Picky is a digital community that was developed to guide consumers through a saturated skin care market and cut through the noise of marketing and misinformation.
On the platform, beauty consumers can discover the most suitable beauty brands and products for them through user reviews, educational content, as well as expert contributions.
Users can also get access to ingredient information from a growing database of over 50,000 skin care products.
Recently, Picky was among five start-ups selected to join Nivea Accelerator (NX), the beauty start-up acceleration program led by German personal care firm Beiersdorf.
“Picky has joined the NX NIVEA Accelerator because we strongly resonate with Beiersdorf's vision of making people from all over the world feel good in their skin,” said founder and CEO Jihong Lee.
“We are confident that Picky's technology and innovative spirit supplemented by the resources and knowledge of the NIVEA Accelerator program will help us make an even greater impact in the skin care industry, for both brands and consumers alike.”
The start-up, which has been backed by K-beauty firm Wishcompany, hopes to benefit from the global opportunities the multinational-backed programme can provide on its journey to expand its global presence.
“Each person’s skin care journey is unique: different products work better for different people. We hope to help people from around the world discover skin care products that will work well for them,” said Lee.
As part of its goal to grow its global network, Lee said the platform will soon offer more languages on its platform.
“Picky aims to continue to grow our global community, and to be truly global, we will be launching in more languages, including Spanish, Indonesian and Russian,” said Lee.
Since its launch in April 2020, the community has grown to a user base of over 140,000 users on its mobile app and has a similar number of visitors on its website.
“Our global skin care community has multiplied in size, with more and more people turning to Picky for honest skin care advice,” said Lee.
Furthermore, it has also grown its community of Super Picky Squad users. These core users are part of a subgroup that actively produce quality content for the platform, helping it grow in the process.
Within the subgroup, the company has also introduced brands and dermatologists, who are known as Picky Experts on the platform.
“Each group plays an important role in our skin care community. Skin care brands share their stories, our users share their honest opinions about skin care they’ve tried, and experts give helpful skin care tips learned through their work,” said Lee.
The company’s list of brand partners has also expanded and now includes brands such as SKIN1004, Make P:rem and The Inkey List.