The CEO of 5WPR Ronn Torossian wants to ask you; can this revolutionary idea disturb the $55 billion dollar cosmetics industry and Beauty Public Relations as we know it? Grace Choi, a graduate of Harvard Business School, thought of an ingenious way to save big on cosmetics. She created Mink, the idea of a miniature 3D printer that allows people to print out just about any kind of color they desire. She claims that modern technology already has the ability to do this, it just has not yet been marketed. This printer will use FDA-approved ink, eliminating the worry that this makeup could be harmful. Instead of going out to Sephora to splurge on those radiant colors, users can now easily find and choose a color hex code to print out.
At TechCrunch Disrupt in May of 2014, Choi demonstrates how to do this by extracting a bright pink eyeshadow color from a makeup tutorial video. She pulls this color up on a photo editing software and says that it can be printed out. Through the use of a computer or smartphone, people can extract colors from anywhere on the web such as from pictures and videos. They are then able to turn these colors into eyeshadows, blushes, lipsticks, and more.
“The makeup industry makes a whole lot of money on a whole lot of bulls—,” Choi boldly stated to the audience of TechCrunch Disrupt. “They do this by charging a huge premium on one thing that technology provides for free, and that one thing is color.”
How exactly will the printer work? “The inkjet handles the pigment, and the same raw material substrates can create any type of makeup, from powders to cream to lipstick,” Choi explained.
So far Choi, the CEO of Mink, is the only employee and retains intellectual property. Not only that, but she has already filed for patents on Mink’s technology as well.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Choi plans to make a positive influence on women. Her target audience will mostly be for girls and young women ages 13-21. However, with the plan being for the device to cost $300, would it be difficult to reach a majority of that audience? Either way, the idea is brilliant and if properly developed, can take the cosmetics industry by storm.
