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Mini beauty products are trending. Across TikTok, videos showing off collections of travel-size perfumes, lipsticks, foundations and serums from buzzy brands are garnering hundreds of thousands of likes. US retailer Target says sales of travel sizes have more than doubled in the last three years, and it now stocks over 300 minis as more popular brands start to offer shrunken-down sizes.
Charlotte Tilbury, Rare Beauty, Saie and Tatcha are among a raft of brands leaning in. Skincare brand Glow Recipe reports that sales of its miniatures were up 110 per cent year-on-year to $22.7 million in the first half of 2024. However, while selling more minis may seem like an easy way to boost awareness and capture the attention of a younger generation, experts warn of drawbacks when it comes to sustainability and cost.
“Beauty minis have steadily been increasing in popularity for the last few years,” confirms Grace Vernon, head of global trends and cultural insights at Walgreens-owned, UK-based retailer Boots and No7 Beauty Company. “Minis are an accessible entry point for consumers to try more brands at a lower price,” she adds. “At Boots, the Sol de Janeiro Bum Bum Jet Set is incredibly popular. We believe this is because it includes three of the best-loved products from the brand in miniature sizes, which our customers love.”
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The cost-of-living crisis is undoubtedly a factor in the rising demand for beauty minis, says Yarden Horwitz, co-founder of trend analysis platform Spate. “Mini sizes are often seen as more economical, allowing consumers to try high-end products without committing to full-size purchases.”
Minis also cater to the growing consumer desire for experimentation, convenience and portability, she adds. Mckinsey’s 2023 beauty market survey, which canvassed shoppers across four generations in six countries (the US and China as well as the UK, Germany, France and Italy), found “consumers today are interested in adding products to their regular home beauty routines,” with 69 per cent of respondents liking to try new products at least every six months and one third using five or more brands for cosmetics in their regular beauty routines.
Experts agree that one consumer group in particular is driving the trend: Gen Alpha. “We have noticed younger consumers shopping for minis more,” says Sarah Lee, co-founder of Glow Recipe. “Although we see diversity in age range for individuals shopping minis, the younger consumer is also evolving,” adds Lucia Ruehlemann, president of makeup brand Saie. “They like the price accessibility, collecting multiples and virality of our hero [products], such as the glowy super gel, one of our most successful minis.”
A new TikTok trend has put shrunken-down products in the spotlight: the “mini makeup bag”. One video by creator @organizedbyJulia of a bag containing mini mascaras, lipsticks and blush — titled “I’m only buying minis from now on” — received over 150,000 likes; a similar clip from @homewithaziza has over 80,000 likes.
“Mini beauty products are booming right now on TikTok Shop,” says Emily Caine, TikTok Shop’s UK head of beauty. Saie has seen great success with its minis on TikTok, while Lookfantastic says it has observed consistent quarter-on-quarter growth in the demand for minis through its TikTok shop. “Our insights show this growth is driven by convenience, aligned with the ‘mini makeup bag’ trend, not the monetary saving that mini beauty products can bring,” shares Kate Jameson, head of brand at Lookfantastic.
“It’s clear that the Gen Alpha aesthetic is driving this change,” says Horwitz, noting how the “cute” appeal of these products is the key selling point on social media. Some mini products are becoming collectables, such as the often sold-out Rare Beauty blush.
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Horwitz notes that interest in minis has been rising for some time now. “While TikTok has amplified the mini products trend, we first noticed its growth through search data,” she says. For example, Google searches for “mini toners” skyrocketed by 2,200 per cent in 2023, and “mini blush” rose 1,042 per cent.
The opportunity in discovery sets
For many brands, minis are becoming a vital way to drive discovery in a saturated beauty market.
Tatcha created a mini version of its cleanser as the original option was too large to take on flights (most airports still restrict liquids to 100ml). However, the brand also started selling sets of minis for customers to try out before committing to full-sized products, similar to Glow Recipe and Saie. “Mini products offer a solution to try out a range of products without the big price tag and many will then go on to invest in the full-sized version when they have found what works for them,” says Caine.
Glow Recipe’s Fruit Babies mini skincare set, launched in 2019, was “created for driving client acquisition”, says the brand’s co-founder Christine Chang. By gifting these minis to Sephora customers, the brand is “seeing huge success with conversion as the demand for these hero products is at its highest in the history of Glow Recipe”. At Ulta, “5-10 per cent of our Ulta Beauty Rewards members who shop minis tend to trade up to full-size versions,” notes Maria Salcedo, senior vice president of merchandising.
There has been a 29 per cent year-on-year rise in Google searches for mini beauty sets, according to Spate’s The New Rules of Beauty report. This rises to 109.8 per cent for fragrance.
Discovery is a key driver of success for fragrance businesses, according to Mintel’s 2024 The Future of Fragrance report. Boots, Ulta and Space NK all note luxury fragrances as one of the largest growth areas for these mini product booms. Brands such as Diem, Miller Harris and Byredo are among those jumping on the trend with fragrance discovery sets.
“Fragrance is an interesting category here as we are seeing customers spend the same on fragrance but buying multiple 10mls to give them choice and the ability to layer,” says Sophie Wayman, head of seasonal at Space NK. (Solid perfumes also lend themselves to the layering trend, where consumers build a personalised scent by wearing multiple fragrances at once.)
"Trends, such as scent layering, are complicating usage behaviours within fragrance and scented personal care,” adds Maddie Malone, beauty and personal care analyst at Mintel. Similarly to mini beauty products, the perfume layering trend stems from TikTok and younger consumer groups (Gen Alpha and Gen Z) as it offers a personalised and unique approach to fragrance that cannot be achieved with one large bottle. Malone notes waning consumer confidence, reduced spending power and a growing desire to experiment behind the rise of fragrance discovery sets.
However, brands should continue to introduce mini versions and discovery sets in new, trending product areas beyond just fragrances, according to Horwitz — such as toners and blushers. The Vogue Business Beauty Trend Tracker highlights silicone primer, tubing mascara and water-based SPF as hot beauty categories this month.
The pitfalls of minis
Despite being a great acquisition category, the cost of producing minis can be higher than the full-sized versions due to the price of packaging. There are also sustainability red flags. Proponents say minis are effective testers, preventing people from buying larger products that they don’t like and won’t use. They also use less packaging, by virtue of being smaller — as long as people aren’t buying several to make up for their smaller size. “The reduced packaging and waste associated with mini products align well with sustainability goals,” says Caine.
On the other hand, if people repeatedly purchase minis, packaging waste becomes a bigger problem, and one that isn’t easy to solve. “Miniature beauty products, like 99 per cent of beauty products, are in single-use packaging and that is what is driving the issue over size or even the material,” says Claudia Gwinnutt, commercial brand advisor and founder of reusable mini beauty product company Circla.
Some retailers and brands are attempting to address beauty’s packaging problem: the Recycle at Boots scheme encourages customers to recycle empty products in-store in return for Boots Advantage Card points. Space NK offers a similar initiative. However, Gwinnutt points out that recycling isn’t a silver bullet for minis: “Recycling sorting machines are built for standard-size products (generally anything smaller than 2 inches isn’t recycled) so they just don’t recognise them and therefore, often just end up in landfill or are incinerated.”
Product placement and marketing, therefore, must be well considered in order not to replace sales of refillable or more easily recyclable full-sized products, and promote over-consumption of miniatures as collectables. “We place minis in areas that customers might not be looking for those categories, so it is about bringing in new people to brands and categories,” says Wayman.
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