Industry insider: male grooming predictions for 2018

Here, we cover his insights for the year ahead:

2018: what will be disruptive?​

2018 will be an exciting year for the skincare industry with rapidly evolving consumer demands continuing to reflect changing preferences across fashion, wellness, social media and culture.

With men’s grooming set to boom, it’s important to know the trends that will drive the men’s skincare segment in 2018 and beyond.

Bulldog Skincare For Men is currently the only major men’s skincare brand driving growth in the UK market. This, the brand suggests, is partly to do with spotting potentially disruptive trends early and seeing this as an opportunity to develop new products.

Shorter Beard Styles​

Whilst the beard is certainly here to stay, I do believe that shaving-based styles will start to make more of an impact next year.

Fashion forecasters are starting to suggest that the next wave of catwalk inspiration may involve a return to the 80s, an altogether more clean shaven age.

The most recent round of men’s fashion catwalk shows have also presented a shorter, stubbly look. The popularity of traditional barber shops will continue to grow.

On the back of this, I predict a better year for quality razor blades, aftershave balms and shaving creams.

Targeted Solutions​

Men are increasingly aware of the ability of skincare to offer targeted solutions that assist common imperfections.

This growing awareness is empowered by trends in social media, and will result in growing popularity for products that target male concerns like blemishes and dark circles.

Bulldog will be launching our Age Defence Eye Roll-On in February 2018 due to consumer demand. This product has been formulated to help reduce the appearance of fine lines, dark circles and puffiness.

Anti-Pollution​

The potential for excessive exposure to sunlight to damage your skin has been widely known for a long time.

What will be new news to many people will be the alarming levels of long term damage that pollution can cause to your skin.

Urbanism and pollution will become key concerns in skincare. This is already a big trend in Asia and we should expect to see an even greater focus on it.

Sustainability & Transparency​

Sustainability will become an even bigger driver of consumer purchases in 2018. We will see more brands and retailers increasing their efforts to avoid certain controversial ingredients and processes.

Radical transparency will be a big theme. Beyond formulations, we will see an increasing focus on the full life cycle of skincare products.

Sustainable packaging will become more popular. A key milestone for Bulldog will be moving all our tube production to sugarcane plastic.

This is plastic that is produced from ethanol derived from sugarcane production. The main benefit of this approach is that sugarcane plastic captures carbon dioxide, helping to reduce our carbon footprint.  

Koreanification​

As the global crucible of skincare trends, Korea’s influence on skincare will continue to extend around the world.

For several years now, Bulldog has been making an annual pilgrimage to skincare hotspots in Myeongdong. We have seen Asian trends such as sheet face masks really take-off in the UK this year.

We anticipate more Korean-inspired products for men appearing in 2018 such as toners, emulsions, tinted moisturisers and concealers.