As a contract manufacturer, I often see trends before they appear to many brands or end consumers. What my team might internally see as trending in 2021, the greater beauty community may see trending in 2022. Here are three trends that we are seeing now to keep your eye on in 2022.
Further insight: Ulta Beauty's 2022 Beauty Trends
The Rise of the Influencer
While not a new concept, influencer marketing is poised to continue to have a greater impact on consumers. And, it is not only well-known brands that are going to benefit. Start-up brands are looking to influencers to promote their brands to a generation that was raised on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, allowing less infiltration of traditional media into their lives.
Report: Top Earning Tik Tok Influencers
Not only are influencers promoting their preferred brands or brands that pay for their influence, more influencers are taking the leap into beauty entrepreneurship. Evidenced by the biggest kid on the block, Kylie Cosmetics, influencers are discovering that they can leverage their communities into a loyal base of consumers and brand champions for their own brands.
These brands are looking to social media and e-commerce as their primary distribution. channel.
Micro Brands
As Amazon continues to march toward dominance in the marketplace, independent salons, day spas and wellness clinics are looking for ways to remain competitive. Once a very lucrative part of their business model, retail sales of known brands have been lost to the likes of Amazon and other online retailers who can often sell for less and ship with lightning speed.
Report: Investing in Amazon Brands
As such, more of these small businesses are creating micro-brands by purchasing small quantities of off-the-shelf white label products that they can then brand as their own. These micro brands cannot be purchased by their clients through other vendors on Amazon or other similar platforms, so the clients continue to have the incentive to repurchase directly from the micro-brand owner.
The Year of the Shroom
The mushroom boom is being highlighted by the “magic” varieties, but the non-psychoactive varieties are proving to be important ingredients in beauty regimens. Similar to when THC was becoming legal and it seemed to be in the news every day, we saw its high-free cousin CBD gain a lot of attention by association. As more research into the benefits of CBD became available, we saw it added to almost every product: supplements, lotions, creams and serums.
Video: Mushrooms & Mitochondria
Adaptogenic mushrooms are the new frontier in health and beauty. While they have been found in many cultures around the world for millennia, research into how they work in nature and in our bodies is in its early stages. As more evidence of how efficacious these adaptogenic mushrooms truly are becomes available, mushrooms like shitake, maitake, lion’s mane, reishi, and others are finding their way into more beauty formulations. And just as CBD did from THC, adaptogenic mushrooms are getting a big boost in awareness in large part due to their “magic” cousins.
Craig Nandoo is Co-Founder and president of JBK Wellness Labs, a contract manufacturer based in San Diego specializing in custom, private label, and white label formulation. For the past 15 years, his team has helped small, medium and multinational brands launch their brands into the market.
