TRENDS 2021: WELLNESS IN THE ‘NEW NORMAL’

SIX TRENDS THAT WILL DEFINE THE WELLNESS SPACE IN 2021

With COVID-19 continuing to evolve at rapid pace, causing catastrophic economic downturns, and a serious health pandemic globally; 2020 has rocked the world to the core. As we close the year, positive signals and key learnings from the past 12 months are emerging for the lucrative, $4.5 trillion global wellness market, and could be the key to a successful and elevated 2021 if we take note. Here we consider the major wellness and beauty trends for 2021.

INCREASED BANDWIDTH BRINGS HIGHER CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT

A step up from the at-home rituals and devices we saw evolve over the year of COVID; the longer the population was in lockdown, the more they demanded innovation they could take from the salons, directly to their home. At home devices will evolve even more in 2021, but with a focus on ‘EXPERIENCES’. While 2019 saw companies push time saving, convenient treatments for the busy consumer, 2020 allowed innovation to focus on developments allowing consumers to pamper, preen and relax with tailor made at home solutions. With the slow-down of everyday activities, there is more bandwidth for the consumer to engage with new concepts. From learning how to prepare new meals, to at-home exercises, 2020 also saw a lot more adoptions of novel beauty routines and this will rise as we move into 2021.

BEAUTY TO MERGE WITH HOLISTIC HEALTH, PREVENTATIVE TREATMENTS AND WELLBEING EXPERIENCES

Heightened awareness on health and wellbeing through 2020, combined with the above mentioned increase in time available to engage and explore new content has led to more engagement with, understanding of, and a more critical view of ingredients used in products, especially in personal care and beauty. Beauty, health and wellness have never been closer – and they will continue to converge. Successful value  propositions will increasingly have to tick all the three boxes, and for many of the traditional product concepts there will be limitations given by the very product architectures they rely on. Be this fixatives required to stabilise actives in skincare, or thickeners allowing for the manual application of traditional haircare products, these are only some of the many ingredients that do not directly contribute to the treatments and in the presence of valid alternatives, will come under increased scrutiny from ever more ingredient-aware consumers.

MACRO-TREND: RECUPERATIVE LIVING

There will be a shift in consumer behaviours and a pattern to weave beauty and health routines together, to enhance hygiene and immunity and this will happen on a big scale. COVID shocked consumers into taking a deep dive into ingredients and now brands will have to pivot to address this to ensure they stay on the frontline with consumers. Wellfully’s Precision Beauty brand, RÉDUIT, has concepts that allow for the elimination of over half of the ingredients. For example, a traditional conditioner has around 35 ingredients, the Precision Conditioner Hairpod, on the other hand has only 15! In a world that is more critical of health in every aspect of one’s life, consumers will not opt for continuous exposure to 20 chemical ingredients – and this is only one product. Considering the whole range of beauty and personal care products, this is 100s of  necessary chemicals that are effectively eliminated with the RÉDUIT system. Brands will be taking note throughout 2021 and pushing to meet the demands of an ever conscious wellness consumer.

SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING

With sustainability becoming a buzzword in the beauty space; we will see this increase with consumers demanding more from brands in terms of packaging, and procurement of processes and ingredients for a more sustainable future. RÉDUIT, one of the Wellfully brands that launched in 2020, takes its inspiration directly from nature, and from its inception, sustainability was at the forefront of its development. The Return & Renew initiative was created purposefully to be well positioned to address the engagement dimension. The need to engage and interact will remain in 2021 and rewarding and assisting consumers to recycle easily and correctly will go a long way in consumer confidence and loyalty.

BEAUTY WILL GO GENDER NEUTRAL

What Gucci has been doing in fashion, RÉDUIT is doing in beauty, showing beauty has no gender with the launch of a new delivery system which is giving beauty a makeover and turning daily routines into Precision Experiences that bridges the gap between men and women when it comes to looking after their hair and skin. In a nod to that trend, we believe gender neutral beauty will soar in 2021 and RÉDUIT is already developing its solution for this in the form of the UNI device which it plans to launch in early 2021. Spanning sexes, applications (hair, skin), a smart product, a single device that has already 24 different Skinpods and Hairpods available for a wide spectrum of needs – with many more coming very soon. Universality and inclusiveness are important in these times. The UNI line is a huge leap in consumer utility and value, a single applicator device allowing access to the full spectrum of the RÉDUIT Precision Beauty Experience universe.