Beauty Retailing Keeps the Market Alive with Alternate Channels and New Chains

Beauty Retailing Keeps the Market Alive with Alternate Channels and New Chains

The retail landscape for personal care products in the United States is constantly evolving with many consumers no longer finding themselves tied to one particular channel. This puts pressure on retailers to create a fun, seamless shopping experience whether a consumer is purchasing in a store, online, or using a smartphone or tablet. In today’s post, Donna Barson, Kline’s Senior Associate for Consumer Products Practice, reveals some of the newest and hottest trends from the U.S. beauty retailing scene.

Personal Care Ingredients Mix to Delight Consumers’ Senses at this Year’s in-cosmetics

in-cosmetics 2015

The world’s leading personal care ingredients tradeshow, in-cosmetics, held this year in sunny Barcelona, has once again brought together an immense number of ingredient suppliers and marketing specialists to showcase the novelties offered by their businesses.

While some novel ingredients were introduced at the show, this year is rather signified by new end product concepts and formulations with the existing ingredients. Textures, softness, smoothness, comfort, and consumer needs were touted by many marketers and the word “sensory” permeated a variety of marketing campaigns.

Retail’s Power Players – An Evening at the CEW Newsmaker Forum

Photo credit: Patricia Willis Photography

It was a chilly New York evening, but inside the Harmonie Club at the CEW’s Newsmaker Forum last Wednesday, November 19th, the topic was hot. With Kline’s Kristy Altenburg and Donna Barson among the sold-out crowd, Mary Dillon, Ulta Beauty’s Chief Executive Officer, and Sona Chawla, Walgreen Co.’s President of Digital and CMO, spoke about their business models and winning in beauty. Both women cited technology as a major force that continues to change the state of their businesses, and both are investing in technological infrastructure to enhance the purchasing experience in an omni-channel way, so that their shopper has the same type of experience both in and out of store.

Back to School, Back to Fall’s Beauty Regimens

During the summer, beauty routines may have lightened up a bit as the skin, hair, and nails are caressed by the sun’s rays and glow naturally thanks to a range of freshly available summer season fruits and vegetables. With the beginning of back to school and office time, the desire to look as beautiful this fall as in the summer is about to reinstate daily beauty routines and maybe add a few new products to the mix.

Fasten Your Seatbelts for the Beauty Retailing Roller Coaster

Findings from our Cosmetics & Toiletries USA report reveal that department stores, along with specialty stores, experienced exceptional growth in 2013, while direct sales outlets or channel squeaked by with an estimated growth of 1%. Our biennial Beauty Retailing USA (coming in 2015) report digs deeper into the retail landscape, explaining what growth patterns really mean within the channels of distribution.

This report will explain that there is more in channel growth than  meets the eye, with many different elements to each channel. For example, if we break up the direct sales channel into its various components, we would see that the person-to-person selling portion experienced dramatic declines due to Avon’s poor performance, while the smaller e-commerce, home shopping, and infomercial channels recorded healthy gains.

COSMOPROF 2014 – A New World of Beauty

Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna has always been the perfect stage for the latest trends and the most innovative products of the beauty universe, being a reference point for professionals and specialists of the sector.

This year, the show brought together about 2,000 exhibitors and more than 200,000 visitors around the world. Over 90,000 square meters­ of exhibition space were dedicated to the various sectors of the beauty industry, including perfumery, natural cosmetics, packaging and contract manufacturing, beauty salons and spas, hair, nails.

Free Webinar on Beauty Devices and Professional Skin Care in Asia!

Attend our free webinar covering the fast growing Asian Beauty Devices and Professional Skin Care markets.

Key Asia-Pacific market findings from Kline’s recent Beauty Devices: Global Market Analysis and Opportunities and Professional Skin Care Global Series reports, from an Asian perspective, will be shared in a free 30 minute webinar on Wednesday, July 31, 2013 at 12:30 pm (Beijing) / 1:30 pm (Tokyo) / 10:00 am (Mumbai). CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Eccentricity, Ethnicity, and Electricity Drive the U.K. Professional Beauty Market

Despite the generally challenging economic climate, the U.K. professional beauty market remains among the fastest paced across all European countries. Today’s cautious, more enlightened, and empowered British consumer is demanding more affordable products and better in-store services to complement their beauty regimes and not tax their budgets.

Taking the biggest cut, the hair-care segment continues to keep ahead of the United Kingdom’s professional beauty market with a 65% total market share, generating £370 million (USD 560 million) in sales at the retail level in 2012. However, consumer visits to hair salons continue to decrease, particularly in the lower-end segment.

New Year Resolutions – Health and Wellness

New year wishes and resolutions are closely tied to health and well-being. We wish for good health for others and want to get in better shape ourselves and therefore this phenomenon can translate into big bucks for many savvy companies promoting corresponding offers. Gyms are still full, and sales of health preparations increase. The digital helping hand also comes in a variety of apps, such as Fitocracy, Lose It, and My Last Cigarette. The most common new year resolutions include weight loss, quitting smoking, exercising, eating healthy, and a better work/life balance.

Fall 2012 Beauty Trends

Since the change of the millennium, fashion, beauty, interior design, and other aesthetic indicators have been celebrating multiple decades concurrently. Not that long ago, trends came and went, where one era or particular look was popular for a while and then faded away. Once upon a time, each decade actually had its own distinctive look. Nowadays, one can observe strong influences from the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s all in the same season’s runways.