Today's topic is beauty. In the US Beauty is outpacing the rest of retail. We forecast US Cosmetic and beauty sales to grow 10% this year, more than three times the broader retail market's 3% growth rate. In the US Cosmetic and beauty e-commerce sales growth will outpace overall US Cosmetics and beauty sales at 13% for e-commerce versus ten overall. So we have beauty growing faster than the rest of retail and beauty e-commerce growing faster than the rest of beauty. Why is beauty and specifically beauty e-commerce doing so much better than the rest of retail? Sky.
I think part of it is that beauty is still bouncing back from the pandemic in different ways. There was a lot of shift to beauty purchasing online during the past couple of years, and now I think the demand for shopping in stores is still rising. There are shifts in consumer tastes and needs. For now, more recently, for items, for going out, for makeup, color, cosmetics have been rebounding, and fragrance has been rebounding. So the category as a whole has been growing very quickly just because it's a category that sustained growth during the pandemic and then has continued to grow because there's just a lot of consumer interest.
I think we talk a lot about the lipstick effect, which is really where even as other categories decline, the affordable luxuries of beauty and cosmetics are still indulged in by consumers. Where it's an area where because it's self-care related and when times are tough, shoppers are a little less willing to trade down or give up those indulgences. And they're not quite the same as indulgences in, like, say, grocery, where you're buying things so regularly that you really feel the price impact with beauty.
You're splurging maybe once a month, every other month for some people. So it's still pretty sustainable. And I think there's just a lot more interest from younger consumers as well. They're really driving a lot of growth in this market.
Sure, a $50 or $100 lipstick or thing of eye cream that feels like more of an investment in the self and also a smaller ticket indulgence than, say, a new TV.
And once people already bought TVs during the pandemic, so they don't need to replace those items as frequently. But if you got into like, say, a high-end skincare or skin cream during the pandemic, you might still want to buy that and continue buying that. And that's something you're going to place a lot more often.
Yes, we're seeing a similar trend in the UK. We don't have a cosmetic and beauty forecast for the UK. But we've got a health personal care and beauty forecast which shows that category sales will grow by 6.7% in 2023, which is faster than any other category and ahead of overall UK retail sales growth of 4.8%. And as in the US, we're seeing e-commerce sales in the category are growing even faster at 7.6%, and that versus a 0.6% dip in UK e-commerce sales this year.
We're hearing a lot of reports from retailers such as John Lewis and Boots that they're seeing an uplift in sales of affordable luxuries like lipstick, mascara, eyeliner, and really nice skincare ranges.
And there's been a couple of surveys which suggest that people are more likely to spend normally on health and beauty this year despite the cost of living crisis in the UK than they are in other categories.
Yeah, I think that also that pivot to skincare is really like keeping the category buoyant, right? Like even if people are buying fewer makeup products, they're still buying skincare. I think that's been a huge pivot, at least in the US with wellness.
Right. And skincare tends to sell at a much higher price point than color cosmetics. And it's an area where consumers are willing to, I think, indulge a bit more.
And there's just so much more interest and kind of demand for these high-end products where you even see very young consumers Gen Z buying skin creams that cost several hundred dollars and then, of course, looking for somewhat lower priced alternatives that might still be very pricey by standards from when I was a kid.
What's been really interesting here is I saw one survey which suggested that UK consumers are more likely to buy less beauty products than they are to choose to trade down in beauty products. So I think what we've seen is people still buying those really expensive premium products but then simplifying their beauty regime.
So they might be skipping the lip primer or they might be simplifying their skincare regime, but then they're really splashing out on those kind of more expensive products to go with it.
Sure. In talking more about Gen Z and those changes in trends, according to Tenuity, 45% of US beauty shoppers recall first hearing about beauty items via social media.
That makes it more useful for shopping than TV which was 30%, or in store displays which was 25%. Gen Z is specifically most likely to discover new products on TikTok, while US adults at large are more likely to find them on Facebook. So how is Gen Z and TikTok in particular changing beauty?
I think here in the US there's been a huge impact in the shift from the previous main channels for beauty content which were YouTube and Instagram, which were really more the one to many channels where you had influencers and creators who were very invested in putting out their content.
TikTok, because of its algorithms, makes trends kind of take off and these can be very specific trends around specific products or specific uses of products. And it's not just the big name influencers and creators that are participating, it kind of encourages a lot of participation from ordinary users to put in their reviews to give their two cents.
One of the trends I learned about while I was reading up for this recording was the TikTok skincare smoothie, which is apparently upsetting a lot of store associates in stores like Ulta because people are going to mix up their own concoctions and they're leaving a mess in stores.
But it's really around using multiple high-end products and creating a custom blend for one's face and then showing the results of what it does for one's skin. So there's a lot more experimentation and playfulness in the content and anything can go viral. And then I think some of the best brands and retailers are the ones that are able to look to those trends and then kind of get in on them and amplify them or make sure that they have the products available when consumers are looking for them.
Make sure that their websites are optimized for the searches that are trending on TikTok and that they're able to fulfill that very rapid surge in demand that can come when products go viral.
TikTok でトレンドになっている検索に合わせて Web サイトが最適化されていること、また、商品が流行したときに起こる可能性のある急速な需要の急増に対応できることを確認してください。
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Yeah, I think that's so important is making sure you're optimized for and prepared for when your product goes viral because it can happen really quickly and it can happen with smaller businesses, less known products.
That old guard of YouTube influencers, Instagram influencers, definitely still exists on YouTube and on TikTok as well. But I think TikTok's a lot more crowded because the barrier to entry is a lot easier. You can film yourself getting ready so easily as compared to a YouTube video, which you may have to stitch together.
I think what's interesting as well is I don't know if it's the same case in the US, but I imagine it is in the UK, people are a bit wary now of these kind of beauty collaborations with big name influencers and celebrities. They've got a bit kind of there's been too many of them, they're a bit cynical that perhaps something's being pushed on them.
And I think what TikTok does really nicely is that kind of peer-to-peer marketing, it feels much more like a community recommendation so people are much more open to then trying those products.
Right. In the US we've seen the trend of de-influencing, which really took off with beauty and influencers who want to be more honest, more authentic, by telling you when a product isn't good, isn't worth the money, as well as telling you which ones are worth the money.
And that really gets to the heart of social channels like TikTok in providing trusted recommendations and reviews, which is especially important in a space like Beauty, where it's so crowded, there are so many products, it's hard to go online if you're just looking at a website.
If you're just browsing around on Amazon, you have to kind of know what you're looking for. And platforms like TikTok, with their feed, with their algorithms, you can search the hashtags, you can see what's trending, they make it a lot easier to discover and get valuable information and educational content around products.
And I think that we're also seeing in this kind of age of inflation, certainly in the UK, lots of TikTok is being used to kind of find those affordable products and those affordable alternatives. So there are hashtags like budget beauty and makeup dupes. We're seeing them trending on TikTok because they're really people sharing their own tips on how to kind of reduce prices for your beauty regime.
Right. I think part of that is kind of the impact of the bigger TikTok trend or social trends around beauty, where there's huge interest in these very high-end beauty brands.
But at the same time, now that budgets are being squeezed, people are looking for their more affordable alternatives and looking for dupes and looking to save where they can.