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Beauty’s growth might be slowing slightly in the U.S., but consumers remain just as engaged, new data shows.
According to Circana data from January through September, prestige beauty’s growth is still beating out the mass market. The markets grew 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
Fragrance was the brightest spot across the board, soaring 14 percent in prestige and notching 2 percent gains in mass.
“After several years of fragrance being about luxury, this year was where the lower-priced side of prestige fragrance took off. We saw it starting in 2023, but it became a strong driver in 2024,” said Larissa Jensen, senior vice president of beauty and industry adviser, Circana. “It’s now about products that have a lower price point, whether it’s a mini or a body spray, but we’re seeing both sides of the coin grow.”
Prestige hair jumped 9 percent, while growing 2 percent in mass channels. The gains there, Jensen said, came from existing trends. “When you think about scalp care and hair loss, all of that is helping to drive hair overall,” Jensen said. “Styling products and treatments in prestige continue to do really well.”
Skin care grew 3 percent in prestige and 2 percent in the mass market. There, consumers are meeting in the middle of the overall beauty market, with higher-priced items in mass and lower-priced products in prestige capturing the most market share.
“When you look at the performance of mass and prestige, it’s pretty close. Everything else has a larger disparity between mass and prestige,” Jensen said. “I’ve been talking about the democratization of the category, because skin care is all about efficacy and consumers have learned they don’t have to pay a lot to get results. It’s a category that consumers go back-and-forth between.”
Makeup was the only category to drop in mass, falling 3 percent. Makeup in the prestige market, conversely, grew 5 percent. Lip cosmetics was the brightest segment in the category across both mass and prestige. In mass alone, lip was up 8 percent and represents a $1.4 billion business.
“Lip products are one of the highest impulse purchases for consumers — in terms of what they anticipate buying versus what they actually buy,” Jensen said. “You can also have multiple shades, different types and different formats. It’s the one bright spot in makeup for both mass and prestige.”
Brick-and-mortar remains the most important channel in each, though Jensen called out that e-commerce grew faster than physical retail on the mass side of the business.
“On the prestige side, brick-and-mortar is going to continue keeping that side of the market and is performing better than e-commerce. But the big differentiator is that you can go and try a product in-store in prestige, and in mass, you can’t test and try,” Jensen said. “There’s also so many [stock keeping units] that can be carried within a particular display space [in mass].”
The outlook for holiday is optimistic, with Circana reporting that 29 percent of consumers expect to buy beauty as gifts, which is an improvement from 2023. That number is even higher for households with children, with 41 percent saying they will gift beauty products.
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