Touchless, Internet-Connected Beauty Tester

Abstract

A universal beauty tester, that is intended for use by any one of a plurality of beauty product suppliers to allow a potential customer at a retail location to obtain a sample testing of one of the beauty products of these suppliers, includes: (a) a display housing configured to house advertising material for the beauty product in such a manner as to not allow unauthorized access to this advertising material, (b) a base, (c) a universal tester bladder that is configured to store any one of the beauty products that are being made available for testing, (d) a liquid dispensing mechanism (e) a non-contact sensing mechanism that is configured to: sense when a customer makes a motion to indicate a desire to receive a test sample of the beauty product, and dispense a test sample, and (f) a processor that controls the operation of the tester and compiles data regarding its use.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims the benefit of Provisional Patent Application No. PPA 63 / 159,257, filed Mar. 10, 2021 by the present inventor. The teachings of this application are incorporated herein by reference to the extent that they do not conflict with the teaching herein.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION1. Field of the Invention[0002]The present invention relates generally to equipment for cosmetics and cosmetic treatments. More particularly, it relates to a universal beauty tester apparatus, process, method and system for dispensing, at various retail sites, samples of beauty products that take the form of a liquid or emulsion.2. Description of the Related Art[0003]Every year, cosmetic brands and retailers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on what are referred to in the retail industry as “beauty testers.” These are the often “tester” marked, fluid dispensing devices that are found on retail shelves and configured to allow a potential custom...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0009]Recognizing the need for the development of improved beauty testers (e.g., less prone to thievery, more hygienic, easier to maintain, and yielding data that can be used to increase product sales), the present invention seeks to provide such an improved beauty tester device, process, method and system for using beauty testers.

Problems solved by technology

Unfortunately, this “task completed data” is the only data collected regarding the beauty testers and available for one to possibly use to assess the effectiveness of using such beauty testers.

There are many problems with these beauty testers and their methods of operation.

For example, they are: (a) when situated on retail shelves, often the target of thieves (e.g., some retailers report that 70% or more of their testers are stolen before they complete their expected life cycle), (b) hard to track as they move from their cosmetic manufacturers to third parties and eventually onto retail shelves (e.g., some brands report that as much as 40% of the testers they provide to retailers and third-parties never find their way onto retail shelves), (c) non-hygienic, in that individual testers are designed and intended to be touched and used by many people, (d) time consuming to maintain, and (e) devices that provide no real-time data that can be used to monitor and correlate beauty tester use and product sales.

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