This is the second in our Global Beauty Hotspots series, unpacking the regional beauty market around the world, including Latin America, Australia, Scandinavia, Africa and East Asia. Read part one to discover how Latin American beauty brands are attempting to build a global business. This article is part of our Vogue Business membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to our weekly Beauty Edit newsletter, which contains Member-only reporting and analysis, the Beauty Trend Tracker and Leadership Advice, sign up for Vogue Business membership here.
Australian beauty brands have reached a turning point. The country is known for its pioneering role in the clean skincare movement, producing some of the industry’s buzziest brands, such as Aesop and Grown Alchemist. Now, the focus is on new organic products and a more sophisticated development of sunscreens.
Ultra Violette is one of the brands leading the way. Launched by co-founder Ava Matthews, who was previously a brand manager at Australia’s largest beauty retailer Mecca, over the past four years, Ultra Violette has been attempting to inject new energy into the sunscreen sector — from bold packaging (including a spin on millennial pink and a distinctive cobalt blue) to a pump applicator. More importantly, it promotes a blend of skincare and suncream — what Matthews calls “skinscreen”. Consumers are no longer content with using “all-purpose” traditional sunscreen products on their faces, she says.
In 2020, Sephora became the brand’s first retail partner in Australia. A year later, British beauty retailer Space NK was confirmed as its first international stockist. “We started the [skinscreen] category, and we’re in the process of trademarking it,” says Matthews. “When we were putting together our deck for the brand, we knew we’d have to borrow from a bit of prestige [skincare], moisturisers, and pull from certain subcategories to get a sense of the potential of our brand.”
The goal, she says, has been to elevate the brand beyond traditional suncare lines to sit alongside high-end skincare brands. Space NK initially stocked Ultra Violette on a seasonal basis in 30 stores from March to October in the UK. That’s now been expanded to year-round in 80 stores, as Space NK recognises that suncare has become an all-year-round category. Space NK cites Ultra Violette Supreme Screen among its top 10 best-selling products.
Unlike in other markets, Australians are well versed in UV protection and educated from childhood (it is part of the school curriculum) to ensure access to sunscreen all year round. That attitude is now gaining traction with international retailers and consumers in turn. “You can now really see how retailers are valuing this category,” says Matthews. “They’ve also really understood the potential of skinscreen in terms of being a basket add-on. We’re growing the skincare category for retailers because we’re not cannibalising anything else.”
The global suncare market hit an estimated $2.7 billion in 2022, up 7 per cent from the previous year, according to market research firm Kantar. The broader Australasian beauty market is worth $9 billion in 2022, according to Euromonitor International. The skincare market is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 3.39 per cent between 2023 and 2030, according to a recent Edited report, The Power of Localization in the Beauty Industry. The report notes consumers are more interested in organic ingredients, with “natural” and “vegan” featuring respectively in 14 per cent and 13 per cent of all skincare product descriptions in stock in June 2023.
Clean and organic are still a priority
As with fashion, beauty customers are taking a more sustainable approach to consumption. Brands in Australasia are working hard to become more transparent and focus on sustainable packaging and clean ingredients as well as more hybrid products, notes Euromonitor International’s beauty and fashion analyst Julia Illera. “With businesses under pressure to take a positive and active role in protecting people and the planet, many are embracing sustainability to enhance brand reputation, comply with legislation and build back better after the coronavirus pandemic.”
For Miranda Kerr, Australian model and founder of clean skincare brand Kora Organics, the drive to create a clean and organic beauty brand is connected to her personal history. When she was a teenager, her mother was diagnosed with cancer and was keen to avoid harmful products. “We were shocked to see how toxic certain products can be that were readily available on the market,” she says. “It was then, back in 2006, that I realised there wasn’t anything on the market in the certified organic skincare space that delivered the results that I needed. That was my lightbulb moment.”
She launched Kora Organics in 2009, leaning on local and organic ingredients native to Australia, such as Kakadu plum, a highly rated source of vitamin C, used in the brand’s Noni Bright Vitamin C Serum and Noni Glow Sleeping Mask. Other ingredients include caviar lime, kangaroo paw flower and sandalwood.
Brands in Australia were developing clean products for decades, long before they caught on with international markets, says Charlie Denton, co-founder of Isla Beauty. His family set up Australian cosmetic manufacturer Devcos. “I’ve done a lot with Australian product making and brands, particularly when I was working for the family business, and the key thing is they specialise in a lot of natural technologies,” he says.
Social media has helped to inform consumers about clean skincare and products, he says. Brands are consequently held to a higher standard, with consumers pushing for more transparency from brands.
Clean and organic skincare should not be confused — and there are very few brands doing both, says Miranda Kerr. “[Our brand] is quite different to many other brands worldwide. We are more than just clean beauty; we are certified organic,” she says. “Studies have shown that certified-organic ingredients [derived from fruit or vegetable] can contain up to 68 per cent more antioxidants than non-organic ingredients, which is why I believe our products produce such powerful results.”
However, the beauty industry has faced accusations of greenwashing, as with fashion. “Clean beauty is a step in the right direction, but unfortunately, it isn’t regulated, and it can be very misleading — each brand or retailer has their own set of rules of what they deem clean,” Kerr says. “Due to the lack of regulation, brands can misleadingly market their products as ‘clean’ or ‘natural’.” Kerr says her products are certified by an independent global certification body, Ecocert/Cosmos — the entire supply chain is reviewed and audited, including ingredients, manufacturing facilities and packaging.
Global potential
Some beauty insiders say the international market is now moving on from the clean beauty trend. Grown Alchemist prefers to use the term biological beauty. After L’Occitane acquired a majority stake in the Australian clean skincare brand in March 2022, the team reassessed its customer base. “They are Gen Z, design-conscious but also really looking for efficacious ingredients,” says Harrison Gregory, general manager of UK and EMEA at Grown Alchemist. “We found that talking about being clean and natural was in the past. Now, we talk about biological beauty. We talked about green chemistry [and] biomimetic ingredients.” The latter involves incorporating ingestible or nutricosmetic (such as IV drips) that deliver vitamins directly to the body.
Other leading brands from Australia have been snapped up by global giants. Australian skincare brand Aesop was bought from Natura Co by L’Oréal in April for $2.5 billion, its biggest-ever brand acquisition. The brand is best known for its vegan formulas in distinctive black bottles and is sold in 400 retail points worldwide. It has a fledgling business in China and deals with luxury hotel chains and beauty centres. Earlier this week, it was announced that Japanese consumer goods company Kao is acquiring Bondi Sands, an Australian brand known for its self-tanning products and sunscreen, as part of a strategy to scale its skin protection category.
Kerr launched Kora Organics with international growth in mind. She introduced the brand to America in 2017, gradually expanding distribution to include the UK, EU and APAC. It now sells products in 40 countries through bricks-and-mortar stores and online to more than 160 countries. “Between 2017 and 2021, we increased revenue over five times, and we have a robust strategy in place to double it again between 2022 and 2027,” Kerr says. Australia remains its biggest market, followed by the US.
Taking a brand global means working with global partners. “It’s very difficult to scale a brand based in Australia,” says Kerr. “The first thing we did was move our manufacturer from Australia to New York. We now work with a manufacturer who took the original formulas to see how they could improve/tweak and future-proof the products and also make them globally compliant. So now, we have the same amazing products that are globally compliant for registration purposes in pretty much every market.”
For businesses based in Australia, there are frustrations with the basic issue of connecting with retailers and buyers in international markets because of the time difference. Grown Alchemist now has teams in London, New York, Singapore, Shanghai and Australia. Each team manages their respective territories carefully, making sure products and marketing are suitable for local markets.
Differing regulatory environments are a hurdle. “The US is different to Europe; Europe to the UK; Australia to Canada to Asia,” says Matthews of Ultra Violette. “It does make it really hard to be a truly global sunscreen brand. That’s something that we’re grappling with at the moment — but we will get there.”
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