Grad combines coding and cosmetics for skincare industry innovation

NAIT pitch competition contributes to development of student venture

Chris Small describes the “Pitch It To Me” competition at the Mawji Centre for New Venture and Student Entrepreneurship as “the most terrifying experience” of his life.

The softspoken Small (Bachelor of Applied Information Systems Technology ’23, Digital Media and IT ’22) prefers writing code to public speaking. In fact, the November 2023 competition was his first time on a stage. He was there to pitch his business, Faculty of Skin, which uses artificial intelligence to help cosmetic businesses customize products for individual clients. Thousands of dollars in prizes were up for grabs.

But when his opening slide – a joke about overwhelming selection at cosmetic stores – landed, his nerves began to settle.

“As I talked, I got more confident,” says Small. “I was so passionate about the audience and the company, and so excited to tell people about what we’d been working on. I don’t remember most of the pitch. It went by in a flash.”

It was a pretty good debut for his public speaking career. At the end, judges awarded Small $4,000 – validation of not just his aspirations as an entrepreneur but of his skills as an ingenious coder ready to bring innovation to a multibillion-dollar industry.

Cosmetic coding

Small cofounded Faculty of Skin with Ade Adegbonmire, an entrepreneur he met through LinkedIn.

“In the second year of my diploma program, I wanted to build something that would actually have an effect on the world,” says Small.

“I was reaching out to random people on LinkedIn, trying to find something to build.”

As he was doing so, however, someone reached out to him: Adegbonmire, who offer Small a tour of adewunmi, his Edmonton-based skincare business.

Adewunmi creates bespoke moisturizers, cleansers and serums for every customer, formulating each from scratch.

But assessing individual needs and then making the right mix was labour-intensive and slow, as was training new help. Could Small help him find a way to scale?

The pair started by finding an off-the-shelf AI tool that analyzes images of skin.

“You take a selfie and it scans your skin and assesses it across 10 different data points,” Small says.

The challenge was connecting that analysis to some kind of automated production.

The first machine Small and Adegbonmire made was attached to a 2x4. This evolved into a second device that had 19 pumps and was built into a personal computer case. Running code Small wrote, it could combine skincare ingredients based on data from the AI skin assessment tool.

Engineers had helped with both builds – then left. For the next stage of development, Small and Adegbonmire decided to try outsourcing the engineering so they could focus on software. That was when they discovered that a company in France was selling a commercial version of the machine they’d been trying to invent.

They secured distribution rights for North America and figured out how to integrate the skin scanning app. To this they added another algorithm, built around Google’s Gemini AI model and customized with code from Small. It connects the scanning app’s recommendations with ingredients a cosmetic business may want to offer customers.

They called it “Faculty of Skin” for its scientific, academic sound. Then they emailed and called every spa in Edmonton.

Skills and scalability

“Business-to-business is a really smart way to do it,” says Dale Schaub, lead entrepreneur consultant at the Mawji Centre. “It’s much easier to target versus the broader consumer market.”

Schaub knew of Small from courses he’d taken through the centre, and invited him to compete in Pitch It To Me. “He was already a standout student because he had something solid,” says Schaub. “It’s scalable with some big potential.”

Globally, that’s massive. The skincare market was worth $146.7 billion in 2021 and it’s projected to grow to $273.3 billion worldwide in 2031.

For now, though, Small is focused locally. Faculty of Skin signed up its first customer, an independently owned spa, in September. Small and Adegbonmire hope to expand their clientele soon, along with their company’s product offerings.

As the company grows, Small’s ability as a coder will continue to be useful, but so will other skills that are essential to working with technology – skills that probably helped him make that successful pitch for Faculty of Skin in the first place.

Developing software is “so much more soft skills than technical skills,” says Small. “It’s all about problem solving and learning how to learn.

“Lots of my experiences have been throwing myself into the deep end and teaching myself how to swim. I had to do that at NAIT”