149 - What I'm Reading: Week of June 14th.
What's up with Band-Aid?, hemorrhoid's get a makeover, the celebrity/music/haircare crossover, masculine scented laundry detergent, tattoos and lymphoma, the cryogenics comeback, and more...
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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
Vox: How the self-care industry made us so lonely. The commodification of an activist concept turned a revitalizing practice into an isolating one.
🩹 Morning Consult released their annual most trusted brands reported - and Band-Aid is still on top [The Hustle].
👩🎤 Celebrity Brands:
Last week an X account saw Jake Paul’s new body care - called W including body wash, deodorant, & body spray exclusive to Walmart [Instagram].
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
JOONBYRD, a fun body care line from dermatologist Dr Alexis Granite [Instagram].
My Bum - a new hemorrhoid care brand - following the ‘holecare trend’…i don’t really think this is a trend as much as a growing awareness for better products in the space [Instagram].
The rumor mill is rumoring that Olaplex may dip into skincare - it recently hired anew CEO, Amanda Baldwin formerly of Supergoop, which makes people think this is part of a new turnaround strategy. Not that it means much, I remember reading the Olaplex S-1 IPO - where it said they could go into skincare.
🇰🇷 Edit.B - a Korean playful skincare line with super cute packaging [Edit.B].
Urban Kind - a skincare line designed to protect city skin - meaning - a skincare line high in antioxidants and ingredients like niacinamide to help with the impact of external aggressors which can result in inflammation [Instagram].
🇫🇷 Substance of Light - a new suncare brand spotted by Formes de Luxe at MakeUp Paris. Their first product is a ‘protective mist’ [Instagram].
🇫🇷 JOD Cosmetics - a bright & fun waterless skincare brand featured at MakeUp Paris and spotted by Formes de Luxe. As a pure generalization - a lot of waterless beauty brands tend to lean more on earth-tones, I really haven’t seen many that stand out with bright & a more beauty forward approach [Instagram].
Future Society (the extinct fragrance brand from Arcaea) expanded into body care with body wash [Instagram].
🇮🇳 The Economic Times: Skincare brand Foxtale raises $18 million in Series B funding from Panthera Growth.
🇮🇳 Reliance Retail’s Tira launched its own skincare brand Akind. The skincare line is focused on barrier care [Inc42; Instagram].
Black Radiance launched an AR app for Black women [Hypebae].
👩🦱 Haircare:
🇫🇷 Moss - a cool new scalp care brand - Formes de Lux at Makeup Paris [Instagram].
The full Fenty haircare lineup launched…so now you can show your musical/hair taste with Beyonce’s Cecred, Rita Ora’s Typebea, or Rihanna’s Fenty Hair…choose your player?
👃 Fragrance:
Binaurale - a new fragrance brand leaning into Y2K vibes. The brand is leading with emotion and ‘immersive worlds’. The fragrance space is extremely active right now, and Jessica DeFino’s Substack this week does a great job poking fun at the over the top scent descriptions coming out right now [Beauty Independent; Instagram].
🧺 Homecare:
Dutch - a detergent brand focused on colognes…so do we really need this? Detergents are not all floral - actually most fall in this synthetically ‘clean’ scent space. What we really need are better detergents, better formulas, better for clothing & skin…this is a very specific passion point [Instagram].
👩🔬 Femtech:
Axios: Rootless raising $1.2M for seaweed-based hormonal health.
Bayer and Samsung are partnering to learn more about sleep disturbances associated with menopause.
Unfabled - launched Unfabled Labs an insights and innovation platform to support innovation in the space of female health products.
🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...
Bloomberg: Temu lures more repeat Customers than eBay, pressures Amazon.
Beauty Independent: Ulta Beauty And Credo end partnership. Credo had helped to introduce clean brands into Ulta via this partnership.Retail Dive: Function of Beauty expands to Amazon.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...
MIT Technology Review: This AI-powered “black box” could make surgery safer. A new smart monitoring system could help doctors avoid mistakes—but it’s also alarming some surgeons and leading to sabotage.
Fierce Biotech: No hormones, no problem: YourChoice's first-of-its-kind male birth control is safe for men, so far.
The Washington Post: Doctors couldn’t help. They turned to a shadow system of DIY medical tests.
Bloomberg: Startup brings new hope to the pursuit of reviving frozen bodies. Laura Deming sees potential in a corner of longevity science with decades of failed promises.
🗣 Social Media: News about TikTok, Meta, BeReal, Snapchat, X...
🇮🇳 rest of world: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative. The microblogging platform — India’s first in over 10 languages — went from booming international expansion to near closure in just four years.
♻️ Sustainability: Sustainable Design💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs, Bankruptcies, Closings...
The Verge: Humane is reportedly trying to sell itself to HP for $1 billion. And now there are some problems 🔋 that could involve 🔥.
Techrunch: BeReal is being acquired by mobile apps and games company Voodoo for €500M.
NutraIngredients: Care/of to close operations as parent company Bayer explores ‘future innovations’
🔬RESEARCH
⭐️ 🇸🇪 The rise of tattoos is leading to concerns around carcinogenic dyes and our body’s natural defense response to the act of tattooing. The ink injected into the skin does not stay there, where particles can end up in the lymph nodes. The study found that “that tattooed people had a 21% higher risk of lymphoma than people without tattoos after factoring in smoking status and education level (both being factors that may be associated with getting a tattoo and developing lymphoma).” The authors say more research needs to be done before providing larger guidelines around tattoos and that lymphoma is still a rare disease [The Lancet].
😴 In case you ever doubted it, sleep is critical in supporting memory. A team studied the mechanism for why sleep supports memory, finding that neurons used to learn are often reactivated during sleep - which help to reinforce the memory. During sleep deprivation this reactivation does not take place. Yet another reason why all-nighters just do not work…even though I am sure most of us have done it [Nature].
Mass General Cancer Center researchers identify gene that helps cancer cells spread throughout the body [Mass General Hospital].
🧐 REPORTS
⭐️ 💄 eMarketer: How US consumers shop for beauty across age groups.
⭐️ McKinsey: State of the Consumer 2024 —What’s now and what’s next.
🧘 McKinsey Health Institute: In search of self and something bigger: A spiritual health exploration. Gen Z reports poor spiritual health.
☀️ Spate: Sun Care Trends 2024.
💡 Enjoy,
-Anne