🐞 063 - Midweek Mini-Byte: Tuesday, August 4th.
A new HIV pill shows promise in early trials, tinnitus gets its own neural fingerprint, Hyper Skin is pausing, livestream shopping goes mainstream, the Cosmetify mid-year Index...and more.
👋 Hello everyone.
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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
💥 Quick Hits
🇮🇳 Marma Rituals launched skincare and wellness rituals inspired by indigenous traditions.
🏃 Wattz debuted a high-performance mineral sunscreen built for runners, by runners.
🦟 LymeAlert, the first at-home test for infected ticks, hits the market in August.
🛒 Under Amazon, Whole Foods is shedding its “Whole Paycheck” reputation with price cuts and expanded 365 private label.
💄 CVS is going all-in on beauty minis, driving a 140% bump in beauty sales.
🆕 Brands Spotted:
👩🎤 Celebrity Brands = 1
🧴 Skin/Personal Care = 6
👩🦱 Haircare = 2
💊 Supplements = 3
🐕 Pet Care = 1
👩🔬 Femtech= 2
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
Jing Daily: The wellness industry is making us healthier, and lonelier. The loneliness epidemic and the limits of optimization point to where luxury’s wellness offer needs to go next.
Just for fun:
😵💫 Optical illusions.
👩🎤 Celebrity Brands:
🇮🇹 Chiara Ferragni, arguably one of the largest influencers, launched a body care brand back in March [Instagram].
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
Wattz - High-performance mineral sunscreen, built for runners, by runners, from Combo [Instagram]. Here is the backstory.
Relab is taking on psoriasis [Beauty Independent; Instagram].
G I A N N I - skincare inspired by the Caribbean [Instagram].
🇮🇳 Marma Rituals - healing rituals inspired by indigenous traditions offerign skincare & wellness solutions [Instagram].
🇷🇺 Reminder - a new self-care brand focused on masks [Instagram]. The filing folder branding is really fun.
Reseen - a beauty brand based around light. (Most of the products looked white-labeled) [Instagram].
👩🦱 Haircare:
👀 Redditors are doing what they do best and scheming over whether Glossier is going to make moves into hair.
🧊 Chris McMillan - launched a new cooling clarifying shampoo [Instagram]. The branding on Instagram looks great…it doesn’t translate to the website.
🇰🇷 Miok - Korean self care, marine powered wellness offering shampoo, hair perfume mist, & under eye patches [Instagram].
💊 Supplements:
🇬🇧 Yutrients - custom blended nutrition powders [Instagram].
vivvira - a synbiotic for gut health & overall wellness [Instagram].
🇨🇦 Olway - Performance nutrition optimized for the needs of everyday athletes, priced so they can use it [Instagram].
🐕 Pet Care:
Ritual Paws - Building thoughtful care for flat-faced dogs - starting with wrinkle & nose care [Instagram].
👩🔬 Femtech:
Riora - a new women’s health brand, built on ancient wisdom and modern science [Instagram].
Pum Pums - period care gummies for cramp relief [Instagram].
🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...
Retail Brew: CVS is betting big on beauty minis. Michelle LeBlanc, VP of beauty and personal care at CVS, shares how a beauty strategy shift led to 140% bump in beauty sales.
So CVS is catching on to Sephora’s mini strategy…they just need to put them near the checkout.
Bloomberg: Under Amazon, Whole Foods is shedding ‘Whole Paycheck’ reputation. The grocery chain has cut prices and expanded its 365 private label selection in a timely bid to attract inflation-bit shoppers.
BoF: The future of beauty commerce is live. Livestream shopping has evolved beyond a marketing experiment, prompting beauty brands to rethink the intersection of content, community and commerce.
Everyone has known this, the question has been largely on what platform…and TikTok is winning.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...
⭐️ Smithsonian Magazine: The first at-home test for infected ticks could improve lyme disease diagnosis. LymeAlert will hit the market in August. The latest tool against the tick-borne illness could become a medicine cabinet staple
Wired: The new Friend AI pendant can now talk back to you. Avi Schiffmann has a new version of his controversial AI companion. It’s more expensive, and you can’t change its personality.
US News: Bed rotting - health benefits and risks of spending all day in bed. Lounging in bed all day has become social media’s favorite way to reset. Here’s how doctors distinguish between needed rest and harmful avoidance, plus how to bed rot safely and alternative ways to recharge.
Allure: What it means to have “Ferritin Face”. Everything you need to know about the epidemic of iron deficiency in women.
The New York Times: ChatGPT led to a man’s near-fatal health crisis, lawsuit claims. The case appears to be the first to argue that a chatbot’s advice harmed someone seeking guidance about a medical condition.
Wired: Is it possible to make smart glasses that aren’t creepy? As more big companies invest in glasses that record audio and video and pack AI on board, privacy concerns are only getting louder.
🗣 Social Media: News about TikTok, Meta, BeReal, Snapchat, X...
🇦🇺 Reuters: Most Australian teens still on social media three months after under-16 ban began, study finds.
💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs, Bankruptcies, Closings...
Hyper Skin - sent an email stating that they are pausing the business after six years, with August 10th being the last day to shop. They ran out of funding. Last June they had been crowdfunding $150K for pre-orders. Running a beauty business, even one in Sephora is brutal.
More than anything I respect how transparent & creative Desiree Verdejo has been about funding. A lot of brands sugar coat how the business is going, I wish more founders spoke about how challenging it can when funding is low, orders cannot be made, sales drop, making it less attractive to raise.
🔬RESEARCH
💊 A new HIV pill called VH-499 was tested in a small early trial. Over 10 days, it lowered patients’ virus levels. The higher the dose, the bigger the drop, and it caused no serious side effects or drug resistance in almost everyone. The results are encouraging enough that researchers want to keep developing it as part of a future long-acting HIV treatment [Clinical Infectious Disease].
👂 A brain-imaging study found that tinnitus with normal hearing shows different neural fingerprints depending on how long someone’s had it. Acute cases show competition for attention/alertness and executive-control brain networks with unusual high-frequency activity, while chronic cases settle into a more stable pattern with the brain compensating via low-frequency signals [iScience].
🧐 REPORTS
Navigo: Saltair after the deal: one shelf won, one shelf rented. Ulta.com and Amazon.com. 13 weeks to July 19, 2026, against the same 13 weeks of 2025.
Spate: 2026 CPG Brands Report - Today’s Most Popular CPG Brands and the Themes Shaping Their Success.
Cosmetify: The Cosmetify Index Mid-Year 2026.
Looking at insights from the first half of the year, we reveal which brands are holding onto their momentum, which are climbing the ranks, and which are beginning to lose ground. Last year’s leader, TirTir, has taken a tumble, while Huda Beauty has reclaimed the crown, and a wave of rising brands continue to make their mark.
💡 Enjoy,
-Anne