Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, leaving millions of people stuck at home with nothing to do but window shop online, the dial was already turning in favor of the digital shopping experience. It comes as no surprise that one of the largest and fastest-growing market sectors, the beauty industry, is one of the first to dominate buying trends like social shopping and personalization. These trends will go on long after we’ve all returned to our outdoor lives, as the convenience is too hard to let go of.
Beauty Refuses to Go Broke During COVID-19
Part of the thrill of shopping for makeup is testing it at the counter and seeing all the colorful pallets and tubes all lined up and waiting for you. While many people still buy their beauty products in stores where they have to physically see and touch and even try on the products, you would have expected this $500 billion dollars global industry to suffer during the lockdown, but in fact, it was one of the most resilient markets. While it’s in-store sales understandably went down, their on-line sales increased 20-30% offsetting much of that downturn. Leading beauty brands like Sephora have used Augmented Reality (AR) to help consumers see what the products will look like on their own personal avatar.
The use of AR will continue to gain popularity as consumers are totally done with seeing airbrushed and photoshop flawless photos in advertising. In fact, 51% of consumers stated they didn’t want to see photoshopped images anymore.
Beauty Gets Down with Social Media
Social selling is the hottest trend in beauty as IG and Facebook both announced huge overhauls to their social selling platforms making it a more seamless experience for large and small companies alike. Social selling makes sense when you look at these beauty industry stats:
- 96% of beauty brands have social media accounts
- 80% of beauty consumers think social media dictates beauty trends
- 63% of beauty consumers trust brands more when they have a strong social media presence
- 67% of social media users trust influencers when making purchases
You’re going to see more community-based websites and beauty apps like Mira Beauty, where people can share personal reviews on skincare products and makeup, becoming micro-influencers in their own spheres. People trust their family and friends when it comes to product recommendation, and that’s true for every industry.
Direct to Consumer (D2C) Grows as Personalization Becomes King
Another key beauty industry statistics centers on the direct to consumer trend (D2C) which is taking social media by storm. If you’ve heard of beauty subscription services like Birchbox and Ipsy or have seen the stunningly aesthetic posts from Glossier then you’ve already discovered D2C beauty brands. Their popularity is quickly growing, expecting to go up 20-30% in the next year, and that prediction was made before COVID-19 made permanent changes to our online shopping habits.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) means there is no brick-and-mortar store and no middleman. This allows even small companies to compete and offer a wide range of choices for total personalization of skin types and tones across the beauty marketplace.
