Hair-raising tales of 2020
THE UK male grooming market was estimated to be worth £500million in 2019, £2.2million more than the previous year.
Late 2019 trend predictions for this year included hair transplants, head-to-toe grooming, and the rise of make-up for men, but no-one could have predicted the reality of men swerving shaving in lockdown and resorting to cutting their own hair because barbers were closed for months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s hardly surprising then that research reveals online searches for beard and hair trimmers soared this year.
Money.co.uk analysed Google search data to reveal what was on the minds of men in the UK in 2020 when it comes to skincare and grooming and found that searches for ‘best beard trimmer to cut hair’ were up a whopping 5,233% on 2019. Searches for for ‘best hair and beard trimmers’ saw an increase of 511% during the same time period.
Overall though, the most popular grooming question for men this year was ‘how to grow a beard?’. With more than 96,000 searches this query has increased by almost half compared to 2019.
‘How fast does male hair grow?’ came in second, with a whopping increase of 529% on last year. No doubt down to many of those people cutting their hair with beard trimmers going on to regret their decision.
Other popular lockdowninfluenced searches this year included ‘how to shave men’s hair?’ and ‘how to shave your own head?’.
With men now said to spend on average up to £20 a month on grooming products, queries around male skincare were some of the biggest climbers in the top 10, with an increase of 175% for the term ‘men skincare’ and 86% for ‘best moisturiser for men’.
Other popular searches included ‘make-up for men’, up 86% and ‘how to make male hair grow faster?’ which saw an increase of 83% from 2019.