Beauty and grooming products are generally applied to enhance the beauty of skin, hair, nails, lips, and eyes.  The usage of ornamental has been common among primitive peoples from pre-historic times.  Greek women used charcoal pencils and rouge sticks of alkanet and coated their faces with powder, which often contained dangerous lead compounds.  Beauty aids reached a peak in imperial Rome.  Egyptians used kohl to darken their eyes; a crude paint was used on the face, and fingers were often dyed with henna.

The ability to customize or personalize beauty and grooming products is a significant draw to today’s consumers.  Consumers are recognizing the importance of smarter and more connected beauty solutions.  These are experiencing a major boom due to the need for tech-validation, alongside the growing desire for more customized beauty offerings that provide unique benefits to each individual consumer, according to research and consulting firm GlobalData.  How well a product is tailored to one’s needs and personality is the second most influential factor when making choices in this sector, the first being how the product impacts health and wellbeing.  Therefore exploring customizable attributes is a key way to engage with this need.

The concept of co-creation or creating products alongside the brand, while not new, is highly appealing to 61% of consumers globally, significantly more-so than DNA customized solutions which just 44% of consumers find appealing, according to GlobalData’s 2016 research.   Although potentially highly effective, the technologically intensive and often costly nature of DNA-based formulations may not necessarily be as accessible or engaging for many consumers on a day-to-day basis.

In recent years, the growths of online influencers such as beauty bloggers have changed how consumers purchase healthcare products through influencing consumer choices.  Over half of consumers globally are more trusting of blogger/user reviews compared to brand claims.