Ishonest+: Whats Next for Beauty

After having been immersed in beauty and spoken to experts in a variety of related fields last year, I’ve compiled my predictions for what’s to come in 2019.

Wellness will have its inclusivity momentWe frequently talk about wellness as the “new luxury,” which implies that it is available only to a small coterie of people with the means to participate.

But there are some grass-level movements popping up to spread the wellness, such as HealHaus in Brooklyn, New York which offers donation-based classes (including yoga and meditation), an event space, and instructors who are a variety of ages, races and body types, according to Fashionista. HealHaus also offers education on how to make wellness more accessible, like how people can adopt wellness rituals into their daily lives.

There’s also a proliferation of meditation or self-care apps that cropped up this year, including many designed with accessibility in mind, like #SelfCare and text-message app Shine. Both are free to download and think of time-saving ways for users to take part in self-care and focus on wellness.

“Wellness is still not accessible, even though we were talking about it more, because it was all about going on a retreat and not a day-to-day basis,” said Marah Lidey, co-founder and CEO of Shine. “Accessibility means a lot of things, like being representative, affordable and connected. What we wanted to do was offer someone who could talk [via text] to users, but not take up too much of their time.”

The Farm Bill will usher in a new era of CBDCBD was perhaps the most significant beauty trend of 2018, particularly because it helped usher in a new market economy, which is estimated to hit $22 billion by 2022, according to the Brightfield Group.

What 2019 has in-store for wholesale retailers

Two of the biggest trends of 2018 were the continued rise of fashion resellers, along with a host of fashion brands favoring direct retail over wholesale. That’s why I’m predicting that 2019 will see retailers attempting to take back some of their lost business.

E-commerce retailers like Net-a-Porter have done an excellent job of remaining relevant as retail changes, but more traditional retailers like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s have some catching up to do. I expect these retailers will start rolling out new, more experimental efforts in order to meet the demands of customers used to having affordable, easy-to-access products delivered with all the luxuries that the internet can provide.

Brands and resellers are working together more often, leaving retailers out in the cold. As resellers continue to transform themselves into something resembling a more traditional retail experience, retailers will have to come up with ways to distinguish themselves from their new competitors. –Danny Parisi

A fashion brand’s guide to maintaining control on Amazon

“It’s really important for us to have control over the [customer] experience,” said co-founder Jaclyn Fu. “That’s something we prioritize.”

In that case, considering Amazon’s reputation for confiscating power from partner brands, many would argue that linking with the marketplace was a bad move. But Fu and fellow co-founder Lia Winograd maintain that, five months into their brand’s launch on the marketplace, they feel in-control of their brand across channels.

Here’s how they’ve navigated the notorious power struggle on Amazon:

Going in with a new-to-the-market productFinding a white space is regularly pointed to as the reason a brand’s founder hits go on bringing a concept to market. For Pepper, the brand’s launch on Amazon highlighted the extent to which it was filling a need. As the conversion rate proved 2 percent higher on Amazon than on their own website, Fu and Winograd concluded that women were discovering their products on Amazon by searching relevant keywords (“best bras for small- chested women,” “best bras for 34AA”). Without spending on advertising, their bras were coming up in searches due to the lack of competitive product on the site.

Stepping in as customer servicePepper signed on with Amazon as a Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) partner, meaning (for starters) that the company is responsible for packaging up its own items ordered on Amazon and shipping them to customers. Fu and Winograd take advantage of that opportunity: “Amazon is notorious for making customer communication hard, and we have no insight to the customer support requests they receive,“ said Winograd. “So we include thank-you cards in every package, where we offer up our own service. Every card has our direct contact information, and we state that, if customers want to get in touch, they can.”

Only teasing their product offeringLike many brand leaders, Fu and Winograd are strategic about the items they offer on Amazon, limiting the selection on the marketplace to a small sampling. “The idea is that [Amazon] shoppers will find their perfect fit on the site and want more [styles], and they’ll have to come to our website to get more,” said Winograd.

Maintaining to a niche focusThough Amazon’s private-label strategy is often seen as a threat to brands, Fu and Winograd are confident Pepper is in the clear. “Amazon is more more likely to go after a mass audience — do what Lively or ThirdLove are doing [with extended sizes] — than try for our niche audience.” – Jill Manoff

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