Having worked in the skincare industry for over 10 years now, I've had a great deal of experience with new products and product "innovation". It's a known fact and norm in the industry, that without newness, you simply die. Competitive exclusion in it's simplest form. If your product is one of those really rare brands that has something very unique and special (normally a combination of both exceptional product and even more exceptional marketing), and consumers remain loyal, regardless of what other new wrinkle cures or botox alternative are sprouting up all around them, then you are of a very rare breed indeed. But sadly also a dying breed. It won't last forever. You will ultimately need to keep coming up with new "stuff" to keep your customers believing in you and buying your brand.
The real question though, is how innovative really are all these new products flooding the market? And boy do they flood the market. On average 25% of established skincare brands revenues for the year will come from new products. So no newness = no 25% increase = no growth. And let's be honest - these companies are not really thinking about your laugh line, but more about the importance of that 25%! So whether there is real newness to put out there or not, they're going to make sure they find some. The 25% depends on it!
Well I can categorically tell you, that all these "NEW" products are not innovative or NEW at all. Like AT ALL! 99.9% of them are the same stuff, that either the company has done before, or a competitor has done before. It will have sparkly new packaging, a new "break-through" anti-ageing ingredient and definitely a new scientific study with "further evidence" that you have to buy it as the solution to all your ageing woes. But it's the same stuff. Same technology. And like everything else in our beautifully packaged and presented world, just with more ingenious marketing.
So what happens to the few guys that really are doing amazing new things. How do you even attempt to get noticed or understood as genuinely NEW? The answer to that is not as simple. Unfortunately you have to compete with the "me too's" and you have to tell your story. You just have to be a little more clever about who you tell it to and how you tell it. You have to make sure the people who will "get it" are told. The old marketing rules still apply. Segment your market. Define your niche and make sure you target them. And you have to tirelessly educate everyone around you and shout from the rooftops that this is something awesome and something special.
I am priviledged to be part of the launch of probably the most innovative and "game-changing" launch in skincare that the market has ever seen. Esse Organic Skincare has launched a range of probiotic skincare products under the name Esse Plus+. The products are designed to work with the microbial ecosystem on your skin, to optimise the good microbes and exclude the pathogenic ones. True innovation can only be based on real and new scientific discovery - and this line takes cogniscence of the findings of the Human Microbiome Project which reveals that humans are a complex mix of trillions of microbes, and these very microbes are responsible for so many of our optimum bodily functions. The brand has researched, and understood every detail there is to know about how skin functions and the hugely complex environment on the skin, and designed a solution that considers every single angle. Being so new, and so innovative, there is mountains of info to talk about and explain so I could go on for days. But they're doing a great job of this too, so visit their website and check it out.
The rarity of something authentically innovative as this, is awesome to see. And even more awesome to have been privy to!
