1. ize your cleansing routine based on
your skin’s needs and your personal
preference.” Secret Deodorant fea-
tures “odour protection customized
for you.” System Professional claims
“your hair is as unique as your fin-
gerprint.”
So what about Concoction which is
now ShampYou, and ProfilePro in
hair care; Nivea Spa, Pierre Ricaud
and every skin product that uses
booster oils, like Fresh and Dr Den-
nis Gross; Palette nail varnish in
make-up; or even Jo Malone’s can-
dle shots for home fragrance? These
are strategies that mimic customisa-
tion, offering the consumer a degree
S
kin care regimens created on
a DNA profile, e.g. Geneu, de-
liver a one-off product spe-
cific for just one person. These are a
good example of true customisation,
but volume-wise, in beauty and toi-
letries, they remain a very small seg-
ment of the market. Nevertheless,
the custom-made appeal is univer-
sal. From cars to coffees, from TV
shows to shoes, brands love to pro-
mote a personalised message, even
if they’re not selling true customi-
sation. Clinique’s Smart Custom Se-
rum is “created for one skin in the
world. Yours.” Rodin Facial Cleans-
ing Powder “allows you to custom-
A Playful Choice
Product development | Skin care products created specifically for
one person: they’re truly customised, but still an exception. Helga
Hertsig-Lavocah, Futurologist and Trend Watcher from Hint Crea-
tive Consultancy, puts the customisation trend into perspective.
AUTHOR: Helga Hertsig-Lavocah
Futurologist and Trend Watcher, Hint Creative
Consultancy, Dublin, Ireland
info@hint-cc.com
www.hint-cc.com
SPOTLIGHT: CUSTOMISATION
36 l COSSMA 1–2I2016
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2. Customisation is
not a temporary
trend – it’s
here to stay
brands offering all three as a
personalised service, and mass
market brands perhaps offering
machines that blend on the spot,
according to a pre-defined, online
diagnosis.
Beauty can take an interesting in-
sight from coffee: consumers are
prepared to pay 11 to 13% more
for a coffee with latte art1. The
editor of Roast Magazine’s “Daily
Coffee News”, Nick Brown,
thinks, “It’s a nice touch. It shows
an area of skill from the barista
and I think it demonstrates that
the barista cares about what
they’re giving you.” Substitute
“barista” with “skin care expert”
for a ready-to-go concept. Custo-
misation becomes theatre.
And if all this sounds familiar,
then it is, because pharmacies
used to provide this service.
Some, like Bergel La Grande Phar-
macie Principale in Nice, France
are returning to bespoke skin
care.
Challenge for bath,
body and hair
For bath, body and hair care, cus-
tomisation is a massive chal-
lenge, but we can borrow some
ideas from outside the beauty
world for inspiration. Califia is a
California-based cold brew
coffee. They market their concen-
trate as a product that “personal-
izes (the) at-home coffee experi-
ence.” Consumers can make a
variety of beverages from one
base product. Extrapolate this to
your beauty brand… Could you
sell a base for consumers to cus-
tomise to their needs? Could one
product be tweaked to offer dif-
ferent moods or textures? This
may seem contradictory to
everything you’re doing at the
moment, but millennials love
contradiction – for example,
they’ll do yoga in a nightclub to
dance music (“voga”) and then
drink cocktails. Contradictions
grab attention, and in a world
where attention spans are dwin-
dling (down to eight seconds for
Gen Z2), shock techniques are
almost the only way to stand out.
By the way, the average consum-
er spends just 13 seconds pur-
chasing a brand in-store3.
Another borrow-worthy idea
comes from Japanese laundry
care. The Softlan fabric softener
brand has a dosage cap with two
chambers. Consumers mix varie-
ties of fabric softener in the cap’s
chambers to create their own
fragrance blend. This echoes fra-
grance layering. This technique
could be duplicated for hair
conditioners or even deodorants,
allowing consumers to customise
strength & fragrance.
Pods and capsules
If logistics limit customisation (in
toothpastes, for example), it’s
going to be hard for consumers to
add different actives and flavours
to the product as it currently
stands. This gives us the oppor-
tunity to take an alternative ap-
proach: pods. After revolutionis-
ing coffee, pods have transitioned
to skin care (Romy Paris), body
wash (SkinJay and Sephora and
even laundry care LG Care in
South Korea). While the pods
of choice and control (like Star-
bucks coffee). Successful prod-
ucts balance the 4Cs: control,
choice, convenience and confi-
dence.
Confidence in the brand makes or
breaks success. There are many
start-ups offering customisation
in skin care, e.g. Hekatè, and we
wish them well; however, the
consumer will have more confi-
dence in the efficacy of a cream
that they have “created” them-
selves if it comes from a big
brand, like Olay or Dior. Skin care
and beauty is very emotional ter-
ritory, and trusted brands offer
reassurance. In fact, the majority
of beauty consumers do not want
the responsibility of creation –
they want expertise. We foresee
the major beauty brands shifting
mostly to online catalogues, rath-
er than overwhelming the con-
sumer with their in-store offering.
In-store presence could then
morph into something like a
“beauty barista”. With this shift,
sales assistants will become tech-
nical experts, adding value in the
form of diagnosis, prescription
and formulation – higher end
photo:Stable,SvetlanaLukienko,Shutterstock.com
Customisation is about offering choice in a
playful and easy manner
SPOTLIGHT: CUSTOMISATION
www.cossma.com l 37

3. don’t offer a unique product, they do
offer multiple choices, fitting per-
fectly today’s mind-set of no com-
mitment and constant entertain-
ment.
Customise the strength
Typically, when we talk about cus-
tomisation, we talk about tailoring
the active ingredients or fragrance.
Dermalogica’s Overnight Retinol Re-
pair shows a different approach to
customisation: it allows consumers
to tailor the strength of the product.
Consumers mix a buffer with the
product; more buffer means a lower
concentration of actives. This idea
can be replicated across many other
categories.
One more insight
The world of food and beverage pro-
vides us with one more insight. In
the USA, the claim “simple” (i.e.
fewer ingredients, which is per-
ceived as safer) is overtaking “natu-
ral”, according to the Hartman
Group (because there is no legal
definition of “natural”). The Hart-
man Group calls “simple” the new
premium marketplace “because we
know that the brands commanding
the highest-priced premiums gener-
ally are younger, entrepreneurial
brands whose default assumption is
a target consumer who wants mini-
mally processed foods and beverag-
es, which the natural and organic
sector has relentlessly pushed
through the market in the past two
decades.” This is all about control.
Customisation allows control. Think
about what this could mean to the
beauty industry. Chanel has already
tapped into this trend with La Solu-
tion 10 De Chanel, which contains
just 10 ingredients. This echoes
niche beauty brands such as Sprout,
SW Basics and Fig & Yarrow. Simple
ingredient lists also tap into the cur-
rent emphasis on clean living.
Not a trend but here to stay
Customisation is actually NOT a
trend, because “trend” implies
something temporary that will pass.
Customisation is here to stay and
will only grow as gadgets such as
OKU and WAY which help consum-
ers understand their skin, become
more popular and their diagnostic
powers broaden – to hair, for in-
stance.
True customisation is aspirational;
while it will perhaps happen in the
far future, with every consumer
taking responsibility for his or her
impact on the planet, customisation
is currently about offering choice in
a playful and easy manner. Think
about kits and shots that give your
user a different experience every
time they interact with your prod-
uct. Is it texture? Scent? Cleansing
levels? Moisturisation?
One more customisation claim
comes from Mother Dirt, the US
company hoping to revolutionise
personal care by looking at our
microbiome. Their website claims,
“no routine is one-size-fits-all be-
cause everyone’s biome is truly
unique.” A successful product ticks
many trend boxes. □
This article is an extract of the key note address for C.H.
Erbslöh’s 4th European Cosmetic Forum, to be held in
Düsseldorf 18 & 19 February 2016. It features one of the
three key trends in 2017: Customisation, Poly-sensoriality
and Health is Beauty.
The reference list can be found on the Internet – see down-
load panel
La Solution 10 taps into
the less is more trend
Using more buffer for a
lower concentration of actives
SPOTLIGHT: CUSTOMISATION
38 l COSSMA 1–2I2016 www.cossma.com
WEBSITE TIPS
www.califiafarms.com
www.chanel.com
www.clinique.com
www.colgate.com.my/app/CP/MY/HC/Products/
Fabric-Conditioner.cvsp (Softlan)
www.concoction.co.uk (ShampYou)
www.dennisgrossmd.com
www.dermalogica.com
www.dior.com
www.figandyarrow.com
www.fresh.com
www.geneu.com
www.getoku.com
www.hartman-group.com
www.hekatecosmetics.com
www.jomalone.com
www.lagrandepharmacieprincipale.fr
www.lgcare.com
www.motherdirt.com
www.nivea-spa.de
www.olay.com
www.oliolusso.com (Rodin)
www.palettelondon.com
www.profilepro.com
www.ricaud.com
www.romy-paris.com
www.secret.com
www.sephora.com
www.skinjay.com
www.sproutskincare.com
www.starbucks.com
www.wella.com (System Professional)
NN
photos:Dermalogica,Chanel

4. Kevin Gallagher, Croda
“LIMITLESS
POTENTIAL”
GO FUTURE: SUN CARE
The US’s gap in
UVA protection
SPOTLIGHT:
CUSTOMISATION
The trend put
into perspective
DR. GERD MILDAU,
CVUA Karlsruhe,
comments on the
current legal status
concerning sun care
1–2/2016
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