How to Spot Beauty Products Trends: Part Two

This is Part Two of a two-part blogpost on how to spot beauty trends to help grow your beauty business. If you missed Part One you can read it here.

In this post, we're going to continue the discussion and also provide tips that you can apply to your own bath and body business to update your beauty products.

Most “futurists” study what is going on now and apply trends that are happening in other areas to new ones. For example, the news and media keep reporting how insular we have all become within our smart phones and social media addictions. We nod and carry an in-person conversation while texting someone else and laughing. We are losing the ability to communicate in the real world.

So reading what people need now isn’t necessarily going to be some great new product. Sometimes it is a marketing angle or packaging  aesthetic that plays off of the situation.

• We have become so high-tech that retro/vintage images and lifestyles are comforting to us - (Mad Men television show).
• Appreciation of Quirkiness & Individualism- (The New Girl television show)
• Anachronistic humor- Anne Taintor, Someecards ( http://www.someecards.com/), Retro Future Ads for Social Media ( http://laughingsquid.com/fake-vintage-ads-for-facebook-youtube-skype/)

When futurecasting, ask yourself how will you update an existing product to adjust to trends or capture a new vibe?

Here are some ideas to consider to get you started:

• Try new color names, new color labels, update font or text.
  
  
• A variety pack of small items instead of one large item to get across a theme or aesthetic.
  
  
• Ask yourself, “What are my competitors doing? What are they promoting? Am I on-trend or are they wrong?”
  
  
• What are getting the biggest hits on your website? Is it selling or do you need more variety in that area?
  
  
• What is dying off? Do you need to put that on “hiatus”, discontinue or repackage with a new name, color or some other tweak?
  
  
• What new lines or products are being promoted in the marketplace ( i.e: spa or organic categories). What’s happening in In Style, Allure, and Vogue magazines? Take advantage of the large corporation’s millions of dollars and expertise in reading the marketplace.

• What is happening in home, bathroom and kitchen trends with style, color (i.e.: towels, drapes, accessories, etc.)? If your product relates to this – are you up-to-date?


• Are you shopping in retail stores and researching competition online within your distribution level, above and below? You have to be aware of everything. You may see the same idea at all levels. How is it interpreted? How does it differ? Where does your price, quality, packaging fit in? Does it make sense to your target market? Evaluate and adapt. What do you need to do to catch-up, keep-up or change-up?


• What products are being promoted on the beauty spots on morning shows (gifts, at-home spas, organic, sustainable, high-end organic, yoga, glam, etc.)? Would you fit in or could you raise the bar in regards to that product offering?

Conclusion

Futurecasting isn’t always finding the next trend or expanding on the one that seems hot...sometimes it is looking for the twist on the existing or the need caused by it. It doesn’t have to be innovative and startling in thought- being too early is just as bad as being too late. 

Be aware of who/what you want to be and who/what you don’t. Find one or several inspiration/ aesthetic/innovation “mentors” in the industry or outside of it. Apply those same thoughts or innovation or ideas to your own line with your own twist and the idea will probably cast a fresh light on your product.

This article is republished with permission from the May/June 2012 issue of The Saponifier Magazine. It is written by Jennifer Kirkwood and Marla Bosworth. Jennifer Kirkwood is the founder and owner of La Dolce Diva, Inc. (www.ladolcedivainc.com/) a bath & body novelty gift boutique collection. She is also an award winning activewear designer and for 25 years has been reading trends and designing into them as an in-house designer and as the president of her own design consulting firm. She has worked at length with companies such as Callaway, Hanes, Disney, Russell Athletic, Soffe, LA Gear, Target and Spalding as well as for the Atlanta Olympics. 

Marla Bosworth is the CEO and President of Back Porch Soap Company (www.backporchsoap.com), a wholesaler and retailer of sea-inspired bath and body products. She is also an independent bath and body business consultant and teaches soap, natural cosmetic formulation and bath and body business classes in Boston, NYC and San Francisco. She is a market research analyst and has worked with companies such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Canon and Xerox.

How to Spot Beauty Product Trends: Part One

 

Looking to spot trends and develop new beauty products for your bath and body line? Futurecasting – the study of change - can do just that for you. There are three rules to futurecasting or trendspotting: observe, analyze, and execute. Implement these three rules to your own line of products while taking into consideration your the aesthetics, demographics and budget of your brand. This blogpost is part one of two posts.

One of the best futurecasters was Steve Jobs, the former co-founder of Apple Computer. He knew what people wanted before they did. He didn’t believe in focus groups. He went with his gut, and his vision of the future. Jobs was inspired by a Xerox prototype (the Xerox Alto 1973 Prototype Workstation to be exact) and he took it from there to combine technology with his own love of minimalist form and function.

Can you learn or acquire the ability to futurecast? Absolutely. The level of expertise in execution can be a combination of luck and talent and this eventually turns into a skill.  Successful futurecasting and applying learned evaluated knowledge causes others to see you as innovative and fresh- it doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel or copying. When you see a new product announcement, look closely and see if you can identify the inspiration or the trend. When you start observing the everyday products you use you will begin to notice subtle updates in color and type or packaging. Sometimes this change is announced with bold lettering, or the print on the front label panel announcing that the formula is “All New!” or “Improved!”. Often times it is just subtle and changed along the way so it looks fresh and timely.

The trick is to find inspiration and constantly study what is going on around you. Futurecasting is not a sudden bolt of lightning- although it feels like that. It is usually observations stored in your memory that all come together in an instant by a seemingly unrelated spark or impetus. Somehow your brain reaches inside and pulls it all together sub-conscientiously. This is why brainstorming is so great – it is free-form relating and it can spark great ideas. The skill is to learn how to be in the moment and objective at the same time. Try and apply abstract thoughts to the central idea and see how what develops. Once you start reading the market- it becomes innate and you will be able to see your own bath and body line in a new light. 

Why It’s Valuable

It’s important to stay ahead of what is happening with consumers in your target market and know what future trends are coming. Why? Because from that birds-eye view you can deliberately develop and market new products to appeal to a growing trend for great success.

Here’s an example: Since consumers are still “cocooning” (spending more and more time at home) and spending less time in stores shopping for gifts, one way to futurecast is to think in terms of how this applies to gift-giving. Most of us are spending less time in stores purchasing gifts and mailing them to friends and families for birthdays or other special occasions. Instead, we’re looking for internet “solutions” or gifts that we can buy online and simply ship to the recipient. We can do this with our feet kicked up watching our favorite television show instead of driving store to store looking for the perfect gift.

Now that we realize “cocooning” is still prevalent in the U.S. (a trend that began before the economy’s collapse in 2008), we can understand the popularity of such technological conveniences as the internet, home entertainment, cellphones, smartphones and other advances in communication which allow for work-at-home options. With that understanding, we apply that thought to how it relates to our bath and body customers. Get inside the customer’s head. If they are spending more time at home, what does that say about their purchasing habits? Perhaps more of their bath and body products are bought online. Better yet, how about putting more time and development into providing gift-giving solutions to online consumers? If they are spending more time at home, we now understand that there is a need for convenient gifts that can be sent to a recipient with the click of a mouse or a few keystrokes versus getting in the car and driving to the nearest retail store to pick out a special gift.

In Part Two, we'll continue this discussion and also share tips on how to update your beauty products.

This article is republished with permission from the May/June 2012 issue of The Saponifier Magazine. It is written by Jennifer Kirkwood and Marla Bosworth. Jennifer Kirkwood is the founder and owner of La Dolce Diva, Inc. (www.ladolcedivainc.com/) a bath & body novelty gift boutique collection. She is also an award winning activewear designer and for 25 years has been reading trends and designing into them as an in-house designer and as the president of her own design consulting firm. She has worked at length with companies such as Callaway, Hanes, Disney, Russell Athletic, Soffe, LA Gear, Target and Spalding as well as for the Atlanta Olympics. 

Marla Bosworth is the CEO and President of Back Porch Soap Company (www.backporchsoap.com), a wholesaler and retailer of sea-inspired bath and body products. She is also an independent bath and body business consultant and teaches soap, natural cosmetic formulation and bath and body business classes in Boston, NYC and San Francisco. She is a market research analyst and has worked with companies such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Canon and Xerox.