153 - What I'm Reading: Week of July 12th.
Skincare (the movie), customizable fragrance for your perfect 'potion', a solution to solidify period blood, 2 injections to stay HIV free, a Modern Age comeback?, metals in tampons, the gut & autism.
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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
📞 🚫 Slate: We’re in a new era of survey science. It’s very difficult to get anyone to answer a phone call—and that’s skewing data on everything from chocolate milk to antisemitism.
So&So - a new consumer venture studio from the former founder of Quip and his first employee [Instagram].
Storebrands: Private label sales hit record highs in first half. Figures from Circana and the Private Label Manufacturers Association show continued growth in units and dollars.
✨ MIT Technology Review: What is AI? Everyone thinks they know but no one can agree. And that’s a problem.
Just for fun:
Are we peak skincare/beauty craze? A new movie entitled ‘Skincare’ starring Elizabeth Banks is coming out August 16th about a fictionalized esthetician (with a skincare line) goes off the rails due to a competitor.
Fast Company: Pinball is cool again—and these stunning machines are why. Take a look inside the tech and creativity fueling the current golden age of pinball, with Stern Pinball game designer Keith Elwin and chief creative officer George Gomez.
🧸 goodgoodgood: Grizzly bear baby boom in Yellowstone triples cub count in national park.
👩🎤 Celebrity Brands:
Prenetics, a biotech company, announced David Beckham is the co-founder of a new consumer health & wellness brand called IM8. I am guessing they are going to sell supplements linked to a diagnostic in someway given the parent company’s current offering. Beckham is an investor in Prenetics. This is not Beckham’s first dip into the beauty/wellness space - he previously ‘founded’ House 99 by David Beckham, a men’s grooming brand which did not last too long [BoF; Instagram].
Ok…Whoopi Goldberg releases comic book she wrote ‘25 years ago’ about hero who 'embraces' powers of menopause…next NYT bestseller?
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
The Body Lab - customizable body care from Strands (the customizable haircare brand) [Instagram].
🧈 Collage Skincare - Under eye patches with butter branding [Instagram]…
🇬🇧 XO Supreme - a new clinical skincare line using exosomes, peptides, amino acids, and growth factors.
🧠 The Atlantic: Skin care is coming for your brain. Need to work on your relationships? There’s a moisturizer for that.
🇨🇳 Jing Daily: From seniors to sunscreen, which 2024 beauty trends are fueling China? China’s beauty market is booming, driven by senior spending, holistic wellness, immersive retail experiences, and innovative sunscreen products.
🇨🇳 ☀️ Jing Daily: How sunscreen brands are innovating to capture China’s market boom. Asian sunscreen brands are innovating with cultural storytelling and cross-industry collaborations to engage young consumers.
👩🦱 Haircare:
Being haircare, a new inclusive line for all hair types sold at Walmart from the founder of Monday Haircare (Zuru Edge). The branding looks a lot like Plus… [Instagram].
👃 Fragrance:
⭐️ Scent Lab is teasing a really exciting launch for Monday July 15th. They are moving into the world of customizable body mists, where anyone can mix to create their personal ‘potion’. Perfect timing for ‘scent wardrobe’ craze. Get ready for a fully updated / upgraded brand experience and super cool immersive online fragrance finder [Instagram].
💊 Supplements:
Magna - a super cool magnesium hydration drink launching Tuesday, July 16th. Targeted toward athletic performance…and a big brand upgrade from the OG, Natural Vitality [Instagram].
👩🔬 Femtech:
⭐️ 🇬🇧 🩸 Papcup offers at-home testing for HPV using menstrual blood [Instagram].
⭐️ 🩸 Scientists at Virginia Polytechnic Institute have developed menstrual products that can solidify blood, reducing leaks and spills. Using a mixture of alginate and glycerol, their technology outperforms traditional pads and cups and aims to be more environmentally friendly by making reusable products more appealing [Gizmodo; Nature; Matter]. This also feels like there could be other applications across the bandage space (not that anyone should be bleeding-out regularly) - but perhaps in hospital/military space.
LBB Online: LG combines AI with air conditioning to help menopausal women cope with hot flashes.
🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...
Majesty’s Pleasure - a membership based ‘social beauty club’ opening in NYC - offering manicures, blow outs, spa services, along with a cafe & bar. Currently it is based in Canada [Instagram]. (The name minus the look/feel could make you think it is a different kind of place).
Mint - Shein is on its way to India - despite a ban on Chinese apps.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...
⭐️ The Conversation: HIV breakthrough: drug trial shows injection twice a year is 100% effective against infection.
🤖 Edible robots are closer than we think - potentially able to change drug delivery and monitor health [Nature Reviews Materials].
The Verge: Samsung’s Galaxy Ring could be the one ring to rule an ecosystem. The hardware is solid. The ideas are intriguing. So long as it holds up in testing, Samsung could have a winner.
Axios: AI is supercharging disease diagnosis. Big data is playing a larger role in diagnosis - versus biomarker alone.
The New York Times: The health trends that are defining 2024. “Hurkle-durkling” is in, along with gut health and floor time.
🍺 Slate: A pill to treat alcoholism exists. Why aren’t doctors prescribing it more? In hundreds of studies, naltrexone has been found to be a safe and effective medication to help people reduce and stop drinking. Yet it’s woefully under-prescribed.
⌚️ WSJ: Apple Watch is becoming doctors’ favorite medical device - Some doctors are telling patients to get the watch to manage their conditions. Researchers study how it could be used for heart disease, post-surgery recovery and other conditions.
TechCrunch: Art therapy app Scribble Journey lets you express emotions through doodles.
Healthcare Brew: Dollar General shuts down mobile clinics, becoming latest retailer to abandon primary care.
⭐️ The WHO is classifying Talc as ‘probably carcinogenic’. For more information check out The Lancet.
🗣 Social Media: News about TikTok, Meta, BeReal, Snapchat, X...
Fast Company: Latte makeup and girl dinners aside, TikTok’s hold on pop culture may not last. TikTok’s impact on trends and American consumerism is undisputed, but its influence faces uncertain times.
TechCrunch: Spotify is no longer just a streaming app, it’s a social network.
💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs, Bankruptcies, Closings...
WWD: Shiseido said eying OSEA as skin care brand explores deal options.
Beauty Independent: West Lane Capital Partners breathes new life into Beauty Bakerie with acquisition.
Modern Age, which shutdown in March appears to be coming back…the website is still down but they are collecting emails and hiring on Instagram..for their upper east side location.
BoF: UK tycoon Jatania poised to buy Body Shop out of administration. A consortium led by British tycoon Mike Jatania is nearing a deal to buy struggling UK cosmetics retailer The Body Shop out of administration, people with knowledge of the matter said.
NYT: How a distinctive beauty brand fell apart, sinking almost $700 Million with it. When the private equity firm Carlyle bought Beautycounter, the skin care brand that people sold at kitchen tables, everything changed. TLDR - the brand, built on a MLM model faced challenges from Carlyle to shift away from it as well as its clean beauty messaging.
Lots of moving and shaking in the department store space:
BoF: Can Saks, Neiman Marcus and Amazon save the American department store? A $2.65 billion merger of two of America’s largest department stores, with involvement from Amazon and Salesforce, is a bet that scale and technology can breathe new life into an ailing business model.
Arkhouse, Brigade Capital raise buyout offer for Macy’s to $6.9 Billion. The new proposal is to acquire Macy’s stock that Arkhouse and Brigade Capital do not already own for $24.80 each, up from $24 per share offered in March.
🔬RESEARCH
⭐️ 🚬 🍺 New data shows that 40% of all cancer cases (713,340 out of 1,781,649) and 44% of all cancer deaths (262,120 out of 595,737) in adults aged 30 and older in 2019 were attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors. These factors include cigarette smoking, excess body weight, and alcohol consumption, with cigarette smoking alone responsible for 19.3% of cancer cases and 28.5% of cancer deaths [CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians].
💩 New research out of Hong Kong is connecting gut microbiome profiles to autism analyzing the gut microbiomes of over 1600 children finding differences in 14 archaea, 51 bacteria, 7 fungi, 18 viruses, 27 microbial genes and 12 metabolic pathways were altered in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) versus neurotypical children [Nature Microbiology]. Critics have been quick to point out that these differences may be the result of dietary preferences of children with ASD versus neurotypical children, and not necessarily that an altered microbiome is a signature of ASD.
🚫 👃 Many of us have have probably experienced the workout shirt that gets ultra-stinky or a piece of clothing that over time does not smell as fresh as it should coming out of the laundry. A study out of Alberta explains why some fabrics like cotton tend to withstand bad odors while polyester tends to hold onto odors more strongly over time. TLDR; essentially - nylon & polyester retain odorants for longer than cotton and other natural fibers, attaching more strongly to oil based odorants and bacteria [Sage Journals].
⭐️ 🩸 A new study evaluated 30 tampons from 14 tampon brands (unnamed), across 18 product lines for the presence of toxic metals. Organic & non-organic tampons were tested. Regardless of origin or manufacturer, metals were present in all tampons. This is attributed to agricultural practices and / or manufacturing processes contributing to the heightened presence of lead and arsenic. Lead is reportedly higher in non-organic tampons while arsenic is notably higher in organic tampons with no category of tampon being free of the 16 metal(loids) tested. The brands were not named…which of course anyone would want to see. I guess since all of the tampons had some level of metal there is no ‘better choice’ so pick your poison? Ugh…there is also a question of how much exposure over time is dangerous (one could argue any exposure is bad), but that is an impossibility [Environmental International].
I am seeing a lot of opportunistic social posting in the fear mongering space around this topic…where brands are saying their products are free from this…and to ‘check your tampons’. Excuse me, how might anyone check their tampons? And secondly, if you actually read the paper you would understand regardless of manufacturer ALL cotton can uptake metals in the growth process and/or from the atmosphere…so come on…STOP.
Nature: What causes migraines? Study of ‘brain blackout’ offers clues. The blinding headaches are poorly understood — a mouse study suggests that the content of spinal fluid is a trigger for pain.
🧐 REPORTS
⭐️ 🧺 Free the Birds: Homecare 2024. A look at the homecare space through different personas - and the brands/trends driving it.
The Vogue Business Beauty Index: The Ordinary, La Roche-Posay and Cerave top the leaderboard.
JungleScout: Consumer Trends Report Q2’ 2024. Where consumers are shopping by product category and the rise of social shopping.
TrendHunter: 2024 Report - featuring P2P menopause apps, headache tech, makeup with actives, smart bras and more…
🇮🇳 McKinsey: What does the future hold for India?
🇨🇳 Bain: China FMCG Settles into New Reality, with Moderate Growth and Continuous Price Pressures.
🇨🇳 ChinaSkinny: New Chinese-style wellness trend brings new business opportunities - including AI TCM.
💡 Enjoy,
-Anne