At Glossy’s annual Beauty & Wellness Summit, held this week in Newport Beach, beauty and wellness leaders and insiders discussed top-of-mind challenges, current industry-transforming influences and new opportunities arising from innovation, culminating in the definition of new industry directives.
Factoring in the implementation of tariffs, the new possibilities enabled by science and technology, the evolving definitions of beauty and wellness, and the changing consumer, among other considerations, the best answer to “Where do we go from here?” is to focus on the following industry trends and emerging movements, Summit speakers and attendees agreed.
Advanced science and the longevity boom
Brands are adapting to the industry’s rapid integration of advanced science, with many becoming increasingly focused on longevity through enhancements in internal health and cellular function. For both beauty and wellness brands, the longevity boom presents a significant opportunity and runway.
On the beauty side — in response to consumer demand for advanced skin-care breakthroughs and products offering visible results, largely through before-and-after images — brands are leaning into biotechnology, with a focus on cellular pathways. Future innovation is set to center on aging smarter and modifying cellular pathways to reduce premature aging and improve hair, skin and scalp health, for example. Overall, the research frontier lies in longevity, with a focus on compounds such as NAD.
Categories poised for innovation include intimate care, menopause, perimenopause and sleep wellness, as research catches up with consumer demand.
Laura Beres, head of wellness at Ulta Beauty, called out the new prioritization of science as the Summit’s biggest theme. “Brands are looking at the science behind their products [more than ever],” she said. “And I think that is the path forward for this industry, particularly at the intersection of beauty and wellness.”
The AI and digital strategy imperative
Artificial intelligence is transforming the industry from all angles, including in how brands develop products and how consumers discover them.
For brands, AI is being used not only to gain a competitive advantage but also to keep pace with the rate of change in the market. The technology is becoming a go-to for optimizing campaigns, accelerating R&D and informing creative strategy, among other functions.
For consumers, the traditional path to purchase via Google is changing, with 74% of Gen Z using TikTok as their preferred search engine, and AI chatbots like ChatGPT becoming top sources for education and research.
To ensure discoverability amid the rise of AI search, brands are placing more value on human-generated content, which is playing a significant role in training algorithms. Specifically, they’re optimizing their content density, targeting brand mentions in reliable sources and fueling positive sentiment. And the rise of AI is giving rise to agentic shopping, where LLMs shop on behalf of consumers.
“We’ve taken more of a pay-to-play route by investing in partnerships with publishers and getting way more coverage in articles across different media publications,” said a wellness brand executive during the Summit’s Town Hall discussion. “And we’ve seen that, in the last three months — specifically through product-specific features — we’ve been brought to the top of ChatGPT results.”
Evolving product categories
Traditional beauty categories are evolving dramatically. Fragrance is now the fastest-growing beauty category, with growth fueled mainly by Gen Zers who prefer to maintain a “fragrance wardrobe” rather than claim a signature scent. Driven by the category’s boom, adjacent, more accessible categories are sprouting up, including laundry detergent, home and pet products, all made by fragrance brands.
“Home is this huge opportunity for us. We see it driving our business,” said Carina Chaz, founder and CEO of DedCool, during a fireside chat. “At this point, laundry is 30% of our business. … So, we’re definitely taking a step back and looking at the category and seeing how we can expand in a way that really resonates with the consumer.”
Color cosmetics is also a category to watch. After struggling during the pandemic, the category’s sales are rebounding to pre-pandemic levels. However, there’s a clear need for innovation that will move the category beyond older product formats and aesthetics — 2016 YouTube-era makeup is still lingering.
Finally, skin-care brands are finding success by simplifying complicated routines, or “decomplicating the complicated,” to appeal to younger, overwhelmed consumers who prioritize skin-barrier protection. The strategy is set to stick.
Consumer demand for trust, transparency and simplicity
Given the proliferation of product choices and rampant misinformation online, all signs point to trust as the most critical currency for brands in the next era of beauty and wellness.
Today’s highly sophisticated beauty and wellness consumers are demanding that products provide proof of efficacy through clinical studies, for example. In step, brands are increasingly relying on internal experts or trained creators to communicate the science of their products to avoid misleading claims.
“Our whole vision is to be the most trusted brand when it comes to women’s health,” Katerina Schneider, founder and CEO of Ritual, said during an onstage session. “So, we’ve distilled our brand ethos down to a few things: safety, efficacy, and traceability of science and sourcing. … We try to ladder all of our messaging to those main principles and show the proof behind our decisions and our ecosystem. We never want to ask people to take our word for it or to just [lean on] the research. The more distillation we do, the clearer we are in our messaging, the clearer our partners are in their messaging, and the clearer the consumer is.”
In wellness, specifically, given the market’s complexity, brands that come out on top will be those that prioritize simplicity and clarity of message, allowing consumers to understand a product’s value proposition, insiders agreed.
And once customers are acquired, retaining them will come down to facilitating personalized interactions, including experiences, exclusives and content — all of which Gen Z and younger millennials value over traditional loyalty models.
Shifts in retail strategy and experience
The future of retail is omnichannel, but it is supported by a renewed focus on high-touch, in-person engagement.
Today’s beauty brands are strategically distributing across direct-to-consumer channels, Amazon and retail partners, including Ulta and Target. Retailers, meanwhile, are increasingly rolling out marketplaces to broaden their assortment, test white spaces and provide convenience.
But in-person consumer connections remain valuable. Driven by the challenge of standing out online, as well as the need to build trust, brands are investing in experiential marketing, including pop-ups, conferences and masterclasses. They’re also expanding their retail footprints to include smaller markets outside of New York and L.A.
Because sales associates and stylists are often the most trusted source of recommendations for consumers, brands are also heavily investing in educating these groups on their products.
“We hired full-time account executives who were going to be based in the top regions,” said Alisa Metzger, co-founder of InnBeauty Project, while leading a working group. “[I would advise brands to] ask Sephora, ‘Where are your most productive stores in New York, L.A., South Florida and the Dallas, Texas area?’ Understand those geographies where the top doors are, and try to figure out a way — whether it’s with full-time team members or freelance members — to put people in-store to help educate on your brand. Give product and gratis to the beauty advisors in those stores, so that when you’re not in the store, they’re advocating for your brand and recommending it to the right customer.”
Other means of acquisition and connection that brands are tackling include experimenting with new marketing tactics, such as investing in sports partnerships with the likes of Formula 1 and the MLB, and engaging with niche communities on Substack and Reddit, among other platforms. It’s all about casting a wider net, while staying true to the brand.
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