As the popularity of mass skin care continues to rise, thanks to brands like CeraVe and Cetaphil, Procter & Gamble is making a play for the market.
On Tuesday, its new sensitive skin-focused brand GoodSkin MD launches on CVS.com. This follows the brand’s soft launch on its DTC e-commerce site. It will enter all CVS physical stores in July. Gender-inclusive and designed for millennials, the brand launches with six products including sunscreen, vitamin C and vitamin B serums, a night cream, a rescue cream and a cleanser, with more planned for the future.
P&G started developing the brand a year and a half ago, after finding that 65% of consumers say they have sensitive skin, said Eric Rose, senior brand director at P&G Skin Care.
“When you ask them why, the No. 1 reason they tell you is the skin-care products they use,” he said. “Using the words from one of the consumers that we talked with, trying new skin-care products makes them feel like their face is on fire.” As a result, in-store marketing signs will feature a fire-face emoji to attract consumers with this concern.
To appeal to this sensitive-skin customer, GoodSkin MD developed hypoallergenic products without common irritants including parabens, synthetic dyes, fillers and fragrance.
According to P&G senior scientist Jennifer Werner, who conducted R&D for GoodSkin MD, millennials’ top skincare concerns include uneven skin tone, dark eye circles, dullness, fine lines, visible pores and acne.
“Like life, millennials have said that their skin is unpredictable,” said Werner, noting that acne is most prevalent among the younger millennials, while this generation is also “starting to see signs of aging.”
For marketing, the brand’s strategy has been to “build relationships with dermatologists” on social media platforms, said Rose. “There’s been a big shift in how consumers engage with dermatologists since the beginning of Covid,” he said, noting that the brand has tapped into the rise of dermatologists on TikTok. “SkinTok, as I’ve heard it referred to, is rapidly growing, and what we’ve tried to do is build relationships with dermatologists on these platforms.”
Mass skin-care brands have been gaining market share in the past year, thanks to the rise of skinfluencers on TikTok and other platforms. L’Oréal-owned CeraVe, for its part, has seen strong sales after emerging as a social media darling. In addition, drugstores have been increasingly elevating their product assortments and expanding their beauty offerings.
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CVS will be GoodSkin MD’s main sales channel focus, while its DTC channel will be used to collect customer feedback and data, said Rose. The cleanser retails for $10.99, while all the other products in the lineup will be $29.99. At a higher price point than drugstore competitors, the brand is positioning itself as a more accessible alternative to premium skin-care brands found at specialty beauty retailers.
This is the latest example of P&G’s growing focus on millennial-oriented brands, following the acquisition of body-care brand Native in 2017 and the terminated attempt to acquire razor brand Billie last year.
