Natural personal care is no longer niche

According to Nature’s Gate, a brand that’s been around since the early 1970s, the natural beauty market is growing and changing. And even long-standing specialty brands are adapting to keep up with mainstream consumer expectations.

At ExpoWest, in Anaheim, California, last month, Nature’s Gate showed a new collection of body care meant to do just that—meet current consumer expectations for natural personal care.

Over the past five years the company has seen real change: “there has been a big shift to the natural market,” Terry Sarian, marketing director at Nature's Gate, tells Cosmetics Design.

“Consumer demand for healthier alternatives has been on the rise due to education and social media platforms sharing a wealth of knowledge. Natural is now mainstream, it isn’t niche anymore. You can purchase natural products almost anywhere; it isn’t exclusive to only specialty stores,” says Sarian.

New launches

The company’s new product launches include Seaweed Body Scrub, Charcoal Body Scrub, Coffee Body Scrub, Coconut Body Butter, Fresh Scented Body Butter, and Shea Butter Mint Body Butter.

And at ExpoWest there was plenty of industry traffic on hand to check out the Nature’s Gate portfolio, over 81,000 attendees and some 4,000 exhibitors.

Reflecting on the show, Sarian tells Cosmetics Design, “We had very successful meetings with all our domestic and international partners about the future of Nature’s Gate. We shared our new product launches, and line extensions which received an incredibly positive response.”

New opportunities

The collection of scrubs and butters, which have as their signature ingredients some of the most popular naturals (coffee, seaweed, coconut, etc.), was created because, “for Nature’s Gate, we needed to fulfill a gap of our product offerings,” Sarian tells Cosmetics Design. “Our focus is to make sure our product portfolio fulfills the needs of our target market.”

Nature’s Gate plans to start shipping the products in August to be available for sale in September. “Nature’s Gate is evolving again,” acknowledges, Sarian “and our partners are happy to be there with us.”