Skincare Insights: What’s Hot, What’s Not, and What’s Next for Skincare Brands?

A little trivia for you—your skin is the largest organ in your body. 

Taking care of your skin should be a key, daily activity with the weather changing—and the fact that we’re washing our hands/using hand sanitizer so much during the pandemic.

According to an article in The New York Times, a solid skincare routine consists of three main steps:

1. Cleansing — Washing your face. 
2. Toning — Balancing the skin.
3. Moisturizing — Hydrating and softening the skin.

What’s new in skincare trends?

There are so many hyped-up ingredients that can supposedly provide your skin with the nourishing care it needs. Here are some of the latest skincare products with some rather unusual ingredients:

• Marshmallow & Ceramide Sensitivity Soothing Serum by Naturopathica. “This milky serum, formulated for sensitive skin, features soothing marshmallow and a repairing ceramide complex to reduce redness and itchiness for supple, silky skin.”
• Rodial Bee Venom Moisturiser—yes, the venom from bees—​​​​”helps to smooth and plump out fine lines and wrinkles by controlling muscle contractions in the face and helps increase blood circulation in treated areas.”
• RéVive Masque de Radiance, a brightening and moisturizing mask containing mung bean seed oil, “gives skin an energizing, moisturizing boost as it turns from pearlescent white to a shimmering shade of gold.”
• Biopelle Tensage Intensive Serum is made from snail secretions is an “award-winning intensive serum featuring concentrated growth factor benefits for fast improvement in the appearance of lackluster skin.”

Insights for Skincare Brands: What’s Hot, Not, & Next

The global skincare market will grow to $189.3 billion by 2025. Industry data shows that younger consumers—even teenagers—are getting into skincare regimens more often these days as a way to stay looking youthful. This is a fairly recent phenomenon as skincare brands have traditionally been focused on older consumers. With market behaviors changing rapidly, skincare brands must stay on top trends to remain competitive.

Consumer and market intelligence platforms like Skai are increasingly used by skincare brands looking to keep a finger on the pulse of what is happening in the category in real-time and get ahead of the latest trends.

Skai collects more data than anyone else relevant to skincare (social reviews, product listings, ratings, reviews, patents, etc.) so that brands don’t miss a thing. Then, we apply natural language processing so that it’s easy to extract what is happening in the si category and why — and what will happen in the future. And we visualize the data in a way that makes it easy to understand for anyone from Insights, Marketing, Brand, Product Innovation, and more.

Our Skincare category includes data from over:

• 114,000+ products
• 376,000+ consumer discussions
• 537,000+ product reviews
• 707+ key opinion leader posts
• 1500+ patents

So what is the data showing us? Let’s take a look!

What’s Hot?

• Travel Size. Carrying around hand sanitizer in those little bottles has become commonplace these days. So it makes sense that people would be bringing more skincare products along with it. There has been a 183% increase in skincare social media posts that mention Travel Size.
• Glowing & Brightening. The term “glow” has been used to express an appealing look to the skin and used a lot in skincare. In the skincare products we monitor, 12,800+ mention this feature with more than 1,200 products released in the last twelve months.
• Vanilla is a popular ingredient highlighted in over 5,000 items of skincare products monitored in our database. There has been a 136% increase in skincare social media posts mentioning this ingredient in the last 12 months.

What’s Not?

• Smoothing has a wonderful sound to it, but skincare companies are starting to drop its use. Skincare social media posts mentioning Smoothing have declined 36% over the past year.
• Beeswax is a declining ingredient in skincare with just 388 new skincare products released in the last year, a 23% decrease in growth. There’s also been a 10% drop in skincare social media posts mentioning Beeswax versus the previous year. 
•  SPF/UV Protection seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Why not combine this benefit with your skin regimen? Even though over 4,600 skincare products mention SPF/UV protection, there was a drop in new products released in the last twelve months. Skincare posts mentioning it have dropped as well—22% in social media posts and 1% in consumer product reviews. Maybe with the pandemic, people are generally less outside so they need less sunscreen?

What’s Next?

• Pigmentation is a skin condition that brands are starting to address in skincare. Last year, 147 new skincare products that mention this condition were released—that’s a 332% growth versus the previous year. There’s also been a 42% increase in consumer reviews over the same time period. 
• Bergamot is a scent that is starting to get noticed in skincare. There was a whopping 921% growth in skincare social media posts in the last twelve months to mention this citrusy scent.
• Coal Tar Free is becoming a feature that skincare brands might be looking to for growth. There was a 600% increase in new skincare products released in the last year to mention this feature.

Top Skincare Brands (by Most Discussed/Reviewed Brands in August 2021,# of posts)

The Skincare Trend to watch: Encapsulation technology

Has this happened to you? You buy a skincare product and its smell and texture change over time. Why does this happen? It is because some of the active ingredients in the product can be affected over time. This is because many organic ingredients can be sensitive to light and temperature changes. This can change their chemical properties and be rendered inactive in some cases, and may even become irritable to your skin—the exact opposite effect for why you bought the skincare product in the first place.

Encapsulation is when ingredient molecules are put into a protective coating of polysaccharides which keeps the ingredients active. When you put the final product on your skin, the coating fades away and the active ingredients then seep into your skin slowly. By keeping the ingredients active and by releasing them slowly into the skin, they are more potent and last longer. Encapsulation also protects against environmental factors like UV and dry air. 

There has been a 500% increase in skincare products featuring Encapsulation Technology in the last year—and consumers are noticing. In the last year, there has been a 1350% increase in skincare social media posts and a 200% increase in consumer product reviews that mention this innovation. 

To find out what’s hot, what’s not, and what’s next in your industry, please reach out today to schedule a brief demo of Skai’s market intelligence platform.

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