013 - Midweek Mini-Byte: Tuesday, June 24th.
Unilever acquires Dr. Squatch, Olly launches body care, CosRX launches a hair line, hands free flossing, Sakara gets into the gut, Rhode in China, a sunscreen debunking tool, Polar takes on WHOOP...
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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
👀 Keep your eyes peeled for a fun interview all about CPOs tomorrow.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
Jing Daily: Luxury really isn’t as bad as the market says. Opinion: While Bain predicts luxury's worst year since 2008, a more nuanced story of brand adaptation and eventual market recovery gives cause for optimism, argues Andrea Felsted.
Just for fun:
👩🚀 How many people are in space right now.
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
🇯🇵 🇫🇷 Maison Kose - Kose, the Japanese manufacturer, has created a website and in-person experience in France for consumers to experience J-Beauty brands [Instagram].
⭐️ Elise X Elisia - a papaya based bodywash for skin brightening…it looks great [Instagram].
Supractiv - a French skincare brand [Instagram].
⭐️ Unilever owned Olly - announced it is launching into body care products, called Mood+Skin, a line of body washes, scrubs, serums, and products for shaving that are ‘infused with vitamins. The line is scent driven and contains four different scent categories: CALM, REVIVE, BRIGHT and RENEW [Instagram].
🇬🇧 Miriam’s Collection skin and hair care powered by rice water [Instagram].
🇨🇳 Vogue Business: Inside Chinese beauty brand Florasis’s smart factory. It’s rare for an independent C-beauty makeup and skincare brand to invest in its own factory — let alone one so advanced. Will others follow?
⭐️ Dieux created a tool to help anyone better understand their sunscreen.
Vogue Business: Brands wanted to make SPF more fun. But do they still work?
Today, SPFs come in shimmery gel sticks and whipped mousses as brands seek to make the category more sexy and less medicinal. But product efficacy matters most.
🇮🇳 Fortune India: India’s K-beauty boom: How D2C growth and seed-stage bets propelled it to No. 3 globally
👩🦱 Haircare:
CosRX known for their skincare is launching into haircare with a new line, PEPTIDE-132, a new hair & scalp focused line [PR Newswire].
👃 Fragrance:
BoF: Calvin Klein bets on body sprays to be Gen-Z’s obsession. As the fight for teen relevancy and wallet share intensifies, the Coty-produced fragrance line will launch an all-new collection of affordable body mists. Let’s also be real they are also way less expensive to manufacture with extremely high margins.
Hustle: You wouldn’t guess who’s driving perfume sales…teen boys…aka Axe’s wet dream.
🦷 Oral Care:
Gfloss - hands free dental floss. Definitely an interesting idea. Waste aside this is better than not flossing at all, except it doesn’t allow you to floss in the curves of your gums…[Instagram]
💊 Supplements:
Sakara launched a symbiotic supplement.
👩🔬 Femtech:
Monix - a wearable biosensor to monitor female hormonal health.
🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...
Retail Dive: Walmart, Target announce competing Prime Day sales. Both retailers are offering early access to paid loyalty members and highlighting back-to-school savings.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...
MIT Technology Review — Calorie restriction can help animals live longer. What about humans? Research suggests that while cutting calories might help you lose weight and reduce risk of disease, it also carries health risks.
WSJ: Eyeglasses with built-in hearing aids — this just makes sense. Nuance Audio is a new option for people who resist traditional aids, from the company that makes Ray-Bans and operates LensCrafters
Popular Mechanics: Scientists have uncovered a 3rd state of life, which starts after cell death.
Polar announced it is launching a WHOOP (screenless wearable) competitor. It tracks heart rate, stress, and sleep continuously, and uses automatic activity detection (no need to manually start workouts). It will also be subscription-free.
🗣 Social Media: News about TikTok, Meta, BeReal, Snapchat, X...
⭐️ Fast Company: A new Roblox study shows how longer suspensions help curb bad behavior on the platform. Research reveals that longer bans can significantly reduce repeat offenses, without driving users.
💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs, Bankruptcies, Closings...
⭐️ Unilever to acquire the men’s care brand Dr. Squatch…this does not surprise me one bit. One thing Dr. Squatch has done more masterfully than any other brand I know of - especially in the men’s space is understand Amazon and how to create products that pop on that platform.
One in one out? Unilever is looking to sell Graze - the healthy UK based snack brand.
🔬RESEARCH
An obesity drug is being linked to helping to reduce migraines [Nature]
A new study shows that cancer-specific DNA fragments can be detected in blood more than three years before diagnosis, paving the way for ultra-early cancer detection through routine blood tests [Cancer Discovery].
🧐 REPORTS
🇨🇳 Daxue Consulting: How Rhode in China is booming without a market entry.
⭐️ McKinsey: Asia–Pacific consumer sentiment: Spending shifts amid uncertainty.
From India's beauty boom to Japan's discount-driven skincare shoppers, APAC consumers are reacting to inflation and tariffs in wildly different ways, offering tailored growth paths for CPG brands that localize their strategy.
McKinsey: The next innovation revolution—powered by AI.
AI could revolutionize personal care R&D by generating smarter product formulations, replacing consumer testing with “digital twins,” and mining social data for unmet needs, paving the way for faster, more targeted beauty innovations
💡 Enjoy,
-Anne
That Dieux sunscreen tool is so great - just shared with a few friends!
As an email-only free subscriber, sorry to comment without a full Substack profile—I promise I'm neither bot nor undercover company employee! I rly enjoy this newsletter, just wanted to pop in and say Huppy's simply undergone a brand refresh–their products are the same as when I first subscribed in 2021. The new look is nice, much less cutesy (the old logo used an umlaut over the "u"). Oddly, the About Us no longer prominently features their AAPI founders.