Estée Lauder adds chatbot to e-commerce offerings

NEW YORK — Estée Lauder is expanding its omnichannel reach and its partnership with ModiFace by bringing a conversational lipstick advisor to its flagship brand’s e-commerce offerings.

With the chatbot, Estée Lauder shoppers can search for and virtually try on the full assortment of Estée Lauder’s lipstick shades, take a quiz that will provide personalized shade recommendations based on the shopper’s preferences and perform a search by color, allowing them to search for lipsticks based on any photo.

The new chatbot is the next step in Estée Lauder’s partnership with ModiFace, which started with the May rollout of augmented reality virtual try-on technology on the company’s e-commerce product pages. The chatbot will allow users to explore and interact with Estée Lauder’s Pure Color Envy Sculpting lipstick and its new Pure Color Love lipstick.

"We see Augmented Reality as an essential layer of interaction between beauty customers and brands,” ModiFace founder and CEO Parham Aarabi said. “Estée Lauder is among the leaders in embracing the notion of AR being used everywhere. We are very excited by the latest step in our partnership, and look forward with great excitement to the many steps that together we have in store for the near future.”

The ModiFace partnership is an extension of the company’s efforts to use technology to meet consumer needs by leveraging technology, Estée Lauder said. 

“One of the key pillars of our partnership with ModiFace is the application of Augmented Reality and AI across all platforms where customers interact with our brand,” Estée Lauder global brand president Stephane de La Faverie said. “Messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger are the perfect platform for consumers to search, explore, try-on, and ideally purchase Estée Lauder products.”

Anyone with Facebook Messenger can access the chatbot through m.me/esteelauderlipartist.