Lauren Kitchen, 19, first heard about a robot that gives manicures while scrolling on TikTok. When the Wheaton resident learned it was available at her local Ulta Beauty store in Naperville, she knew she had to try it out.
“It looks really nice,” she said, admiring the dark blue nails she received Wednesday. “I love how glowy it is, it’s really pretty. … It takes (its) time. I like how it gets all the edges.”
It’s a machine she would like to own some day — if she’s able to afford it, she said.
For nearly six years, robotics company 10Beauty has been building a robot that can give a full-service manicure. That includes everything from cleaning the nail with a sponge and pushing back cuticles to filing the nails and applying the color. Customers can even watch the robot perform its work through an iPad.
The company piloted it at the end of last year at select salons and stores in the Boston area, where it is based. They have now expanded to the Chicago market with the launch of their product at Ulta Beauty’s flagship store in Naperville in June and 7AM Nail Care in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood in May. 10Beauty has about 850 machines pre-sold to retail partners, including companies like Nordstrom.
“Similar to how you have an espresso machine at home with a coffee pod, could we build a machine that could then give you a manicure through a pod-based system?” Alex Shashou, co-founder and co-CEO of 10Beauty, said. “That’s what we set out to do in 2019 and then the only decision was, ‘Do we launch it in-home or do we launch it in existing stores to start?'”
It is the second start-up venture for Shashou and business partner Justin Effron. At the time, the two felt that there was a growing synergy between existing consumer services and at-home automation. People had their espresso machines sitting in their kitchens, but they also had the local coffee shops they frequented. Exercise machines like Peloton gave people more flexibility to work out at home.
“I just felt there was like this amazing complement between a self-service piece of technology and an amazing incumbent brand,” Shashou said. “And so we felt that that’s what the future of beauty services would be: You can do parts of your ritual through automation and parts of it with existing brands.”
He also noticed that beauty seemed to be a time-consuming chore for many people and while the industry was making strides in products like foundation or blush, there was little innovation in how people applied those products.
“We wanted to build a company that could build convenience back into beauty,” Shashou said.
Initially, Shashou and Effron thought it would take them two years to build a robot that could do a manicure but soon realized the process was much more involved than expected.
There were many engineering questions they had to answer. How would a robot know where the nails are? How would it remove nail polish? How would it file a nail without using a single blade? How could it do it all safely and with precision?
“It’s been a very long journey,” Shashou said. “We’ve had to build each step piece by piece. Originally, we had two cameras. Now we have eight cameras in the machine, so we have more eyes on your nails, so we get more angles, so when we bounce light off your nails we can really understand the curvature of your nail.”
The first version of the robot was so big that Shashou said it could not even fit through a door and for the first four years of development, the robot was only working on left hands. Every week, Shashou would fly from New York to Boston with his left hand painted red from a salon-style manicure. The robot would then practice removing the red nail polish — the hardest color to remove — and replacing it with its own manicure.
“The machine would paint my left hand really badly, terribly,” he said. “And then I’d have to go home with it and see how long it lasted. And so that was my journey. I’m the guy who comes in, gets his left hand painted. I’m the robot nail guy.”
It was only after four and a half years in that Shashou could receive a full end-to-end manicure from the machine. Now, the best part about the project for him is seeing reactions from customers.
“Most of our feedback is that people are surprised by how delicate, gentle it is,” he said. “The way we buff your nails, it feels like a massage on your nails. The way we remove it, it feels nice and cold.”
And the company is constantly making tweaks to the machine.
At the beginning of the year, it took the robot an hour and 10 minutes to do a full manicure. Two months later, it could do it in 42 minutes and a new software update launching soon will shave another 10 to 15 minutes off of the process.
A nail technician also currently accompanies the machines in-store to complete any final touch-ups, but by the end of the year, the hope is the technicians will no longer be necessary.
While the robot is currently only available in select locations, Shashou said their goal is to one day have 10Beauty robots in people’s homes, workplaces and fitness centers. It’s a few years out from that becoming a reality, but ideally there would be smaller at-home devices that would complement the 10Beauty robots found in stores like Ulta Beauty and Nordstrom, he said.
“Our vision is you should be able to get a 15-minute, $15 manicure,” he said. “You should be able to change the color of your nails every day and it takes a few minutes. … I see no world where we can’t deliver a $15, 15-minute manicure in the future and then you have something you take home that could just change the color of your nails in a few minutes.”
Those interested in receiving a manicure from 10Beauty can go online to 10Beauty.co to book an appointment at either Ulta Beauty at 220 S. Route 59 in Naperville or at 414 E. Grand Ave. at 7AM Nail Care in Chicago. Walk-ins are also accepted at both locations.
cstein@chicagotribune.com
