MANLY MARKET
The coronavirus has affected everything, including Father’s Day. According to the National Retail Federation 2020 Father’s Day survey, shoppers will give dads fewer special outings and 25% more personal care items this year.
Did you buy your dad some anti-aging cream this year? There’s a chance he might already have some.
Men’s shaving kits and skin care products are the hot items these days, and not just because we’re stuck at home staring at the mirror. The metrosexuals of the mid-1990s are no longer single and becoming dads. They are much more open to buying products to care for their skin and grooming.
How hot is the market? According to Allied Market Research, men’s personal care industry is expected to grow at an annual rate of 5.4% from 2016 to 2022 and reach $166 billion.
While the beard trend has hurt some U.S. shaving product sales, the largest men’s grooming category, demand for men’s skin care items has seen healthy growth. Sales of men’s shaving products were $2.8 billion in 2017, declining an average of 1.1% a year from 2012 to 2017. In contrast, the annual average growth for men’s skin care products during the same period was 7.2%, with sales reaching $345 million in 2017, according to Euromonitor, a market research company.
Men and skin
In 2017, men’s skin care product sales jumped 11%, outpacing growth in all other men’s grooming categories including bath and shower, deodorant and hair care. Men spent a total of $6.9 billion in the U.S. on grooming products, Euromonitor data shows.
A 2018 report in Forbes noted: Men ages 35-44, and especially dads, will drive the overall grooming market demand as they are “more invested in the category and less price sensitive than other groups.” Nearly three-fifths in that age group say they “pay attention to” the personal care products they buy, compared with less than half for the entire male adult group surveyed by market research company Mintel.
It turns out more than one-third of American dads — and the percentage goes up to about two-fifths among those with two children — say they care about preventing the signs of aging, compared with 23% of men without kids, according to a Mintel study released in 2018 that surveyed about 1,000 male personal-care product adult users in the U.S.
Male toiletries include bath and shower, deodorant, skin and hair care products. The market is expected to outpace that of shaving products and fragrances and reach $23.9 billion in 2020, rising to 39% of total sales.
Some retailers such as Macy’s and Nordstrom have created dedicated sections for male grooming products, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Target has added men’s grooming departments in more than 80 stores, with more than 600 products filling the new men’s selection.
72 million The estimated number of fathers in the U.S.
29 million The estimated number of those fathers who also are grandfathers
191,000 The estimated number of stay-at-home dads
24 million The number of fathers living in married-couple family groups with children younger than 18 in 2019