Coronavirus and Cosmetic Business: resilient from recession
Imagine just a few short weeks ago, the UK’s biggest upcoming fear within our industry was Brexit. Now seemingly overnight, retailers have closed their doors, once full clinics are empty, and buoyant brands and businesses have been left reeling over the potential global repercussions of self-isolation which may, or may not, last for up to one year or more.
The confidence among my industry colleagues has suddenly fallen off a cliff edge, and the panic is palpable.
But remember, this too shall pass, though we may well come out the other side looking a bit different. A perennial optimist, I’d like to take a moment to inject some positivity into our profession, particularly when right now, we need it.
It is often said we are ‘recession proof’. Does this still hold true?
Perhaps it’s coincidence the last two dresses I purchased happened to fall well below the knee, or perhaps unconsciously I rooted my purchase decision in that old-timey adage of hemlines rising and falling in line with the stock market. Harking from the Great Depression of the 1930s, the ‘lipstick effect’ is the notion that as consumers economise on spending, we turn to entry-price products to cheer ourselves up. In the four years from 1929 to 1933, industrial production in the US halved, but sales of cosmetics rose. Pure proof of retail therapy, in each of the three past recessions of the early 1980s, early 1990s and early 2000s, the European personal care products sector continued to outperform the broader market by an average of 100%.
Just imagine what this means in an era where the unimaginable has happened, countries have had to close their borders, and our favourite pastime - beside pub life! - is at stake. The Great British public can no longer reasonably expect to holiday abroad this summer. Already, many supermarkets’ make-up aisles have been emptied. Stripped bare. In a dystopian scenario, a full face of perfect make-up wouldn’t personally be my most pressing concern, and yet here we are, with empty shelves of - supposedly - the most non-essential items, from lipstick to mascara. Fancy that.
Why does beauty matter?
If stocking up on make-up sounds too flippant for you, consider this. One of the most striking and deeply touching sentiments I have ever read in regards to our industry, was as a preface in ‘Wall and Piece’ by urban artist Banksy (the original excerpt was taken from ‘Five Days that Shook the World’ by Nicholas Best):
“When British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945, they encountered 40,000 prisoners in 200 huts. They also discovered 10,000 bodies. The vast majority had died from typhus or starvation. The German guards, fearing infection, had refused to bury them, and the remaining skeletal prisoners lacked the strength to do so, so the bodies had been dumped in piles around the camp and left to rot.
In his diary at the time, British Lieutenant Colonel Mervin W. Gonin, commander of the 11th Light Field Ambulance, R.A.M.C. was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945, and wrote:
“It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering around about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on their arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.”
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs doesn’t include ‘aesthetic needs’ and ‘self-actualisation’ without reason. How we are (sheltered, fed, rested) transforms to who we are (connected, respected, recognised) as we progress up his conceptual pyramid. Within the personal care industry, we begin with washing and cleanliness, before finishing with fragrance and colour cosmetics: from core hygiene to flamboyant self-expression and adulation, our industry runs the gamut.
Personal care vs pharmaceuticals
From wartime to peacetime, our industry has consistently proved resistant to recession. Quickly, we have seen a renewed focus on hygiene, and unlike the pharmaceutical sector where new product launches can take years to reach market, we in the personal care industry can move much faster.
You may already have heard of LVMH diverting their manufacturing facilitates to hand sanitiser due to a global shortage of hand sanitising gel and donating these free of charge to the French public health authorities, but this herculean effort and pace has been replicated among large to small enterprises with energy and aplomb.
The inimitable Sarah Brown of PAI Skincare has already got to work, releasing a hand sanitiser, appropriately named Acton Spirit, in just two weeks! Even better, they’re already distributing to local businesses and charities, schools, nurseries and the surrounding community as of the 19th March. A remarkable attempt given the first death in the UK from coronavirus was just 14 days beforehand and products typically take 9-18 months to reach market. Kudos to both LVMH and PAI for taking a community approach first and foremost.
When this is over, what’s next?
I predict we’ll see much more of a community and social purpose approach to business – we’ve been talking about ‘conscious consumerism’ for more than a decade, but I predict the coronavirus pandemic will finally turn the tables for a more integrative conscious capitalism. One of the big ‘faults’ of climate change is that the average man-on-the-street seems unable to imagine or fully comprehend the impact of this macro concept on their personal life. Coronavirus, I think, is a precursor to raising this understanding; a sign of things to come and how future resource wars can entirely disrupt our day-to-day lives.
Sustainability and biodegradability have already largely been incorporated into new brand and product development, to varying levels of success, from clean, green and natural to total greenwashing. We will now see more social purpose brands. Examples include the NHS supporting brands, ‘My Trusty Skincare’ and ‘Nursem’, or the visually impaired and disabled people’s employer ‘The Soap Co’. This is the ultimate realisation of the triple bottom line business model. That economic growth must be part of the three tenets of sustainable development, also known colloquially as: people, planet, profit.
Consumer behaviour
Naturally, we will see an ongoing and sustained focus in hygiene, the much maligned soap bar will see a renaissance – see the new ritualisation and ceremonialisation of washing one’s hands for a minimum of 20 seconds – as will hand sanitisers which will become, once more, widely used for some significant time to come.
Predictably also, a commensurate rise in the sale of hand creams, as we all become more acutely aware just how drying and skin-damaging bleach and other household cleaners are.
Plant-based health
I do not believe it’s anywhere near game over for the naturals sector either. In the long term, I predict we will see a continued and greater emphasis on holistic ‘health care’ rather than allopathic ‘sick care’. The idea being a ‘healthy’ body with a well-nourished immune system is less prone to disease, averting causes of illness long before they materialise, and strengthening our resilience when they do. Whereas, by contrast, Western allopathic medicine is geared towards treating only the symptoms and manifestation of illness. Don’t believe me? Lest we forget estimates put somewhere in the region of 50-75% of the world’s pharmaceutical drugs as derived from plant-based herbal remedies…! Nature is science.
Last week at my local markets in a largely Afro-Caribbean part of London, I saw independent food stalls swamped by requests for ginger, turmeric, and garlic. These remarkable plants, among many, are ripe with scientific studies proving their efficacy and the innate antimicrobial, antiviral, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory resilience they proffer.
Brand behaviour
Alongside community-centric and natural health businesses, we will see emerging trends like ‘DTC’ and ‘genderless’ become more entrenched and universal. The personal care industry will be seen as more essential to health and hygiene and less flippant and superficial; future comparisons of the beauty industry will be made less as an accoutrement to the fashion industry, and more as the friendlier, and more accessible, face of the pharmaceutical sector.
If I am honest, I sometimes secretly struggle with the term ‘beauty industry’, to outsiders I know it can come across as shallow, trivial, and unimportant and yet put simply, it’s essential: everybody needs to wash.
There has been a rising trend for some time towards genderless brands and products, and less specific targeting to women (which is oh so often stereotypical, clichéd, and confidence-sapping). I predict this defeminisation will continue in everything from product design and development to brand marketing.
Our new normal
We are all going to be online even more than usual for a bit. Mercifully, we have the internet; can you imagine if the self-isolation directive had hit us in the ‘90s? When this is over, employment and business will be changed for ever. Companies slow to believe in working from home will discover, yes, it’s quite possible. While high street stores close, they will place ever greater emphasis on their ecommerce channels, and going forward, this will become our predominant sales platform.
Things won’t go back to the way they were, so effective free sampling programmes and rapid no-hassle returns (including home collections) will become essential pillars of the online shopping environment. Online shopping is also tied to transparency; you cannot satisfactorily make a sensory purchase online if the profile is not adequately explained or the full list of ingredients is withheld.
This pandemic is unprecedented, but to my many friends who run their own businesses and fear for their future livelihoods, I want to say this: stay confident. Our industry serves a vital and valuable role in protecting the public’s health and hygiene, and it will survive even this pandemonium.
So, keep it clean, and keep up the good work.
See you on the other side.
About the author:
Wren Holmes founded the independent consultancy, Brands Botanic Ltd, specialising in plant-based product and brand development based on the triple bottom line approach to business. Her decade-long leadership of new development projects have several hundred award wins among them.
This article was kindly republished in full on BeautyMatter.com and an excerpt is on TheRedTree.co.uk.
