Has Beauty Lost Its Innovation Mojo?
When Dianna Ruth, cofounder and head of product development at Milk Makeup was creating the brand’s Cooling Water Jelly Tints, it was her self-imposed mandate to create something never-before-seen.
“I was in multiple meetings where people were like, ‘Does anyone wear stains anymore? Stains aren’t in,’” she said. “I would say on paper, this item should not have worked. But in real life, it was crazy exciting, and the jiggly texture is what made the item go viral.”
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Milk Makeup’s Cooling Water Jelly Tints were quick to rack up 60,000 shoppers on its wait-list, 160,000 hearts on Sephora’s Loves list and sold 400,000 units during that period — nearly $10 million at the product’s $24 price point.
“Innovation can create a scale that you would never get to normally because of something going viral,” Ruth said. “The look, the jiggly texture, that’s what made it go viral, and it’s like a cheek stain. Innovation can bring back a classic effect with a twist. When we launched Hydro Grip Primer, for example, everyone was like, ‘Why is it green?’”
But industry executives say that success stories such as this — that entail a differentiated format, unconventional texture, desirable attributes and digital traction that stand out on the market — are becoming fewer and further between.
Despite the lightning-strike effect that innovation can have on a business, founders and executives describe a dearth of differentiated products leading to a stagnation in beauty.
“Overall newness is not a big piece of the market, but it’s important,” said Larissa Jensen, Circana senior vice president of beauty. “Within that newness, a significant amount tends to be renovations of existing products versus innovation of a few products. It’s a small piece of the pie, but it’s an important piece of the pie. It’s what gets consumers back in store and exploring your brand. Small, but critical. Within that space of newness, there isn’t a ton that is game-changing.”
Indeed, that applies to companies large and small. As reported, among the headwinds facing the Estée Lauder Cos. is what analysts describe as a shortage of innovation across the company’s portfolio, and it’s become a key strategic priority of newly anointed chief executive officer Stéphane de La Faverie.
Ruth described the phenomenon as, “Straight fear and not a lot of innovation. Brands don’t want to take product risks because it’s scary and an investment, and everyone now is in this data world.
“You’ll see four brands launch setting sprays with the same messaging, and you wonder if they’re all owned by the same parent company, or if a retailer told them to make them. You wonder how it happened, but there’s not a lot of exciting things happening,” Ruth continued.
“The world has become too standardized to an algorithm,” said beauty industry consultant John Demsey. “People don’t take the risks that they used to take and they, many times, blindly embrace trends in such a way that everyone ends up doing variants of the same thing at the same time. Not every brand is meant to play every game.”
Demsey posited that the market’s repetitive nature was especially detrimental to color cosmetics, though isn’t localized to the category.
“People have this herd mentality, especially in makeup,” Demsey said. “Makeup is driven by true innovation and trends in the fashion business. When someone has a success, they don’t get out of that comfort zone and they repeat the success over and over again. The makeup business requires more risk-taking [than that].”
Retail pressure also kills the creativity factor, according to Jeanine Lobell, founder of Neen and previously Stila. “I met with a manufacturer last year, and they were saying, ‘we always know when a retailer has given a directive to their brands because we’ll get 13 brands wanting to make a liquid blush,’” she said. “They try to tell brands what products to make, and it breeds more of the same thing.”
Lobell said cost plays a key role in the hesitance to innovate. “Taking risks is expensive,” she said. “A big brand can afford to innovate, and a small brand can’t, because they don’t have the marketing dollars to support it and they’re being watched and copied. Those are usually those who are capable of innovating. So many of the products I created back in the day came from working on sets as a makeup artist.”
The most successful brands in makeup specifically, Demsey said, “have a strong point of view whether you like it or not. Charlotte Tilbury kills it because Charlotte Tilbury is authentically herself. The success of Bobbi Brown’s Jones Road speaks to a woman in a no-nonsense way that connects with them. Gucci Westman takes her approach on skin and skin tone with a formulation and packaging that’s really innovative and very interesting.”
Brown thinks her brand is resonating because “I didn’t invent makeup, I just reinvented it. I don’t look over my shoulder to see what everyone else is doing, and I don’t believe marketing is why people should do products. To me, it’s about formula.”
She cited Miracle Balm, the hero product Jones Road launched with in 2020, as an example. “It’s not expensive, nor is it risky. It’s just making something better than everybody else’s,” she said. “People want it, they tell their friends about it, they keep buying. I’m the simplest person in the world, but I just know what’s good and what’s not good.”
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