Ipsy
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/020316/ipsy-review-it-worth-it.asp
https://www.ipsy.com/quiz/take/questionsdeferredEvents=%5B%7B%22name%22%3A%22SIGNED_OUT_LANDING_EXPERIENCE%22%2C%22label%22%3A%22Clicked%20Get%20Started%20Button%20on%20Hero%20Section%22%7D%5D
Ipsy is a beauty company that is a “Glam Bag” subscription-based program with over 2.5 million subscribers. Customers pay $10 per month (or $110 per year) and receive a “Glam Bag.” A Glam Bag is “a collectible makeup bag filled with four to five deluxe-sized samples or full-sized beauty products with free shipping.” Each bag is made so that the customer can do a full face of make-up so an eye product, a face product,and a lips product at the very least. Users get customized bag every month and the items they get in their bag is chosen from a bigger pool of items for that month. The way Ipsy customizes each bag is by making every user complete a quiz when first purchasing their glam bag. The questions of the quiz are:
- What is your skin tone? (users must choose one from light to deep)
- What color are your eyes?
- What color is your hair?
- How comfortable are you with make-up? (Not Very Comfortable, Somewhat Comfortable, Very Comfortable)
- Which of these beauty brands do you love (or would love to try)?
- How often would you like to receive the following makeup products? (lists mascara, eye liner, etc)
- How often would you like to receive the following skincare, haircare, and nailcare products?
- How often would you like to receive the following shades? (for eye shadow, eye liner, blush, lips, and nail polish)
- What notes would you prefer if you received fragrance?
- Where do you usually shop for beauty products?
- How would you describe your skin concerns?
- How would you describe your hair?
These questions are used to personalize the bags and to get information on their experience with make-up, as well as brands or products they don’t use because they can’t afford it. In the article, Julia Hawley writes “Michelle Phan [founder] is most excited about the fact that Ipsy provides subscribers with access to brands they love and cannot afford or brands they have never tried. ” Along with the glam bags, each customer receives access to make-up tutorial videos made by the stylists at Ipsy.
The process of personalizing subscribers Glam Bags is an example of a matching market. The items must be matched to a subscriber every month. Each subscriber must be given 4-5 items that could make a complete look but the customers preferences and ordering of preferences from the quiz, as well as the items they were given in past glam bags, must be considered every month for every glam bag. The article doesn’t go into how Ipsy does this or what their algorithm is (they have more than 2 million subscribers so they can’t do this by hand). They also don’t mention if there’s a limited supply of each item so that not all 2 million subscribers could get the same exact mascara one month, but I would assume there is. I know that other beauty subscription programs such as BoxyCharm that work in the same way have now created an option where subscribers may choose one item for their box/bag each month and they are guaranteed to get it. This feature may have been caused due to dissatisfaction with the personalization of each box. Also, foundations and concealers or any complexion based product must be really hard to match with people because there aren’t that many shade ranges in the quiz and a subscriber choosing a color online may be very off.