inevitable question of
whether jobs will be replaced by the devices. According to the US Bureau of
Labor Statistics, in 2019 there were 155,300 jobs; average pay was $27,870 per
year or $13.40 per hour (before tips). Without any disruption, a growth rate of
19 percent is expected.
None of the futuristic machines shape nails, so
that part of salon service will not be disrupted. Apte said she did not
anticipate any job losses at salons, because her device would function as an
extra service. Leong also said he did not expect his company’s device would put
people out of work because it did not substitute for a full manicure.
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