What is happening to the beauty industry during the coronavirus pandemic?

.Hi Everyone, 

We thought we would look into and explore what is happening to the beauty industry during the coronavirus pandemic.  There's some pretty scary stats out there about the economy in general - four days ago the BBC reported that the economy has drunk a record 20.4% in April.  The big question in our industry though is, how is the beauty and cosmetics industry being affected?

Firstly - some products are not only on the up, but are spiralling into the stratospheres of success - bars of soap, liquid soap, hand sanitiser and disinfecting products.   We have also seen beauty brands help out - one of our winner's in the UK 2020 Global Makeup Awards, the L'Occitane Group, has manufactured over 70,000 litres of hand sanitizer for health officials.

As spas and salons have been forced to shut by government mandate (Treatwell is currently suspended), we have also seen a huge rise in home treatments.  That includes home face masks, box hair dye kits and home hair removal kits. At this point we of course want to mention our favourite hair removal kit, and winner in the UK 2020 Global Makeup Awards - No Mo-Stache's No Mo-Unibrow.   

On the other hand, the beauty events calendar has been thrown into the air.  Beauty Awards with galas have had to cancel the galas of course and stream them online or to announce them online.  Beauty Expos such as Bologna's Cosmoprof has been postponed until next year and will be Spring 2021.  People are also looking after themselves more in lockdown  - we are seeing 40% of high income earners looking to actively manage their stress, including with at home spa treatments.

Brands have been forced online, and have been selling through their website, facebook, Instagram and other online channels. Many, who haven't been able to adapt to selling online, have ceased business for months,  It's not all doom and gloom for the beauty industry though.  Euromonitor international predicts that the beauty sector, both luxury and non luxury, is set to fall by just 2% this year.  It is a negative fall, but it could have been much worse.  For example, comparatively, the luxury goods market will fall 18% this year globally.  As a side note, Switzerland is seeing a fall of 25% for the luxury goods market, which is a whopping fall of 1 in 4.  We are also expected to see an economic bounce back, and we are hoping some consumers have experimented with new beauty brands during lockdown.

What is the Global Makeup Awards and Global Green Beauty Awards seeing within the beauty and cosmetics industry?

In addition to the above - we thought you might want to see closer to home our own experiences and expectations for the beauty industry during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of course we have seen business struggle with warehouse issues, particularly at the beginning of the outbreak when there were no organised ways to manage social distancing, but that now seems to almost have disappeared.  People have more guidance and know how to work appropriately.  We are also seeing people want to use marketing more than ever to promote their brands online.  We have seen a monumental number of entries in the Global Green Beauty Awards.  This awards is green and clean, and it seems the coronavirus outbreak has also led people to be more environmentally aware.  This has been the perfect backdrop to enter the 2020 Global Green Beauty Awards.

Though we had to postpone Asia as a beauty awards which was due to launch, regrettably, during the Chinese coronavirus outbreak, as a whole the other regions haven't been affected and are going ahead as scheduled. As an online beauty awards and makeup awards, we are online only so thankfully we have not had to cancel any galas and therefore on a personal level haven't been too affected by the crisis.

We hope everyone is slowly getting back to normal and looking forward to nominating their brands in our upcoming USA Global Makeup Awards (An American Beauty Award) and the Global Green Beauty Awards (an environmentally friendly green beauty award).

Best wishes the GMA team xx