The beauty and wellness industry is ever evolving. At the recent Cosmoprof North America in Las Vegas, trends like clean beauty and environmentally-friendly brands were some of the highlights.

We connected with Beautyque NYC Founder Sonia Khemiri to discuss the biggest trends in the beauty and wellness categories and space.

1. Aging Audience: The demographics of our consumers is a mix made up of Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X and Boomers. “While we are a tech beauty company that is focused on younger generations, we are committed to responding to the needs of all others as well. I am part of Gen x and I easily relate,” Sonia says. Other brands also focus on a younger audience; however, Beautyque NYC observed some brands reaching out to the older audience by giving them products for the needs they were looking for, that being either in skincare, makeup, haircare, sexual wellness and other categories.“We have been speaking to the founder of Me Cosmetics, a brand that created a clean hair care powder to cover up some empty parts of the scalp. It's effective, targeted to an older audience and the founder is making sure to build a successful structure to reach her audience,” Sonia describes.

2. Ingredient Freshness: Ingredient freshness is something that Beautyque NYC has on its platform; however, there also seems to be an awareness of the degradation of ingredients with shelf life overall in the beauty industry. “Creating a product that has a long shelf life with fresh ingredients takes a lot of research and work and sometimes is not achievable. It is not an easy challenge,” according to Sonia. “However, we are working with a brand that we believe has found the right way to do it. Fresh Chemistry joined us in 2021. Freshness is at the heart of the brand. The founder is a skincare guru who worked years to achieve the launch of two products that are activated only when you use them the first time. Active ingredients are separated, and you mix them when you use them. The ingredients are clean and the product delivers what it claims.”

3. Sustainability: “I see many brands changing their packaging to more sustainable options, taking into consideration Carbon footprint and many other factors involved and others also have some certification to support their claim,” Sonia says.

4. Clean Ingredients: “We are noticing this year that having clean ingredients is becoming a ‘standard’ and not just a goal to reach. We have also noticed that ‘clean’ is not standardized yet and every retailer or brand has their own definition of clean,” Sonia explains. “We built our own clean standard as well. All brands in 2021 who joined us have clean ingredients according to our standards.”

5. Young Consumers and Young Founders: “Something we also worked on this year was to encourage brands created by young entrepreneur founders targeting a teen audience in general to join our platform,” Sonia adds. “We spoke with a few brands and are planning to add them for 2022 with the new Beautyque NYC rebranding. We tend to focus on Millennials and Gen z but there are generations on both sides of the bracket that have different needs and teens are one of them.” For example, the brand 31st Street is completely focused on teen skincare and haircare. Their products are marketed as easy-to-use products, super clean, and are building a great audience around their brand. “There is nothing more fulfilling than encouraging young entrepreneurs to fulfill their dreams and provide the right products for the same targeted market,” Sonia believes.

6. Beauty from Inside: The year 2021 continued the trend on Beauty from Inside. “The pandemic forced us to be more caring about our skin health from inside out by hydrating, hydrating, and hydrating. Some supplement companies are also focused on bringing hydration and detoxing from inside out with vitamins,” Sonia says. “We have an amazing brand, Desert Harvest, that we added to our platform. What made them stand out from the masses was their main ingredient, Aloe Vera. This product has a patent extraction that makes the quality of it extremely efficient. It's mainly used in supplements, but also some skincare and more wellness-related products.” Beautyque NYC has assessed many other nutrition companies and is adding them in 2022 to its platform and consumer offerings. “From detox and booster shots to beauty shakes, proteins, and supplements for overall skin health,” Sonia outlines. “This is our mission from our launch and we see that it is trending well in the industry.”

7. Kinky Products: “Sexual wellness is the backbone of our existence. It's part of our everyday lives and should be a part of our beauty routine. It starts from intimate care to sexual pleasure gadgets, aphrodisiacs, menopause to andropause,” Sonia describes. “It's all related to our sexual drive, which we would like to keep as long as possible. Sexual wellness has and is continuing to be a trend that we believe will grow and last.” At Beautyque NYC, sexual wellness is in the heart of what the company wants to accomplish with its customer on levels that it believes completes the beauty journey. “We saw Goop and the sexual program they launched this year. We also reviewed many companies and new startups in the sex industry just entering the beauty market,” Sonia explains. “They need to adjust their products, packaging and their messaging but the goal is the same. We currently have two brands in the sexual wellness area but we are looking forward to expanding in the upcoming months.”

8. Community Driven Brands:Having a Mission behind the brands, besides all other attributes, is important and trending as well as Sustainability and Recycling. “Like Myro, a refillable Deodorant brand that uses less plastic in their packaging encouraging consumers to recycle. Most recently, they launched a new unique refillable body wash,” according to Sonia. Community Building brands, that are inclusive of all genders and people of color are growing in numbers to the point where some of them are now part of the larger beauty marketplace.

9. Hormones and Skin Conditions: “We proudly have hormone-related products on our platform. We see the trend being applied to multiple spectrums,” Sonia says. “Veracity Selfcare created a hormone testing kit that gives you the product you need to use according to your hormones level and we believe that this is only the beginning.”

10. Spotlight Product Ingredient:Single ingredient hero products like retinol and collagen are still in demand. “On our platform, we focused on a natural retinol replacement, the Phyto A+ from Founder's formula. A formula with Australian Tobacco that has benefits of the retinol without its downsides that the ingredient brings,” Sonia explains. 

11. At Home Tools & Devices: The DIY trend, born from the pandemic, is in its infancy and has led to the creation of tools and devices that help maintain healthy routines at home. “Think of microcurrent devices, cooling devices, and at-home manicures,” Sonia advises. “One of the tools we like is the Handimani manicure tool. It is a patented tool to achieve your perfect at-home manicure and people are loving it.”

12. Augmented Reality, Livestream Shopping & Virtual Reality: Livestream shopping is a mix of physical shopping by trying the products, experiencing the store and the convenience of getting the product online. Livestream shopping ascended in 2020. “We expect this to become a major trending component in the beauty industry,” Sonia predicts. Augmented reality such as try-ons, etc. are here to stay especially for color cosmetics now but allow skincare and other categories in beauty. “The uncertainty of 2022 is still there and even if we can have a physical store (for us it's pop-ups in Soho NYC), other retailers that already have their physical space, still need to make sure they have a strong digital presence,” Sonia recommends. “We will see more brands and retailers with 3D shopping platforms or using Virtual reality for Marketing purposes. We will also see a resurgence of brands in the metaverse environment and involved in NFT as well. Beautyque has been in this environment from the beginning and we are planning to be in the metaverse universe and hopefully collaborate with video game companies in the future.”

13. Fragrance: The fragrance category has grown in popularity and has had a major impact on the beauty industry since the beginning of the pandemic. 

14. Intercultural Community Collaborations: Brand founders saw the power of community, especially with the Black Beauty movement. Many of the brand founders and organizations from different roots and backgrounds are collaborating to bring together the strength of each. “This is one of the main things we believe in. Working together as brand founders to bring communities together through our life experiences (either online or in-store),” Sonia states.

15. CBD and THC Infused Products: A trend we are gradually adding to our platform in 2022 includes incorporating CBD and THC infused beauty and wellness products, according to Sonia. “Relaxing products are in demand against anxiety. It's still in the process of being legalized in New York, But as soon as it is, within the next year we will see a lot of CBD/THC infused products in the beauty market,” she adds. “On our end, we will be adding specific beauty brands that use high-quality CBD.”

16. Makeup & Cosmetics Trends: “When it comes to makeup and cosmetics, due to the fact that we were quarantined and had more time to pamper ourselves and to try to make ourselves feel better, we see a rise in the ‘more is better’ mentality in makeup instead of ‘less is better’, such as using glitter more than usual, overlining lips, overusing products like blush and eyeliner.” Sonia believes. “This will most likely continue to gain popularity.”

17. Body Care Category Trends: Brightening body products like mists and body peels are surfacing, such as the body peel from Stacked Skincare. “Dark spots on the face have been treated for a while, but the body dark spot treatments are now on the rise,” Sonia believes.

18. Beauty Purchasing Trends: “We conducted a survey and people have changed their habits tremendously by being more comfortable buying their beauty products online; however, people still like to go to the store,” Sonia says. “We see a mix of both either browsing online and buying it in-store after or trying it in-store and buying it online after.” 

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