What’s trending? The most-read stories on APAC beauty market and consumer insights

1 – Watsons aiming to implement on-demand delivery services across 75% of Singapore stores in Q1​

Health and beauty retailer Watsons is set to implement three-hour delivery services​ across 75% of its stores in Singapore by the end of Q1 this year.

With the surge in on-demand deliveries of food, groceries, and parcels, the firm said it understood that consumers are growing intolerant of longer lead times and has collaborated with partners like Amazon to drive this service forward.

These great expectations bring about their own set of challenges, including delivery and logistic costs, making the choice of logistics partners a key factor.

2 – Hemp a ‘must-have’ ingredient for beauty brands – Lotus Herbals MD​

India-based cosmetics group Lotus Herbals believes hemp’s multitude of topical benefits, versatility, and sustainability will make it a “must-have” ingredient​ in every beauty company’s portfolio.

The company announced the launch of a hemp-based skin care range.

Nitin Passi, chairman and managing director of Lotus Herbals told CosmeticsDesign-Asia ​that he expects demand for hemp cosmetics to increase in India.

“Hemp is slowly becoming the holy grail ingredient in skin care. Every major skin care brand must-have hemp range to enrich their existing portfolio.”​

3 – Ange Gardien says sales have risen 50% in 6 months with social commerce approach​

Singaporean beauty brand Ange Gardien Paris says its sales has grown 50% in the six months since it started to take a social commerce approach to selling​.

The brand was launched in late 2019 and faced the uphill task of building up the brand in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The changing landscape pushed the brand to tap into the growing popularity of social commerce, a rising and important force driving the development of e-commerce.

The company started to explore opportunities in social commerce in August 2021 and has since seen sales grow by around 50%.

4 – L’Oréal on how luxury fragrance growth is being driven by ‘explosion’ of interest in China​

French beauty giant L’Oréal Group has credited the boom in luxury fragrance to the growing appreciation among Chinese consumers and expects it to continue growing by double-digits​ in the years to come.

The luxury fragrance category was tied to the renewed awareness and interest of scent which had risen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

L’Oréal was optimism for the category moving forward, emphasising that the company was the top luxury fragrance producer worldwide with more than 20% of market share.

5 – The future of beauty packaging is ‘eco-desirability’ – L’Oréal ​

The future of beauty packaging will centre on blending sustainability with desirability and rely on innovative industry partnerships and advances in material science, lifecycle analysis and smart product design, says L’Oréal.​

By 2030, L’Oréal wanted to reduce the overall amount of packaging in its global portfolio by 20% compared to a 2019 baseline.

Upstream circularity was a “very important” focus for L’Oréal, offering an exciting space set to expand in the coming years as more of its brands across mass and luxury rolled out refill or reuse jars and packaging.