'Twas the year for skin care, but not for sun care

The global beauty and personal care market continues to grow at a steady rate and from looking at estimates from Euromonitor it has done again; and will continue to do so next year.

With this in mind CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com decided to ask the market research company’s Beauty and Personal Care Analyst, Nicole Tyrimou, to give her opinion and comment on what has been hot, and what has not, in 2014.

It came as no surprise that the biggest category in the market, skin care, continues to be the biggest contributor to growth in absolute terms.

Skin care growth​

Nicole explains that this is driven by high performance in Asia-Pacific for facial care and also in Latin America for body care.

“​[Skin care is] followed by hair care which has seen a revival over the past couple of years - driven by innovation and closer alignment to skin care,” ​she says.

“In terms of growth, deodorants was the fastest growing in percentage terms followed by baby products.”​

It was not all good news for every category in the last year though, and one of the underachievers this year was the sun care category.

“Among the underperformers the one to highlight is sun care which despite strong growth in Latin America and MEA, it has declined in North America in 2013 and remained static in Western Europe (0%) growth with low growth prospects in both regions,”​ says Nicole.

Sun care cannibalised​

That doesn’t tell the whole story though, as the reason for this drop is the increasing integration of SPF protection in skin care and colour cosmetics products which has cannibalised sun protection’s growth, according to the beauty expert.

“As skin care products and colour cosmetics are already more established in consumers’ daily routines, their SPF versions are preferred over sun protection offerings that also provide moisturisation or colour,”​ continues Nicole.

“Skin care and colour coverage remain stronger benefits for consumers despite the increasing efforts by governments to raise awareness on the necessity of using sun protection daily, all year round.”​