Over the last decade, skincare led the gains within the prestige beauty industry, fragrance was challenged as consumer usage declined, and Boomers drove demand and influenced innovation within the industry. However, 2015 marked a turning point for the beauty industry, driven largely by shifts taking place within skincare and the heightened importance of Millennials, according to data from global information company The NPD Group.
Today the fragrance category is outperforming skincare, skincare and wellness are becoming more intertwined, anti-aging is becoming less prominent, and the lines are blurring between makeup and skincare. For the first time, the fragrance category contributed more annual dollar gains than skincare. [...] In 2015, NPD found that young Millennials in particular are using more fragrance and less of them are using facial skincare products.
— Read more at Category and Generational Shifts are Altering the Prestige Beauty Landscape, NPD Reports at NPD.
I can’t help feeling a little left out–this article talks about Boomers and Millennials, and ignores the generation in between. I guess Generation X has no impact on the industry at all? It is not just this particular article either; GenX seems to get overlooked quite a lot.
It was not until the Millenials that the age balance tipped enough to make skincare a lesser category, that’s all.
I seem to encounter this quite a bit, though. A lot of talk about Millennials and Boomers, and scarcely a mention of Generation X. Perhaps we should be called the Invisible Generation. We can’t call ourselves the Silent Generation, as that name is already taken. Here is an article discussing this very theme:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/05/generation-x-americas-neglected-middle-child/
Interesting. I don’t feel any “allegiance” to a named generation so it doesn’t really resonate with me. Sorry if you feel left out!
Haven’t we (gen x) been kinda invisible all along? we used to be the slackers (which we never were in the least)…
I think we are fairly ignored because we are a smaller population. boomers are a large group and millenials are large as well. gen x is smaller.
interesting to think, though, that gen x is the one taking care of boomer parents as well as millenial children. also the people doing the bulk of major purchasing…right?
The smallness might be why people identify with their cohort more? I could overlap between baby boomer or generation x, depending on whose dates you use, and don’t feel attached to either.
I’m on the cusp, so to speak. Some people try to tell me I’m a Boomer (I was born in 1964), but I have never identified with the Baby Boomer generation in any way. The description of Gen X in the Pew Research article does fit me pretty well. Other sources, however, define the date range for Gen X as ~1961-1981.
I think we may have been unfairly characterized as slackers because we just didn’t make a lot of noise or draw a lot of attention to ourselves, so much of what we were doing went unnoticed. There seems to be an alternating pattern. I see the Boomers and the Millennials as having much in common, and I think Gen X has much in common with the Silent Generation.
I agree with you. Being Gen X I often wonder ‘what about my generation?’
Millennials and Boomers are hugely influential in many industries – the first because they’re the first generation having experienced technology from birth and the latter because of its massive size.
I’M A BOOMER AND I LIKE FRAGRANCE, OK? (Sorry.)
Apparently your fellow boomers spend more of their money on skincare than fragrance 🙂