MYAVANA is a beauty-tech company founded by black female tech entrepreneur, Candace Mitchell Harris. It recently announced a new experiential partnership with Ulta Beauty. This move is coupled with strategic investments from Prisma Ventures, the beauty retailer’s digital innovation fund, and the BrainTrust Fund.
A game-changing tool
As a key component of the strategic partnership, Ulta Beauty has proudly unveiled a new Virtual Hair Analysis tool. The tool integrates MYAVANA’s HairAI technology. It empowers guests to gain a comprehensive understanding of their hair type and receive personalized product recommendations. This partnership fits with Ulta Beauty’s selection of e-commerce virtual try-on experiences. It revolutionizes the way customers explore and select hair care products.
Ulta’s statement
“Through Prisma Ventures, Ulta Beauty’s digital innovation fund, we’re always looking to support and invest in technologies that will pave the path forward for the world of beauty – especially those with like-minded values aiming to innovate the space through an inclusive lens,” said Agustina Sartori, Senior Director of Digital Innovation at Ulta Beauty & Managing Director of Prisma Ventures, “Candace’s visionary approach to digitizing beauty experiences for all hair types, including textured hair, is incredibly unique, and we’re thrilled to collaborate with MYAVANA on their mission to open new doors for more guests through hair analysis technology.”
Funding for MYAVANA
BrainTrust Fund, which invests in brands led by at least one Black founder, invested in MYAVANA alongside Prisma Ventures. The funds go towards expansion, salon channels and global product distribution leveraging the company’s consumer intelligence across the hair industry. “Myavana is emerging as a leader in beauty AI because its hair strand analysis super-serves every customer in this valuable marketplace, from the shopper seeking a personalized diagnosis to retailers and stylists wanting to sell the right products to shoppers the first time,” says BrainTrust Fund General Partners Kendra Bracken-Ferguson and Lisa Stone. “We’re looking forward to working with Candace and her team as the brand continues to accelerate.”
Thoughts from MYAVANA’s CEO
“In the beginning at MYAVANA, we set out on a mission to transform the hair industry through science and technology and I am ecstatic to partner with Ulta Beauty to begin this digital transformation in retail. Through our personalized hair care technology that will innovate and elevate our shopping experiences, we’re excited to bring to market better identification and understanding of our unique hair strands and unique hair journeys while partnering with the nation’s largest beauty retailer that prioritizes innovation and inclusion” says Candace Harris, CEO & Founder of MYAVANA.
Candace Harris founded MYAVANA in 2012, leveraging 17 years of experience in computer science to develop AI haircare technology. The tech analyzes hair strands and hair products to produce personalized hair care plans. She is a pioneer within a space that is overwhelmingly homogenous and non-inclusive, carving out solutions for BIPOC women.
About MYAVANA
MYAVANA is a Black female-owned, and operated beauty tech company backed by over a decade of research, development and data. MYAVANA is disrupting the multi-billion dollar, textured hair care market as a pioneer. Their products include HairAI (Artificial Intelligence Hair Strand Analysis) technology and HairSI (Scientific Hair Strand Analysis). MYAVANA Labs has analyzed over two billion hair strands, making it the world’s largest database of textured hair care data. MYAVANA couples its personalized, scientific hair analysis with the company’s prescriptive, data-driven hair product recommendation suite of over 3000 commercially available hair products. All product recommendations have been performance tested and validated by MYAVANA for effectiveness on textured hair types and conditions. The MYAVANA suite of products forms a transformational hair care solution for consumers and an elevated data-driven service as well as retail opportunity for industry professional partnership.
Hair Product Manufacturers can partner with MYAVANA to gain insights into textured hair conditions to inform product development needs. MYAVANA’s Personalized Consumer Intelligence Data is poised to radically change how hair product purchasing decisions are made by consumers. MYAVANA’s Recommendation Intelligence allows retailers to license hair analysis technology. They can then offer personalized hair product recommendations to shoppers online and in-store.
MYAVANA is becoming a force multiplier for fifth-generation technology job creation in the beauty space, Some AI tech is predicted to replace traditional jobs like customer service, tech support, accounting, manufacturing, etc.
About Candace Harris
Candace Harris founded MYAVANA in beta in 2012 researching and developing proprietary AI hair care technology that analyzes the variables of hair strands and hair products to produce personalized hair care plans that support healthy hair and hair growth. As a graduate of Georgia Tech, she brings over 17 years of experience in computer science to MYAVANA. Candace is the 2023 BeautyMatters Innovator of the Year, Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, WWD Top 50 Beauty Innovator, BET Honors STEM Award winner, Sephora Accelerate fellow and recent Georgia Tech Computing Hall of Fame inductee. Candace’s work was featured nationally on CNN, Marie Claire, ESSENCE, Inc. Magazine, Black Enterprise, Business Insider and more.
Interested in learning more about the future of AI integration? Check out AI Needs EI: It’s About the People.
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