Forecasting trends has always been associated with fashion, but WGSN Beauty has recently been created in response to beauty industry’s request to have a platform that addresses the unique needs of the sector. With Salon India, Jenni Middleton, Beauty Director at WGSN, shares her account of how it is equally or even more important to forecast beauty trends
What made you foray into beauty and WGSN?
My background is that of a journalist. Before joining WGSN, I used to work for a beauty magazine in the UK. About three years ago, I fell in love with the beauty industry. So, when WGSN was thinking about launching a beauty vertical, I was really interested to be involved in it because the science, the new product development, the opportunities all around, felt like it was the perfect job.
What is your role and responsibility at WGSN?
I oversee all of the content that goes onto the site and I make the decisions about what kind of content will be most valuable to new product development. I was also the person who was in-charge of doing research for the launch. At WGSN we have a massive pedigree in fashion and have been predicting fashion trends for over two decades.
What is the difference between fashion and beauty as industries?
When I started, just over a year ago, I realised quickly that the beauty industry needed something different from the fashion industry. We do not post seasonal topics in this sector, we have a different mandate. If you are working on skin care or hair care you need to think about consumers and have to build in time for consumer testing, clinical trials, testing if the products are stable, and so on. For all of this, you need to know the trends much in advance, and we need to have a much longer lead time. The performance, not just the look and feel of a beauty product, is super important. Also, how a beauty product actually delivers result is really different from the fashion industry.
What do you have to say about the design and packaging of beauty products?
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