A NYU Shanghai first year student won a top prize at Singapore’s 2022 L'Oréal Brandstorm, a worldwide competition that challenges university students around the world to tackle real-life business problems in the beauty industry and come up with marketing, management and branding solutions for the international beauty brand.
Ella Goh ’25, who studied remotely from her native country Singapore during the Spring semester, and two teammates from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University were one of three winning teams selected to represent Singapore in the competition's International Semifinals.
From right to left: Ella Goh ’25, Sonya Faye Vohrah ’NTU, Jordan Wong ’NTU presenting in the Q&A section of the Singapore National Finals
Goh and her team, who called themselves “WINx Tech” and competed in the competition’s “Tech Track,” created an app called “The Scent Orchestra,” that enables consumers to create a personalized scent based on their choice of music. First, users are invited to play a song on the app representing their current state of emotions. The app can then begin to deduce the user’s emotions based on genre, melody, tempo of the song selected. Users are then asked to answer supplemental questions to refine the app’s assessment of their emotions, leading to the creation of a mood-based perfume formula.
“We decided to use existing music API technology and existing base scents from L’Oreal’s perfume lineup, and were focused on ensuring our product would be affordable to reach as many people as possible. Our business model banks on the concept that moods fluctuate, hence the consumer will purchase several products to tailor to his (or her) different moods. We believe that emotions are beautiful, and owning our emotion-based perfume will allow them to transfer beauty from the inside to the outside.” said WINx Tech.
In addition to the “Tech Track,” Brandstorm also named winners in the “Green” and “Inclusion” tracks.
NYU Shanghai students are no strangers to success in national L’Oreal Brandstorm competitions. In 2019 and 2021, NYU Shanghai students have won national championships and other prizes in the Brandstorm’s China competitions.