Which beauty products are being purchased

Given the realities of working from home, physical distancing, and mask wearing, it has become much less important to wear makeup and fragrance.

For prestige brands, we see 55 and 75 percent declines in cosmetic and fragrance purchasing, respectively, versus a year ago. When consumers do return to work, many will continue to wear masks, further slowing makeup’s recovery. One possible exception is above-the-mask treatments. In China, Alibaba reported eye-cosmetic sales increased 150 percent, month over month, during the week of February 18, 2020.2.

By contrast, skin-care, hair-care, and bath-and-body products appear to be benefiting from self-care and pampering trends. NPD, which tracks consumer spending and point-of-sale data, recorded that sales of luxury hand soap in France were up 800 percent the week of March 16, 2020, as the country went into lockdown.3 Zalando, Europe’s largest fashion and lifestyle e-commerce marketplace, reported a boom in pampering and self-care beauty categories, including candles, aromatherapy, and detox products; sales of skin-, nail-, and hair-care products were up 300 percent, year on year.4 That is consistent with results from Amazon, for which most makeup sales in the United States are showing slight declines, compared with the same month in 2019, while sales for nail-care products (218 percent), hair coloring (172 percent), and bath-and-body products (65 percent) are way up .

Given the realities of working from home, physical distancing, and mask wearing, it has become much less important to wear makeup and fragrance.

For prestige brands, we see 55 and 75 percent declines in cosmetic and fragrance purchasing, respectively, versus a year ago. When consumers do return to work, many will continue to wear masks, further slowing makeup’s recovery. One possible exception is above-the-mask treatments. In China, Alibaba reported eye-cosmetic sales increased 150 percent, month over month, during the week of February 18, 2020.²

By contrast, skin-care, hair-care, and bath-and-body products appear to be benefiting from self-care and pampering trends. NPD, which tracks consumer spending and point-of-sale data, recorded that sales of luxury hand soap in France were up 800 percent the week of March 16, 2020, as the country went into lockdown.³ Zalando, Europe’s largest fashion and lifestyle e-commerce marketplace, reported a boom in pampering and self-care beauty categories, including candles, aromatherapy, and detox products; sales of skin-, nail-, and hair-care products were up 300 percent, year on year.⁴ That is consistent with results from Amazon, for which most makeup sales in the United States are showing slight declines, compared with the same month in 2019, while sales for nail-care products (218 percent), hair coloring (172 percent), and bath-and-body products (65 percent) are way up (Exhibit 5).