industry trends in America: celebrity beauty brands

With the United States leading the cosmetics market, more and more celebrities are choosing to launch beauty brands in America

Anyone working in the cosmetics industry knows that selling in the United States is essential to a successful beauty brand. Even movie, music, and sports stars know this by now. Many of them have begun to see revenue opportunities in the trendiest industry in the U.S. market and are launching skincare and beauty brands.

The list of celebrities who have launched beauty brands in the United States is already long, but it is set to grow further. After all, Kylie Jenner (Kylie Cosmetics and Kylie Skin) and Rihanna (Fenty Beauty) have led the way, teaching a lesson in marketing and branding to companies with more traditional methods in the beauty industry.

Make-up and cosmetics sales in America see no crisis: Italian companies that want to sell in the US must bet on sustainable and well-targeted products

The celebrities who launched their skincare and make-up brands in the United States did not invent much in the way of products. Instead, they picked up on some market trends that were prevalent among American consumers and gave people what they were looking for.

The most innovative part involved brand communication and broadening the target consumer base:

• Fenty Beauty launched campaigns that helped remove the idea that skincare is a purely female concern
• Rare Beauty removed the taboo of perfection at all costs
• Pharrell Williams (Humanrace) has created a skincare line for men, filling a much-felt gap for skincare-conscious American consumers.
• Harry Styles has created a gender-neutral beauty brand of nail polishes and face serums that also cater to the needs of male skin, Pleasing. The former One Direction singer was already known for his gender-neutral approach to fashion and beauty.
• Tennis champion Naomi Osaka launched Kinlò, a mission-based brand aimed at people with dark skin tones. Kinlò's strengths are its price and target audience: each item is sold for less than $20 and has been explicitly formulated to meet the needs of a target audience that is often overlooked and at risk for skin cancers.

Of course, all products are vegan and cruelty-free. The demand for natural, organic, or vegan products has forced U.S. beauty companies to innovate, and those who have been able to benefit most from this transformation have been those individuals known and admired by Millennials and Gen-Z consumers. They are certainly the primary target audience of the beauty market in America.

Now more than ever, the catalysts for the success of beauty brands in America are social media

Amid all these celebrities launching makeup and skincare brands,  authenticity is just as important as the products being sold. In marketing, authenticity is critical because it creates trust, which drives U.S. consumers to embrace a brand and change their buying behaviors.

This is an era of significant change driven by U.S. consumers: especially in the cosmetics industry, trust in big companies has declined as they have failed to establish valuable relationships with their customers; conversely, U.S. consumers today are more interested in celebrity brand launches than ever before because, thanks to social media (especially Instagram and TikTok), the barriers between company and customer are much less clear-cut and relationships with the brand are, in some ways, more intimate.

It is clear, therefore, that nowadays, it is imperative to have good social media communication to sell cosmetics in the American market. This is an absolute rule that applies to both small Italian businesses and to celebrities.

Selling cosmetic products in the United States to the Gen-Z

Brand relevance in the U.S. market is achieved not only through transparency but also through credibility

Despite its rejection of norms, Gen Z has also fallen under the spell of celebrity brands. This demographic has become the target consumer for many celebrity cosmetic brands in the U.S. - a remarkable achievement considering that younger U.S. consumers tend to shop more consciously. When they find brands with values they identify with, they become promoters among their peers.

It follows that certain cosmetic brands are so successful in America because U.S. consumers trust them. After all, creating a solid business in the U.S. market requires being clear about the brand you want to sell, how you plan to promote it among the new generation of consumers, and how it will be perceived by them - whether it will arouse a sense of expectation or the suspicion that it is just another marketing strategy.