The world is peering over the edge of another year, and for the cosmetics industry, that means another year of trends.
While none of us can see what’s coming, at CosmeticsDesign we have searched our crystal ball of industry research, interviews, trends, launches and knowledge to bring you 15 global trends for 2022.
Below is a deeper dive into the five trends for the US in 2022:
Upcycled ingredients
Cosmetic ingredients developed from byproducts of other manufacturing processes, usually from the food industry, are not entirely new. Many ingredients have been developed in an upcycled fashion for years, but releases of new upcycled ingredients and research into new sources have thrived in 2021.
L'Oréal has launched two new technologies for mass-market consumers and stylists, developed to circumvent hair coloring problems “only technology could solve.”
The company announced the Colorsonic and Coloright technologies on Monday, ahead of CES 2022. Both products, Colorsonic for consumers and Coloright for hairstylists, address ease-of-use with color application.
Head of the L'Oréal Global Technology Incubator Guive Balooch said they’re particularly excited about making these innovations in the hair coloring space, which the company launched more than a century ago.
“What we've seen in the past 100 years is lots of innovation in the types of formulas and colors to get to the right chemistry,” Balooch told cosmetics design. “But the way of actually applying it on the hair, both at home and in the salon, hasn't really changed at all.”
The DTC personal care market has evolved rapidly and the recent layoffs by Glossier can teach the industry how a brand can misstep and what to know going forward, says One Rockwell.
Early in 2022, well-known beauty brand Glossier announced it would be laying off around one-third of its employees, and CEO of e-commerce consulting company One Rockwell Shelly Socol told CosmeticsDesign this might be an example of a well-intentioned company pursuing growth and acquisition too aggressively.
Socol said it’s important to remember Glossier’s story of success, having been founded as a DTC brand in 2014 by current CEO Emily Weiss after transitioning from a blog. At the time, Glossier was effective in developing a brand around what its customers needed and efficiently used Instagram, Socol said.
As the DTC market grew and investors and multinationals became more interested in “the next big thing” brands like Glossier, Socol said the brand likely felt more pressure to create acquisition and growth.
P&G launched new digital platform BeautySPHERE at the CES trade show in January. CosmeticsDesign spoke with Alexis Schrimpf, Vice President of Design, Global Skin and Personal Care at P&G about what the platform is and how the metaverse plays into the company's future.
Tell me about what BeautySPHERE is.
BeautySPHERE is an experiential kind of experimentation, a digital world where people can engage with our brands, our products, our values, and they can learn about things like responsible beauty and what that means to us.
Our first iteration is about telling the story of responsible beauty. What's great about that is that we can show how our brands are really innovating in this space. You can go to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, do an experiential learning experience around cue and how we authenticate our botanicals and play a little game. At the end, a tree is planted in Mexico, in an area where biodiverse planting is needed, so you can actually help out in the physical world as well as the digital world. It's kind of a fun byproduct of the experience.
The beauty industry has recently turned more attention to Black consumers and knowing the ins, outs and risks of the hairstyles used by them can guide R&D, product development and brand innovation.
Because Black people are underrepresented in the dermatology field, a research team out of the United States, Asbeck et al, compiled knowledge research and literature review on the health, social and personal impacts of several common styling techniques, so as to better serve the demographic.
Published in Cosmetics, according to Asbeck et al, the Black hair industry sits around a half-trillion dollars globally, and Black women spend more on hair than any other ethnic group. As such a large segment of the hair market, and one historically underrepresented in retail settings and R&D in the US, knowing about the styles used by these consumers can be beneficial to those creating products.
“Social and environmental pressures continue to influence what society views as beautiful and culturally acceptable,” Asbeck et al said. “There has been substantial debate and discussion regarding the association between certain hairstyles worn by Black women and their connection to hair disorders and other health conditions common to this population.”
