Beauty industry – North America key trends & 2021 outlook

With 2020 breeding a new era of self-care, skincare and healthcare took centre stage — a trend the expert anticipates will continue this year. While they were more bearish on fragrance, there is an opportunity for colour cosmetics to partner with video conferencing platforms, which could be a “huge boom” for this segment, according to the Interview. Colour has also replaced lipstick as the “comfort product” in light of mask wearing. 

Meanwhile, in an interesting twist, online shopping channels have become more experience-focused and brick-and-mortar more transactional. “We are going to see quite a permanent shift in how consumers interact with brick-and-mortar versus online,” the specialist said. 

Similarly, in-store mass-market beauty is under threat as people spend more online, enticed by free shipping on orders over a certain amount. “If you have been using a USD 15 moisturiser, and now you’re going to spend USD 60 on something, you will definitely see the difference. By default, I think that will impact mass negatively, and, actually, will continue to help the prestige growth of beauty.” 

In other observations, social commerce will be led by “creators and improvers” rather than influencers. In addition, celebrity brand launches will “always be a playbook for some brands, but I think they are becoming less and less relevant”. 

In terms of lessons from the pandemic, company leaders are increasingly aware that “there’s so much that they have to depend on, both from the community that they serve, which is their end-consumer, as well as all of the supplier partners and innovation partners, and manufacturing partners.” Data partners and IT are also “now part and parcel of their purview”.

To access all the human insights in Third Bridge Forum’s Beauty industry – North America key trends & 2021 outlook Interview, click here to view the full transcript.