Welcome to the New Era of Beauty & Wellness

The hair, beauty and wellness market is not just evolving; it’s on the brink of a revolution. Consumers’ beauty needs are diversifying and placing greater value on long-term health, with research from Euromonitor finding that more than half of global consumers define beauty as “looking healthy”. This is triggering a rise in beauty services that support physical, mental, and emotional health, fuelling unprecedented growth opportunities for the beauty and wellness industry.

In partnership with leading trend forecaster WGSN, Fresha has decoded the fundamental trends that are shaping the industry, and those that will drive the industry forward in the years to come.

Fresha surveyed over 1,000 consumers, analysed over 600M bookings, and scanned over 2,000 social media accounts in the build-up to launching their inaugural Future of Beauty and Wellness Trend Report.

The report uncovers and decodes trends set to shape the industry. From high-octane beauty to the diagnostic tools taking over salons, clients’ expectations beauty and wellness will evolve like never before in the next five years.

The report serves as a guide to those changing expectations, and shows how services and treatments will need to be adapted to boost business. All of this game-changing information will help business owners outpace the competition and stay at the forefront of client care.

For hair, beauty and wellness business owners ready to evolve to meet consumer demands with a holistic, personalised approach and with forward-thinking strategies and customer-centric services will be the ones that find the most success and keep clients coming back, into 2024 and beyond.

The rise of wellness culture in recent years has triggered an obsession among consumers, with hyper-healthy lifestyles as the benchmark of wellness. Carl Cederström, associate professor at Stockholm University, coined the term “wellness syndrome” to describe the way in which the ideology of wellness and pressure to keep your body in peak condition actually makes us feel worse.

However, the consumer survey found that the top terms respondents across ages associate with wellness didn’t just include “health”, but also “mental health” and “self-care”, highlighting how consumers’ attitudes toward wellness are broadening to focus on feeling good on the inside.

Consumers are building new routines that reject the unsustainable hyper-healthy approach to wellness in favour of balance. Research from the International Food Information Council Foundation found that Gen Z are the first generation to list mental health as one of their top reasons for eating healthy foods, triggering a rise in new nutritional routines that can improve mental wellbeing. Consumers are investing time and energy to learn about the myriad influences of mental wellness such as the relationship between the gut microbiome and brain, or the impacts of alcohol on mental wellbeing, making nutritional choices that support it.

Feeling good emotionally is becoming the new benchmark for wellness, with a recent YPulse survey finding that 76% of 13 to 39-year-olds in North America consider wellness to be anything that makes you feel this way. Younger generations are heading up this newly liberated perspective, where engaging in any ritual that makes you feel good can be classified as wellness. Fresha’s consumer survey found that listening to music and watching TV/movies were ranked as some of the top activities for respondents across ages to promote self-care. Playing video games scored highly for 18 to 25-year-old respondents, highlighting how diversified wellness activities have become.

Wellness, Liberated

Younger generations are beginning to rebel against conventional wellness culture, offering a new perspective on what it means to feel good on the inside and out.

Wellness is no longer about striving for unattainable health expectations, but instead is a mood-boosting, judgement-free and joy-evoking experience that everyone has the right to define. A newfound freedom to indulge in beauty and wellness will empower consumers to experiment with services that simply make them feel good.

No-boundaries Beauty.

Consumers are rejecting dated societal standards, dismantling historic beauty attitudes around gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity in order to build a positive future where identity has no limits.

In the past few years, representation has begun to replace established toxic beauty standards. This has been evidenced by an influx of beauty brands – including Fenty Beauty in the US and Estrid in Sweden – exposing a multitude of unmet consumer needs. Consumers value transparency when it comes to inclusive behaviour, and respond positively to brands or businesses that embrace it – as shown by the growth of TikTok hashtag #InclusiveBeauty, rising from 3M to 42M views over the last 12 months alone.

The mainstream is embracing what makes each of us unique, spurred on by visibility around the diversity of consumer beauty needs, from ethnicity and gender to body type.

According to projections from Pew Research Center, by 2065 the US population will no longer have any single ethnic or racial majorities. Statista, meanwhile, states that as of 2021 the worldwide population that identifies as transgender, gender-fluid, non-binary or other gender nonconforming ways will be 2%. Businesses can no longer take a one-size-fits-all approach to client care. Hair and beauty salons will need to update their approach to customer service to be authentic allies, placing more focus on meaningful communication, services, and experience.

Regular training and education will be fundamental to this, supporting salons and their employees so they feel equipped to offer heightened levels of customer service that are both professional and personal.

Future success for beauty and wellness businesses will be for those who can intimately respond to individual needs, authentically acknowledging their identity and giving them access to the products, services and experts that can help them to feel like the best version of themselves.

Consumer appetite for explorative, personalised in-real-life experiences is surging. Having been deprived of physical experiences in the depths of the pandemic, consumers are looking for in-person connections, with hair, beauty and wellness salons capitalising on this through expert knowledge and disruptive new services.

Despite technological advances allowing us all to be more digitally connected, consumers feel starved of real human connection and are craving in-person interactions. Research has shown that the main reason people visit locations such as salons and barbers is to seek out positive experiences – be it a relaxing environment, human contact or a unique experience – that they can’t get at home.

Consumers are enjoying the multiple benefits that come from visiting a beauty destination in-person. Face-to-face experiences enable specialists to tweak product formulations or treatments based on the client’s personal needs, mood, beauty goals and individual preferences, giving customers the chance to not only disconnect from the outside world, but receive a hyper-personalised service.

As a result, innovations in treatments such as diagnostic and therapeutic services are gaining traction, requiring specialist equipment that’s often unavailable or hard to access at home, further driving demand for in-person experiences.

As consumers seek out physical experiences for relaxation, health and discovery, salons of the future have the opportunity to combine expertise, sensoriality and new technologies to redefine the salon experiences of tomorrow. Disruptive experiences that favour hyper-personalisation, health and wellbeing will be adopted en masse.

Beauty services are going through a period of progression. Treatments and experiences are now designed to cater to our health needs, extending beyond aesthetics to address physical and emotional wellbeing. There is no longer room for a one size fits all approach, salons must tailor each service and experience to the individual, demonstrating a deep understanding of the client’s identity and personal needs and appraising the value of in-person experiences. Radical innovations are set to further disrupt the world of beauty and aesthetics.

Salons must embrace those that align with their ethos and clients’ values, with qualified expertise underpinning every decision. The common thread throughout our data and analysis is this: consumers are keen to experiment and are seeking diverse and personal ways to engage with beauty and wellness. Welcoming change is not enough. Salons must be at the forefront of innovation, joining in the cultural conversation to lead and shape the future of a vital and beloved industry.

This trend report is courtesy of fresha.com

You can read the full report here www.fresha.com/insights/trend-report