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Health and Beauty Trends
Two trends in the health and beauty industries include natural, clean, and sustainable beauty prioritization, and inclusivity in beauty. The description of each brand and examples of companies have been compiled in each trend's sub-section below, while the criteria for including each trend has been summed up in the research methodology.
Natural, clean, and sustainable beauty
- Prioritizing sustainability is one of the key asks from consumers towards beauty brands. According to WGSN, "as consumer expectations grow, brands will need to embrace sustainable business practices, especially when it comes to water scarcity and how it will impact product development."
- Additionally, the trend is expected to be driven by smaller brands that are not facing the challenges of scale which are oftentimes a major problem of larger beauty brands. According to the CEO of Proctor & Gamble, which includes brands such as Aussie, Always, and Garnier, switching to 100% organic and clean ingredients is not possible for businesses of their size.
- The main reason why natural, clean, and sustainable beauty movement is considered a trend for the next two years lays in the statistics which show that new sustainable brands currently attract the interest of 55% of customers.
- On top of that, 59% of consumers say they will try a product from a brand based on the fact that the brand markets itself as a clean brand. Moreover, 60% of consumers are specifically interested in trying natural brands.
- WGSN explains that another proof of brands consciously deciding to join the natural, clean, and sustainable beauty movement is in the large efforts seen by beauty brands to streamline products by offering "better formulations featuring higher active ingredients and multiple benefits."
- Brands that are embracing clean, natural, and sustainable beauty include Dr. Hauschka, Weleda, Lush, L'Occitane, and The Body Shop.
- Dr. Hauschka uses biodynamic farming methods to grow strictly plant-based organic ingredients for its products, and over 75% of Weleda’s products come from organic farming practices. Approximately 90% of Lush’s products are packaged in sustainable, recycled packaging, while The Beauty Shop actively provides access to better working conditions, higher quality education and health services to its farming workers in India.
Inclusivity in beauty
- The inclusive beauty movement has already swept the beauty and cosmetics industry by storm. In 2020 and 2021, the beauty industry is expected to launch expanded product offerings that will not only cater to more skin tones and hair types but also gender-fluid consumers.
- Additionally, the trend will cover a larger issue of including physical and mental needs in the beauty offerings by major brands.
- The main reason why inclusivity in beauty is considered to be a large trend is shown in the Ipsos study, where amongst statistics driving this trend, the following is specified: In the last year, consumers are putting a big focus on products positively reflecting their age (54%), followed by images that show reality and no photo-shopped perfection (51%).
- Embracing the beauty in all body sizes is another big priority (49%), and it is followed by embracing natural facial features (47%). Another large segment of the market is looking for products that will fit their race/ethnicity (42%), skin color (40%) and gender (40%).
- Fenty Beauty, MAC Cosmetics, Make Up Forever, and Milk MakeUp are examples of large beauty brands that are embracing the inclusivity trend in their offering, mainly by expanding their shade ranges and offering age-appropriate products.
Research methodology
To identify two beauty industry trends that are expected to take center stage in 2020 and beyond, we looked into market reports for the beauty industry. We identified two market reports that are specifically focused on identifying trends for the beauty industry in 2020 and 2021. The first trend report is titled "Big Ideas in Beauty: The five need-to-know strategic ideas that will shape the beauty industry in 2021" and is published by WGSN, a trend forecasting company of parent organization Ascential with over 20 years of experience. Due to WGSN being a trend analytics and forecasting company, the trends reported by it are considered to be credible and have been repeated by different industry publications in their articles. The second trend report is titled "With sales mixed and disruption rampant, what is the future of beauty?" and it is published by Ipsos, one of the biggest global market research and consulting firms in the world. The report was referenced by several business publications, including Forbes. As trends identified are repeated in both reports, we established this as the criteria for including the trends in the beauty industry in the research above.