Top Beauty Tool Trends of 2024

As brands continue to fight for consumer attention, and time consequently becomes more of a scarce resource, consumers are increasingly trying to get things done while they sleep.

The heatless hair curler is a widget that molds the hair into a curled form during sleep, replacing a typical morning hair curling which can take 30 minutes. Top Amazon sellers of this product advertise the time almost as prominently as they advertise the heatless function, which helps hair maintain its health over time.

The more tasks we can complete while asleep, the less we have to do while awake. Another timesink, language learning, is following suit: videos with titles like “Learn Japanese While You Sleep” have tens of millions of views and counting.

In the work-via-Zoom era, a professional appearance is mostly above the neck. But while video calls make faces more important, constant mask usage has made skin more susceptible to issues. The hashtag “maskne” has been used in over 200,000 Instagram posts. Products like facial steamers help consumers take care of their face at a time when a Zoom window is their only view into the office. Consequently, people are rushing to buy facial steamers, which use a jet of steam to help cleanse pores and keep face skin healthy.

A look at Alibaba shows that many companies manufacturing garment steamers pivoted some of their resources to facial steamers when the pandemic struck. The decline of large social events meant fewer trips to the dry cleaners as well as a sharp decline in sales of garment steamers. Because the supply chain and tooling for many of the components is the same for garment steamers and facial steamers, many Chinese manufacturers simply pivoted their resources and started pitching their new facial steamers to an entirely new audience.

Like eyebrow trimmers, LED face masks, and other recent health and beauty trends, facial steamers were rising in popularity before the pandemic, but experienced a sharp acceleration starting in March 2020. With salons closed down, consumers who had been getting out-of-home treatments started looking for in-home alternatives.

When the pandemic shifted some activities from out-of-home to in-home, it also changed the nature of conspicuous consumption—from talking about where you went to showing off what you did.

The spa headband is an example of this: at one level, it’s a utilitarian tool; a simple way to keep hair out of the face during a treatment or while washing up. But beneath the surface, brands are also pushing them as a way to make the home spa process more photogenic, and therefore more likely to be shared online.

As the number of small time product creators rises, and the barriers to creating a beauty product fall, larger brands are needing to find new ways to engage and retain their customers.

There’s a concept in the fitness world that is being applied here: an effective motivation tactic for hitting the gym every morning is to put on shoes with the first step out of bed. These routines we do consistently upon waking every morning are likely to turn into habits. And so by keeping customers engaged at peak habit-forming times - the morning and nighttime routines - beauty brands are able to use spa headbands to reinforce the daily ritual that drives sales on many of their other products.

The average American woman owns dozens of cosmetic consumables at any given time, so keeping the purchasing cycles alive for these is critical to business.

A look at Alibaba shows an interesting trend: Because the supply chain and tooling for many of the components is similar for lash fans and other fan products, many overseas manufacturers simply pivoted their resources and started pitching their new lash fans to an entirely new audience of beauty salons and aficionados.

Consumer products often go through a phase where they're driven by new technological possibilities, followed by a phase where the main driver is price discrimination. Mini fridges then beauty fridges, jigsaws then massage guns, zero carb bread then keto bread, among others.

And as new lash fan sellers enter the market, a clever pricing strategy is becoming more popular. In many Asian cultures, 8 is a particularly lucky number and a number of top selling lash fans are priced at $8.88 as a way to market to this audience. This works because 42% of salons in the US are owned by Asian immigrants, especially from Vietnam and China.

Lash fans are small, handheld fans used in salons and at home to speed up the drying process for nails, lashes, and other cosmetics. Historically, handheld fans in general were powered by AA batteries. As Lithium-Ion batteries have gotten smaller and cheaper—and as smartphones have made USB chargers ubiquitous—handheld fans switched to the new battery technology. This doesn't just make the fan slightly more affordable and easier to use; it actually changes who captures the economics of usage. If a fan uses replaceable batteries, high usage means more revenue for Duracell and Energizer. But when the fan's battery is rechargeable, high usage wears the battery out, so the fan has to be replaced, meaning that the recurring revenue accrues to the manufacturer.