Natural

AMITYVILLE, N.Y. — Skin care and hair care company Sundial Brands on Monday announced its debut on Black Enterprise Magazine’s BE 100s List as the tenth largest black-owned business in America. With a national reach of 35,000 major retailers, an increasing focus on its global strategy and a continual emphasis on new innovations, Sundial is also the only beauty and personal care manufacturer to make this year’s list. 

For all the clamor and controversy over being “cruelty-free,” little attention is paid to the animal derivatives used in the products themselves. There is a small but growing band of thought leaders — brands, bloggers and activists — who are determined to raise awareness and create a market for those who want to lessen the environmental impact of animal agriculture by offering vegan beauty products.

Cosmoprof North America, or CPNA, delivered a robust beauty trade fair featuring resources for every aspect of business, from packaging and filling to finished product. The event, held July 9 to July 12 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, grew this year in both attendance and square footage, which can be attributed to expansion in such specialized areas as scent, natural products and multicultural items, not to mention a multitude of country pavilions — with Korean beauty holding court in two areas.

Americans are spending more than $60 billion on beauty annually. To survive as a meaningful competitor in this evolving beauty arena, drug stores must start to burnish their image.

Although the U.S. color cosmetics market has seen a 2% increase so far this year, growth is sluggish across individual segments, according to new research by Mintel. Consumer desire for simplified makeup routines have affected lip, facial and eye cosmetics — each of which has grown about two percentage points slower this year compared with last year.

With cleansers and moisturizers firing on all cylinders, retailers and brands are fine-tuning other segments to keep the momentum going.

By bringing skin care innovations to mass doors more quickly, chains have been able to keep their customer base from straying to specialty stores and, in some cases, lure them back.

Adult bath products offering a Zen-like experience are bubbling to the surface in mass stores and helping to perk up sales, along with Epsom salt soaks. Consumers are favoring products with a purpose over simply fragrant bath additives. That explains the 26% climb in volume of Dr. Teal’s, which offers a Pure Epsom Salt Soak, along with body wash and foaming bath. It is the No.1 selling SKU in the bath category.