South Africans showed keener interest in veganism over the past 12 months than the rest of the world, according to Google Trends data. Additionally, interest in vegan beauty spiked in the early part of 2022 after a slight lull following a five-year high in November 2020. “The beauty industry needs to stay up-to-date with the latest trends taking shape within this growing market in order to anticipate and respond to the opportunities presented both now and in the future,” says Toni Carroll, founder and CEO of luxury nutricosmetic brand My Beauty Luv who, having taken note of the trend, has recently added a vegan supplement to her range.
She unpacks the top three vegan beauty trends:
- Cruelty-free convenience: The global market for vegan cosmetics is expected to reach $21.4 billion by 2027. What’s more, online sales of vegan beauty products exceeded $342 million in 2020 and shot up by 83% from the previous year. Given the growth of the vegan market, there is a clear need both for quality products and convenient ways of acquiring them. It’s not surprising then that we are seeing enterprising business owners like Kylie Jenner opting to relaunch her Kylie Cosmetics range with clean, vegan formulas, and beauty brands like Urban Decay expanding their clean beauty and vegan offerings
- Functional fungi: The majority of products on the market for vegans are comprised of two basic ingredients, pea protein and other powdered plant proteins. But now, medicinal mushrooms, which have been used for thousands of years, are being increasingly added to the mix. This is due to their many health and beauty benefits like improved skin hydration, reduced wrinkle depth, and increased healthy fibroblast cell activity being scientifically proven in extensive studies, coupled with growing demand for natural health remedies. In fact, the global functional mushroom market size is expected to reach $13. 6 billion by 2027.
- Creating and keeping collagen: The African collagen market is expected to experience 6% growth by 2025, with South Africa holding the bulk of market share. Unfortunately, despite various local and global manufacturers claiming to have developed vegan collagen, this is misleading since collagen is, by definition, an animal product. Vegans wanting to stimulate collagen production are increasingly opting for ingestible beauty products packed full of essential and non-essential amino acids as well as antioxidants to safeguard existing collagen levels.
Carroll concludes by saying, “Veganism is far from a passing fad, the more businesses that meet the demand, the faster and bigger the market will grow and the better the planet will be for it.”
