In many industries predicting the future is difficult. The emergence of new products like smartphones, ride-sharing apps, 3D printers and more were not predicted by most experts. Even the development of the Internet was not widely predicted. But in the beauty industry, predicting the future is a bit easier. This is mostly because our industry doesn’t change much. Despite the fact that thousands of new products and patents are introduced each year, our industry hasn’t substantially changed since I started some 30 years ago.
Predictions
So the short version of this article on future predictions is that the industry will not change much. Don’t get me wrong, there will be lots of new products introduced. And there will be clever marketing stories that catch consumer’s attention and sales. However, if we look at the products themselves, I anticipate there will not be much difference in the products we see now from the ones we saw 10 or even 20 years ago.
Trends
While it may be true that products will not be changing much from a consumer standpoint, there are trends that will certainly have an impact on formulating. Here are some of the biggest trends that have been suggested and how they will really impact cosmetic formulators in the coming years.
Artificial Intelligence
Beauty brands are increasingly looking for ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) to make their products more appealing to consumers. For example, AI can now be used to analyze consumers’ skin and recommend products that are tailored to their individual needs. AR is used to allow people to try on makeup and skincare products virtually, so consumers can see how they look before they buy.
But these both remain gimmicky marketing applications that will not have much impact on the job of a formulator. Really, how would knowing the exact skin type and genetic code of a consumer help in deciding the percentage of oil and emulsifier to include in your formulation? Our skin care technology is just not advanced enough for those differences to significantly impact formulating.
However, AI will impact have a big impact on formulating. Chemists will use chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude2 for a number of things such as:
- Starting formula generation
- Ingredient recommendations
- Formulation troubleshooting
- Method development
- New product ideas
If you haven’t started experimenting with tools like these on your job, it’s time to start.
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Natural and organic ingredients
This trend started in the early 2000’s and it continues to have a big impact today. Consumers seem increasingly interested in using natural and organic ingredients in their beauty products. This trend is being driven by marketers and NGOs who hype up concerns about the safety of synthetic ingredients. Beauty brands are responding by reformulating their products with ingredients they can claim are more natural and organic. Unfortunately, this has meant that consumers are getting products that are more costly to manufacture and typically inferior in performance. It is just a reality that traditional, safe and effective ingredients like petrolatum, silicones, and parabens are often superior in performance and price to their natural-derived replacements.
While this trend to natural and organic ingredients may be detrimental to the value consumers get from beauty products and to the amount of land used to grow food, it is arguably a positive development for formulating chemists. Whenever a reliable ingredient gets removed from your formulation options, there is work to be done to find suitable replacements. This, at least, is job security for formulators.
Sustainability
This is one of the buzzwords we see everywhere in various industries and the cosmetic industry is no different. Biotech companies are developing new ingredients for cosmetics that are hoped to be more sustainable and effective. For example, some companies are using plant-based ingredients to create biodegradable packaging or solvents derived from fermentation processes.
There is certainly some promise in the application of biotech to solving the issue of sustainability. However, it is difficult to always know whether a new process is actually more sustainable than the current way of doing things. The amount of energy that goes into a system that is supposed to be more sustainable is often higher than that of standard methods. When you think about it, the whole idea of sustainability is in conflict with a company’s desire to continually increase sales. And any company could immediately make themselves more sustainable by cutting sales by 10%. Does anyone wonder why this doesn’t happen?
But for formulators, this trend will affect you in the same way that the push to natural and organic ingredients affects you. More experimenting and job security.
Other trends that might affect formulators in the coming year include:
Multifunctional Cosmetics: Consumers are increasingly interested in using cosmetics that have functional benefits beyond just making them look good. For example, some consumers are looking for sunscreens that also hydrate the skin or lipsticks that also provide SPF protection. What will be the next BB cream?
Refillable packaging: Consumers are increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of their purchases. Beauty brands are responding by developing more sustainable packaging and even refillable options. Of course, refillable products are fraught with challenges such as microbial contamination so cosmetic chemists will have to solve this problem before there is widespread adoption of this practice.
For cosmetic chemists, the evolving landscape of the beauty industry presents both challenges and opportunities. While the cosmetic industry will change and adapt to trends, it’s worth noting that most of the industry’s foundational practices have remained relatively unchanged over decades. Consumers want products that work and don’t cost too much. Whether they are AI-derived, natural, or sustainable if a formula does not fulfill those key purposes, it will not be a successful product on the market. And creating products that consumers love is what being a cosmetic chemist is all about.
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