SK-II is a premium Japanese skincare brand with a 39-year heritage of helping women achieve their best, most youthful skin. But in recent years, the brand was falling short at connecting with a younger generation of Japanese women. These young professionals are affluent, digitally savvy, and ready to break free from tradition. They feel pressured to purchase when they shop in a department store, especially with many beauty advisors crowding them. What they really want is a personal, enjoyable relationship with a brand—not just a sales pitch. Our objective was to transform the beauty retail experience through technology to free young consumers from the intimidation of purchasing high-end beauty products. And to elevate skincare shopping to feel empowering, fun, and tailored just to them.

SK-II is a premium Japanese skincare brand with a 39-year heritage of helping women achieve beautiful skin. But recently, the brand had fallen short at connecting with a younger generation of Japanese women. Affluent, digitally savvy, and ready to break free from tradition, they feel pressured to purchase when they shop in a department store. So our objective was to transform the beauty retail experience, to free young consumers from the intimidation associated with high-end beauty. And to elevate skincare shopping to feel empowering, fun, and personal.

Enter SK-II Wonderland: a first-of-its-kind, augmented reality-driven popup store in Tokyo, Japan. Wonderland brought personalized skincare shopping to life in a fully immersive experience that was part interactive art exhibit, part virtual scavenger hunt. The big idea: Create a sense of wonder by empowering each visitor to see the familiar in new ways—from the brand and its products to her own skin.

SK-II’s target demographic of young women is affluent, digitally savvy, and ready to break free from tradition. They want to discover what works best for them, rather than being told what’s best by others. So we needed to design a new kind of retail space that would free young consumers from the intimidation of purchasing high-end beauty products. And elevate skincare shopping to feel non-judgmental, fun, and tailored just to them. The strategy: Create a sense of wonder by empowering each visitor to see the familiar in new, unexpected ways—from the brand and its products to her own skin.

Located in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya neighbourhood, SK-II Wonderland was open from November 2018 to January 2019. The 266m2 (2,863ft2) popup store featured two floors of AR-enhanced spaces. The physical and virtual design was inspired by SK-II’s Facial Treatment Essence Festive Limited-Edition series, where audio, visual, and interactive elements came together in a vivid sensorial tour. From walls that pulsated with music to whimsical animations, everything was designed to evoke a sense of play.

Inside SK-II Wonderland, visitors received a mobile device with an augmented reality app. Relying on location-dependent storytelling, the AR experience changed based on which marker the visitor scanned. Using the app to explore and discover at their own pace, they could wander through three AR rooms matching each Festive product design. Within the 10 large-scale AR interactions, visitors could draw, control 3D shapes and colours, watch designs float to music, and even pick up actual SK-II products to trigger light shows. The space was also an AR game, where they could collect hidden “crystals” redeemable for gifts. The space was designed around a custom AR marker set, which recognized the visitor’s location as they moved.

Upstairs, Wonderland celebrated the uniqueness of each visitor’s skin and the magic of Pitera, SK-II’s signature ingredient. To start, SK-II elevated the skin counseling experience with an AR twist. Unlike typical scans operated by a counselor, this one featured a self-guided, automated analysis—using AI technology to compare the visitor’s skin with over one million data points.

Afterward, visitors could view their results in AR, overlaid on a physical sphere. Visitors completed their journey by playing on gesture-controlled tables that told different parts of the Pitera story when they picked up different products. An RFID tag on each bottle signaled when it was lifted, revealing new 3D animations on the table.

During its 10-week run, SK-II Wonderland achieved what it set out to do—reinvent the retail experience for young consumers feeling pressured by traditional retail environments. 86% of our target audience who visited stated that SK-II was “a more aspirational brand” afterward. Engagement levels at Wonderland (averaging 24 mins) were also significantly higher than SK-II’s traditional retail model in department stores. Observing the success of the new model, top SK-II retailer partners are incorporating elements of SK-II Wonderland in their own stores globally. Although a secondary measure, media traction also contributed to the success of the project—with SK-II Wonderland delivering over 9 billion digital media impressions across Asia.