158 - What I'm Reading: Week of August 16th
Dyson launches Chitosan, check the T&Cs you agree to, Dolly Parton lipstick, Boldhue's AI beauty device, period leave, Avon's bankruptcy, prosthetics & logos, aging shifts, & more...
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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
💄 Bloomberg: Don't count on the lipstick index for the next recession. Although women usually reach for cosmetics in tough times, beauty sales are slowing.
Retail Brew: US prestige beauty sales sparkled, while mass remained flat in H1. Fragrance was the fastest-growing prestige category, according to Circana.
🍪 eMarketer: Over half of Gen Z and millennials often or always accept cookies.
eMarketer: Digital media makes up nearly two-thirds of consumers’ total time spent with media.
The New Yorker: What tweens get from Sephora and what they get from us.
🇨🇳 eMarketer: China leads genAI use in select countries with US close behind.
Just for fun:
CNN: This country’s doctors can prescribe four-week spa breaks to frazzled parents…I will take one STAT.
This case is wild - Disney wants wrongful death suit thrown out because widower bought an Epcot ticket and had Disney+…basically a husband is suing Disney because his wife experienced a deadly anaphylactic reaction at a Disney resort restaurant. Disney claims since they had signed up for a free trial of Disney+ they inherently opted-in to arbitration…so read those crazy terms & conditions…also it will be interesting how this case shakes out and could have implications for those crazy T&Cs.
ICYMI - the big news of the week - Mars is looking to acquire Kellanova (the snack side of Kellog’s) for $36B.
👩🎤 Celebrity Brands:
💄 Dolly Parton is launching Dolly Beauty - starting with a line of lipsticks and potentially hair care at a later date. Many things Dolly Parton lends her name to often have some sort of larger message of giving back - this one does not appear to.
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
Boldhue - a device creating perfectly matched foundation. The device costs $295. It is not clear how much the refill pigments will cost. Shade-matching foundation is not new - this is what Il Makiage built their brand on. The difference is the at-home device to mix on demand. Considering there is more to just shade matching for foundation, in terms of how it applies, wears, etc..I wish the device could do more than make one product - and perhaps partnered first with brands consumers already trust [Instagram].
Summer Gelee - orange tanning / SPF gels [Instagram].
Of Other Worlds - a 1-year old skincare brand from the Sephora Accelerate Program - is expanding to Urban Outfitters. The brand looks like if Experiment & Scent Lab had a baby. It has one skincare product - a barrier treatment [Instagram].
🇮🇳 YourStory: How this woman-led brand is a trailblazer for the natural beauty market - Soulflower.
🇬🇧 Indu - the tween skincare brand from the founder of Forever Unique raised over $5M in seed funding from Unilever Ventures, V3 Ventures & more [Beauty Independent].
🇮🇳 BeautyMatter: India's big suncare opportunity.
Fast Company: Why this beauty start-up just picked up a major defense contract. San Diego-based biotech startup Debut focused on developing innovative biomanufacturing processes to disrupt the beauty world. Now it’s working with the Pentagon.
⭐️ Glossy: The rise of the Gen-Z-loved Yuka app — and its growing cohort of critics. I certainly fall in the camp of critic. Unfortunately these apps often give a false sense of empowerment using lightly veiled science. The studies used to justify something as unsafe are not shared with context (as in at what levels were they tested and with what model (even what animal)). Additionally single points of data without the larger context of the formula is misinformed. The intention of these apps to help consumers make more informed decisions is great; however, the execution is really misleading.
👩🦱 Haircare:
⭐️ Dyson announced upgrades to its popular Airwrap device and a new line of hairstyling products. The name of the product line is Chitosan. Both hairstyling products a pre-styling cream and post-styling serum are made with chitosan from oyster mushrooms. Chitosan is more commonly linked with shellfish - (think the outer shell on shrimp). The products use a precision dosing packaging to help ensure that consumers use a specific amount of product. The new Airwrap includes Bluetooth technology for more personalized styling [PR Newswire].
Beauty Independent: Lily Collins joins Silas Capital and G9 Ventures in celebrity hairstylist-founded Roz’s oversubscribed seed round.
Olori Beauty - a new haircare line based on African heritage [Beauty Independent; Instagram].
😅 Deodorant:
Tronque’s super pretty new deodorant made with “Neuropeptide Relaxant Complex mimicking ingredient that inhibits acetylcholine (muscle neurotransmitter) release, reducing nerve signals controlling sweat gland activity” [Instagram].
💊 Supplements:
SoWell, a supplement company, designed a new line of products around supporting the side-effects of GLP-1s [WWD].
Groove Nutrition - powdered daily greens, pre-workout, and amino acids in pretty packaging [Instagram].
BoF: Facing wellness overload, supplement brands get creative. After a period for oral supplements, market changes in funding and the consumer landscape require wellness brands to adapt their businesses to keep growing.
👩🔬 Femtech:
⭐️ CDC issued guidelines to doctors on how to better manage IUD pain. This trend started on social media, where women would tell their stories about the pain experienced upon insertion. It is about time, if you ask any woman she will have either a personal or friend story about this.
Vox: We have a drug that might delay menopause — and help us live longer. Ovaries age faster than the rest of the body. Figuring out how to slow menopause might help all of us age better. TLDR - Rapamycin helps to regulate the protein kinase, mTOR which is linked to cellular aging.
Bloomberg: 1 in 5 US abortions are now through telehealth.
⭐️ Fast Company: What is period leave? The complicated push for a new employee benefit. More employers are considering offering workers time off for menstruation—but it’s not as straightforward as it might seem. The comments on the IG post - made me think we all need to collectively take a break.
Scientific American: Smart rings can track menstrual cycles. But are they reliable for birth control? The Oura Ring and other smart rings forecast menstrual cycles by detecting changes in body temperature. In short - the rings are good at tracking temperature variation which is a predictor of menstruation; however, experts argue that since many of the studies conducted to date have been on smaller samples of white women, they caution relying on these rings for contraceptive purposes. Additionally, for individuals with irregular periods this method is not accurate. For now, experts still believe rectal or oral temperature are more accurate measures.
🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...
🇮🇳 TechCrunch: Amazon is fumbling in India - they specifically have missed out on the quick commerce opportunity.
BoF: Southeast Asia’s e-commerce leader fends off TikTok. Singapore-based Sea boosted its sales forecast for its online retailing arm, Shopee, as it battles fierce competition from TikTok and Lazada.
You can now shop on Amazon without ever leaving TikTok or Pinterest [The Information].
Retail Brew: Which private labels are leading the pack in retail? - Private label for beauty has the smallest share as a percentage of overall sales.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...
⭐️ The Hill: FDA approves epinephrine nasal spray, a needle-free alternative to EpiPen. It is really exciting to see a needle alternative…no more leg bruises. But the anxiety of if it all went in will still be there…
⭐️ This is a super disturbing story - picked up by MIT Technology Review: DHS plans to collect biometric data from migrant children “down to the infant”. The previously unreported program to capture facial images of children crossing the border is designed to improve facial recognition algorithms. Sure, this will immensely help to train a data set on the faces of minor’s; however, it is a pretty slippery privacy slope and feels particularly upsetting due to the group it is being used on.
🦿 The Atlantic: A logo on a prosthesis is like a tattoo you didn’t ask for. As artificial limbs become more advanced, branding is becoming almost inescapable.
🇨🇳 Global Times: China initiates moves to boost standardization and overseas application of TCM.
🧠 Bloomberg: Surgeons cut a giant tumor out of my head. Is there a better way? A freak diagnosis led me to a renowned neurosurgeon—and his decades-long quest to develop medical treatments that use sound waves.
WSJ: AI wants to count your calories. Researchers are developing tech to analyze consumption by the bite, with the goal of tracking nutrition while you eat
⚡️ 🩹 Futurity: Electric bandages could heal wounds faster.
The Guardian: Scientists hail ‘smart’ insulin that responds to changing blood sugar levels in real time. Exclusive: People with type 1 diabetes may in future only need to give themselves insulin once a week, say experts.
TechCrunch: Humidity sucks. Transaera has a new way to deal with it - air conditioners that not only cool but remove humidity.
🦻 Fast Company: Jabra’s obsession with design led to its new line of hearing aids. The audio company is looking to bridge the gap between O.T.C and prescription hearing aids.
MIT Technology Review: Watch a video showing what happens in our brains when we think. Recordings from brain electrodes show "the physical manifestation of thought."
🗣 Social Media: News about TikTok, Meta, BeReal, Snapchat, X...
eMarketer: US adults spend most social media time on Facebook—but not Gen Z. A data table showing time spent on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, & TikTok across age ranges.
💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs, Bankruptcies, Closings...
🔬RESEARCH
⭐️ A new paper out of Stanford, published in Nature shows how thousands of molecules and microbes undergo a huge shift around the ages of 44 & 60. Meaning these shifts are not gradual over time, but more sudden at two distinct time-points. The shift occurred across male & female participants, meaning these changes could not be attributed to menopause [Nature Aging].
Nature: Blood test uses ‘protein clock’ to predict risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases. The clock is effective in people with a range of genetic backgrounds.
Nature: Your microwave oven has its own microbiome. Survey of bacteria living inside household and laboratory appliances finds a robust ecosystem. Why this matters…not everything is ‘killed’ in the microwave and there could be pathogens.
🧐 REPORTS
McKinsey: The state of AI in early 2024 — Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value.
Loop: The Rise of Returns Fraud - Loop’s latest survey found returns fraud and policy abuse are on the rise, with nearly every person analyst survey experiencing it. A tougher economic climate is potentially one contributing factor…but this is crazy!
💡 Enjoy,
-Anne