042 - Midweek Mini-Byte: Tuesday, March 10th.
Tariff refund plans, Gen Z's mall revival, Henkel snapping up Not Your Mother's, Muji going all-in on skincare, Edelman on why the 55+ demographic is brand strategy's biggest blind spot.
👋 Hello everyone.
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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
CNN: Plan emerges for $166 billion in tariff refunds. But don’t hold your breath.
The Guardian: Gen Z flocks to Chinese medicine as trust in US health system plummets: ‘It’s so personalized to being human’.
Just for fun:
🗺️ Telegeography: The Submarine Cable Boom as Told by a Decade of TeleGeography Maps.
Turn your handwriting into a font.
🌸 The Death Valley superbloom.
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
Hush Glow - skincare infused makeup for mature sensitive skin [Instagram].
Plast - skincare based on regenerative biotechnology and scientific innovation [Instagram].
MILARĒS - a new lash brand [Instagram].
🌹 Maison de Rosée - garden to skin botanical skincare [Instagram].
👩🦱 Haircare:
👃 Fragrance:
Dos Mundos - “Latin stories told through scent” [Instagram].
🇸🇬 Maison de L'Asie - fragrances inspired by Asia - with four different perfume collections: Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, & India - as well as home fragrance, body products, and hair [Instagram].
🇷🇺 Oume - nature scented fragrances [Instagram].
🇨🇳 To Summer - a Chinese fragrance brand [Instagram].
😅 Deodorant:
🇨🇦 Happy Squad - natural deodorant infused with silver for antimicrobial protection [Instagram].
💊 Supplements:
Evie Beauty Fuel - offering beauty powders - two electrolytes, a mushroom blend, and a turmeric blend - from FabFitFun [Instagram].
👩🔬 Femtech:
Liv - offering a vaginal microbiome test, from the same startup as myDNA [Instagram].
TechCrunch: Whoop launches a new blood test focused on women’s health.
🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...
WSJ: A new generation of mall rats has arrived. Gen Z shoppers are hanging out at malls and documenting everything on social media, helping boost a budding recovery in stores.
🇯🇵 BoF: Muji is turning skincare into its next growth engine. The Japanese retailer is betting on its fast-growing, value-for-money skincare products to drive growth at home and abroad.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...
TechCrunch: Meta sued over AI smart glasses’ privacy concerns, after workers reviewed nudity, sex, and other footage.
JSTOR Daily: The missing sense in modern medicine. Researchers argue routine smell testing could detect neurodegenerative disease and other health risks years earlier than current exams.
Tokyo University of Science: Real-time imaging of microplastics in the body improves understanding of health risks.
CUDIS - a wearable wellness ring that supports anti-aging [Instagram].
💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs, Bankruptcies, Closings...
BoF: Henkel acquires hair care brand Not Your Mother’s. The German consumer giant is expanding its US hair care presence with the the fast-growing, teen-favorite brand.
🇮🇳 Reliance Retail acquires Pahadi Local. India’s largest retailer has acquired Himalayan skincare brand Pahadi Local amid a global surge in demand for Indian beauty and wellness.
🔬RESEARCH
Spermidine is one of the hottest longevity supplements on the market, but new research suggests polyamines like spermidine may also activate a protein linked to cancer cell proliferation, raising questions worth watching for anyone in the supplement space [Journal of Biological Chemistry].
MIT researchers engineered a wearable skin patch that tricks the immune system into concentrating its rarest disease-fighting cells at a single skin site, then collects them non-invasively, outperforming blood draws and surgical biopsies for immune monitoring across vaccines, infections, and cancer [Nature Biomedical Engineering].
A two-year clinical trial found that a daily multivitamin meaningfully slowed biological aging on epigenetic clocks, especially in people who were aging fastest, while cocoa flavanols had no effect [Nature Biomedical Engineering].
🧐 REPORTS
Edelman: The 100-Year Life is Here Unlocking the Value of Longevity.
TL;DR: Edelman’s Longevity Lab argues that the 55+ demographic, which they call “middlescents” controls over half of global spending but receives less than 10% of marketing dollars, making them the most under-leveraged consumer group in brand strategy today. As lifespans extend toward 100, brands need to shift from short-term acquisition thinking to long-horizon “lifespan relevance.”
A 55-year-old today may have 50 more years of brand relationship ahead, longer than the entire adult lifespan of a Millennial currently alive.
Those 55+ are more interested in fitness and mobility (76%) than those under 55 (68%), directly challenging the assumption that physical performance marketing belongs to youth.
Creators aged 55+ have a higher engagement rate (7.3%) than younger influencers (5.3%) and roughly 30% of Substack’s global audience is already 55+
Gallup: World’s Respect for Women Continues to Climb. Median of 72% globally think women in their country are treated with respect, but large gender gaps remain.
Gallup: More People Feel Safe Even as Global Conflicts Rise.
💡 Enjoy,
-Anne
Is there a corrected link for the multivitamin article? Thanks!