Top Personal Care Trends of 2023

Americans spend an average of 4 years, throughout their lives, in cars–a period of time that was first monetized with the rise of the radio ad industry, where half of the $30B spent each year on radio ads is played to in-car listeners.

Similarly, Americans also spend a lot of time–an average of 3 months throughout their lives, brushing their teeth. Though this time isn’t being monetized in the same way, a growing number of companies are charging hefty prices to reduce brushing time down to less than one month–a 2 minute brushing down to 30 seconds.

Rising brands like Symplbrush sport witty copy like “The 30-second solution to a 2-minute problem”, “Stop brushing your teeth”, and “Outsource perfect brushing technique”. The device itself looks like a mouthguard filled with toothbrush bristles and has a similar effect to, in concept, applying electric toothbrush heads to all areas of the teeth at the same time.

One of the commonly cited reasons people prefer electric toothbrushes is because they often come with a 2-minute timer. Consumers report that when brushing manually, they need to pay attention to how long they’ve been brushing, and thus perceive the time as long and less enjoyable. When outsourcing this to a timer, users say they can think about other things which makes brushing more enjoyable. This means they’re more likely to brush for longer and therefore get better results.

Demand for this type of toothbrush is also for parents who typically have trouble getting their kids to brush for the full 2 minutes, twice a day. Some of the top Google autocomplete suggestions for “u shaped toothbrush” are “for kids” and “for toddlers”.

After years of disruption in the razor market, its biggest player, Gillette, is hoping men will pay a premium for a product that brings a barbershop-style shave home.

The company's Heated Razor retails for $200 and incorporates a "warming bar" inspired by the luxury of a hot-towel shave. While Gillette commands about half of the $2.8 billion men's shaving market in 2017, that's a significant slide from the 70% it enjoyed in 2010. Since then, it has lost ground to newer companies like Dollar Shave Club and Harry's, and in 2017, parent company Procter & Gamble slashed prices by an average of 12% to compete with the influx of competition.

With the Heated Razor, Gillette has a different strategy: Once a customer invests in a base unit (or gets one as a gift), they're more likely to feel locked into continuing to buy the matching blade cartridges at $25 for a pack of four. These are the higher-margin products and where most razor companies make the bulk of their profits.

For the feminine care industry, the rising popularity of menstrual cups is part threat, part opportunity.

On the one hand, reusable cups aren't the ongoing moneymakers that disposable products like tampons and pads are; on the other, they take up far less shelf space and — at around $20 to $40 per cup — command much higher margins. And for consumers, cups are not only a way to cut down on waste, but also often a more cost-effective option, as they only need to be replaced every couple of years.

As interest in more sustainable products becomes increasingly mainstream, menstrual cup startups like Saalt and Nixit have been able to position themselves as lifestyle brands, sold alongside hair-growth supplements and CBD oils at stores like Urban Outfitters and Target. For retailers, health and wellness is a profitable, growing category, and offering eco-friendly products is key to winning with younger consumers in particular.

Despite the difficulty of creating change here, the category is heating up. While category leader DivaCup has grown over 630% in the last 5 years, an even brighter indicator is that Tampax, owned by P&G, has finally launched a menstrual cup.

Unlike many products where companies have the consumer's entire life to fight over brand loyalty, menstrual products become very hard to market after a consumer's childhood, when they're usually introduced to a specific product by their mother. And although it's usually from mother to daughter, companies have tried to circumvent this. In fact, the majority of U.S. elementary schools hold a sex ed program called "Always Changing" which is sponsored by P&G's Always pads and includes free product samples.

While it may seem like the rise of Tattoo Numbing cream would be driven by consumers, businesses are creatively using the product to cut costs and increase profits in surprising ways.

Tattoo numbing cream reduces the pain barrier to getting tattoos, expanding the market size. And since customers often ask their tattoo artist to take a break because it hurts too much, numbing cream actually speeds up the process of getting a tattoo by reducing interruptions. As well, the parlors using numbing cream have an advantage over those that don’t: reviews are less likely to discuss pain. This is particularly valuable in the tattoo industry where the permanent nature of tattoos means consumers are more likely to do their research and fully read review pages before committing to a specific parlor.

One of the top reasons people avoid getting tattoos is pain. Tattoo purists believe that pain is part of the experience, but as tattoos get more popular, they become less of a way to suffer in order to stand out, and more of a way to fit in.

Tattoos are more popular than many people think. Right now, 3 in 10 Americans have a tattoo, and, among millennials, nearly half have them. Many choose to get tattoos that can be covered with clothing, so the size of the market is larger than it seems. But even visible tattoos are rising in popularity, which is a self-fulfilling cycle: a visible tattoo is an advertisement that it's okay to have tattoos.

The creams themselves are usually based on lidocaine, which has been a popular local anesthetic for decades. Part of the rising popularity of tattoo numbing cream comes from branding: the ingredient is the same as it always was, but instead of buying a generic pain solution, customers are now buying one that solves their specific problem. This is especially important in health; it’s a product that already exists, but the branding assures the buyer that they’re getting exactly what they’re looking for, not doing a DIY hack.

Fast fashion has a surprising side effect: as consumers own more clothes and wear each item less frequently, they’re missing out on the clean-laundry smell. Plus, as the line between workwear and workout-wear blurs, it becomes increasingly important to make sure clothes stay fresh for longer.

Scent boosters are a product that's added to regular laundry loads to improve clean clothes' smells and make the smell last longer. Like many other cleaning products, it's sold partly by creating rituals—manufacturers like Downy and Arm & Hammer want to make it a regular part of the laundry experience, with a smell-driven cue at the end showing that the job is complete.

Habits are a powerful driver for the consumption of cleaning products. Procter & Gamble originally sold Febreze as a way to get rid of bad smells, but after extensive market research, they discovered that people tend to acclimate to smells. Instead, they started advertising it by showing Febreze as a sort of end-of-cleaning ritual—the last thing someone did that marked the task as done–which propelled the product to substantially higher sales.

One driver of scent boosters’ popularity is the growth of fast fashion. People who buy fast fashion tend to have larger wardrobes, meaning less frequent wear for each article of clothing. While this means that clothes last longer, it means that their clothes are less likely to be freshly-washed. For anyone who is used to the smell of newly-cleaned clothes, this means fast fashion spending patterns are actually taking away a key part of how those consumers present themselves in person. Scent boosters help mitigate this. Some users take it even further, by washing their clothes with scent booster and then vacuum-bagging them to keep the smell fresh.

A hidden sales channel for spreading these types of products is the shared laundry room. This can help laundry products spread fast for apartment dwellers, but homeowners are harder to reach. One strategy companies are using is to market to future homeowners in what is probably the first place where they do their own laundry and the last place they'll have shared laundry: college dorms, where some CPG marketers distribute free samples to get the next generation of buyers started.