Dusting for Cracks in the Beauty Industry

NEW TRENDS AND NEW MARKETS – SATURATING BOTH ENDS

Companies selling beautifying products and services have found that the ‘beauty’ industry is capable of evolving and creating new trends. They have discovered, in other words, that it is self-generating.

As with clothes and fashion, new trends emerge in the beauty industry that makes its predecessors seem obsolete, antiquated and ‘un-modern’. And in true capitalist spirit, entrepreneurs and companies alike have pounced on the chance to sell their products (or their innovations) to a new, untapped market.

Take for example the popularity that ‘going green’ has amassed. Almost every sector of the economy has found a way to tap into this trend and make a profit from it (whether the intentions are altruistic or not is not the subject of this article, though in itself the matter deserves attention). And the beauty industry has not fallen behind.

A company named Montagne Jeunesse, for instance, offers consumers affordable “moments of self-indulgence” in a way that concurs with what the company claims is its ethos: “Embracing Life on Earth”. Their face-masques are made with real crushed fruit juice and flower extracts. Moreover, the company, which is also one of the founders of Cosmetics Industry Coalition for Animal Welfare (CICAW), has claimed that none of their products are ever tested on animals and that they are 100% vegetarian and approved by the Vegetarian Society.

But the fact that products are labelled ‘all-natural’, according to Praznik, can be somewhat misleading. Namely, there is an assumed “implication … that [they] are safer … but the ‘natural’ [only] refers to the sourcing of the molecule, not what the molecule does”. The molecules can be sourced naturally, like from a plant or mineral, or produced synthetically in a laboratory; and though the molecule produced naturally may not be hazardous, it can be used to produce an ingredient that is.

On the other hand, “just because [something] is derived from a natural source, it doesn’t make them necessarily safe given their hazardous properties or your exposure to them,” like lead, for example, which is produced naturally, but extremely hazardous to our health.

“You have to look at actual ingredients and [ask] is there a hazardous property to that ingredient and what my exposure is going to be to it to know whether or not it is safe,” said Praznik. “There has been a lot of discussion about natural and what is organic and synthetic … but that doesn’t necessarily determine whether a product is healthy or safe for you.”

Another trend, perhaps one of the most profitable ones, has been dubbed the rise of the ‘Frugalista’, a “consumer composite of beauty aficionados looking for affordable beauty products and care.”

As we saw above, the beauty industry is a resilient industry. Despite the financial crisis we saw from 2007 – 2010, the industry as a whole still saw a 7% increase. Salon and spa owners around the world have noticed that despite a tight financial situation, loyal customers see the treatment they “receive [as] essential to their well-being”. This is the cause for the rise of the ‘Frugalistas’, who helped skin care products realize a 3% growth in 2009, while in the same year “premium beauty products sales declined by 1%”.

The Frugalista, in turn, has given rise to a new trend that Trish Crawford from The Star calls ‘The Lipstick Revolution’, which consists in more and more stores across Canada opting to include a rather large section dedicated to cosmetics and other such products in their stores, which as she notes, has spiked sales.

By introducing the ‘everyday woman’ to beauty products considered ‘high-end’, but with a price tag considering the consumer, the industry has seen an average of around 10% growth of total sales (2007). It does this by injecting products that are over-saturated with celebrity endorsements and advertisements into local markets that are frequented by the ‘everyday woman’ such as Zellers, Wal-Mart and, among its most noticeable success stories, Shoppers Drug-Mart, which has 141 in-store beauty boutiques around the country and with 40 more on the way.

Included in these stores are tons of products aimed at helping people (women, particularly) look younger. As Julyne Derrick, beauty guide for www.about.com puts it, there is a rise in the amount of products aimed at offering women a “simpler, less costly option to look younger” because marketers know that insecurity is good business. Making Botox injections or “microdermabrasion products, Retinoids … antioxidants and peels” available at local malls or drug-stores has definitely driven up the interest and usage of such services, to the point where women are “getting [injections] in the mall of all places”.

There is, however, a concern echoed by Praznik which speaks to the problem of counterfeiting beauty products. Though consumers may find more beauty products in regular stores at affordable prices, they must be aware that counterfeit products are out there, “dumped in retail establishments” all over the country.

“Many major international trade members will tell you that their products are regularly counterfeited,” said Praznik. Adding that consumers can usually tell it is counterfeited “because they’re being offered that product at a ridiculously low price”. But, he says, it is highly unlikely that you’ll find these products in regular, well-known stores. They are most likely to be found where “people are selling at a significantly lower price … such as flea markets and discount stores,” for example.

Perhaps the most alarming of trends is the increasingly tolerant view towards teens and pre-teens using make-up and other cosmetics. Sephora, for instance, makes tons of money by targeting teens and pre-teens, according to Julyne.

As with the trend of including the ‘every-day woman’ into the Vanity Market, entrepreneurs have also found a way to let ‘plus-sized’ women know that they, too, are beautiful. For instance, the Ottawa-based Ben Barry Agency occupies itself with persuading its clients (among them L’Oreal, The Bay, and Univeler) to invest in products aimed at women other than “wafer-like” models. In other instances, Ben Barry himself has organized small ‘fashion shows’ in malls featuring minorities as the main talent.

Thus, the industry has found a way to tap the market from both ends at the same time: on one end, an aging and increasingly vain population consumes products and services that are aimed at halting or hopefully even reversing the aging process; while on the other end, an entirely new market is found in easily-influenced adolescents that crave the need to at the very least look older if feeling older is not yet possible, and minorities that simply crave the need to adapt and to fit in a new country.

However, though the industry may drive profits up, there are social and health-related bumps and blemishes that, like unwanted acne on the teenager’s face, leave a nasty mark on an otherwise smooth industry.