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Part
01
Personalized Beauty: Key Players
The personalized beauty space is small but growing, and seems to be intent on disrupting typical sales channels for beauty products, such as department stores, pharmacies and brick-and-mortar retailers. These personalized beauty product providers are not one-stop-shops for hair care, skin care, perfume, and so on, like one might find in a department store; rather, they are focused on providing and tailoring products to the customer in one area, such as skin care or hair care, but not both. As these companies are privately owned, they are not required to list revenues or market share.
Function of Beauty
- The largest company found in this research was Function of Beauty, which provides tailor-made hair products for women.
- The company was founded in 2014.
- Its estimated annual revenues are $2,000,000. This level of revenues makes it a top company within the scope of this research.
- After first taking a hair care quiz, the company allows customers to choose the color, fragrance and name of their unique hair care formula. The answers are processed and the unique blend of ingredients required for that specific hair type is mixed and delivered.
- Function of Beauty produces its own products and is online only.
Prose
- Prose was another personalized hair care company that appeared in several locations during research, thus making it a top company, as hard revenue and market share figures are not available for these upstarts.
- Prose launched in January 2018, and provides online services only.
- Estimated annual revenues are less than $1,000,000.
- Prose is experiencing double-digit month-on-month growth.
- Based in New York, Prose is one of the fastest-growing hair-care brands on the market.
Curology
- Curology is a personalized skin care company whose products fight breakouts and acne, improve skin texture, and reduce signs of aging.
- Curology was easy to find in several sources, thus since revenues and market share are unavailable, it was considered to be one of the top companies in this personalized segment.
- The company was launched in 2014, providing only online services.
- Its revenues are under $1,000,000.
- Customers must answer a series of questions about themselves, they must take a selfie, and their customized product will be sent to them.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
In a developing market of privately owned companies, finding hard data was a challenge. The first steps taken were to find out what companies are in the market to sell personalized beauty products, meaning products that are tailor-made for an individual. Numerous companies popped up in the Forbes Magazine article from 2018, and also in the Health.com article. Using the companies mentioned in those articles as the starting point, research then focused individually on those firms. After searching specifically for those companies, as well as other companies that popped up in databases along the way, it was found that many of those companies do not actually offer tailor-made products; their focus might be on organic products, or locally sourced products, or "pure" products, but not necessarily on individually concocted products.
Some companies offered "tailor-made" products, but they often ended up being products that were not actually made specifically for a person's individual needs. Thus, the size of the personalized beauty market shrank considerably. Upon further research, some revenue figures were found, although again, as these companies are not publicly listed, they are not required to publish their financial statements. Companies for which revenues numbers are available, that have numerous mentions in various databases and articles in well-respected publications, active functioning websites, and that have products that are truly tailor made, were used as three of the top companies.