Sep 21, 2021

The top men’s skincare products making billions of dollars The market for such products is booming – but are these gendered lotions and potions really superior to the more established unisex alternatives? The men’s skincare market is projected to expand about 6 per cent a year to reach $US18.92 billion ($26.08 billion) in 2027. Share Gregor Jaspers began looking for good skincare products for men almost a decade ago, while he was working as head of buying for Maison de Bonneterie, a Dutch chain of luxury department stores. At the time, he recalls, a growing number of sales reps were pitching him multi-functional moisturisers and cleansers designed for men. But that wasn’t his only motivation. “I was travelling 42 weeks of the year, living from my suitcase,” he says. “My wash bag was cluttered with products: women’s brands, pharmacy brands, luxury brands ... Everything was in there.” Gregor Jaspers, who founded men’s skincare company The Grey. Desperate for order, Jaspers decided to streamline his grooming routine by switching to one of the men’s ranges he’d been hearing about. So, he went out and bought several men’s skincare products from a well-known luxury brand. Within two weeks, he had given up on them. “I went back to the female products,” he admits. “I was missing their active ingredients and their luxury feel.” He kept looking for male-targeted alternatives, but nothing satisfied him. “The formulas were just not as good as all the women’s brands out there,” he says. “If you buy a [men’s] face cream from Clinique, it’s great, but the women’s cream is better. And that should not be the case.” The Grey’s Recovery Face Serum. Then Maison de Bonneterie folded, and Jaspers decided to found his own skincare company. “I wanted to create a men’s range that wasn’t simply about grooming but also offered skin improvement using the same active ingredients as women’s products,” he says. The Grey launched in 2018, offering a compact range developed by a Dutch medical laboratory. Key products include a cleanser, a face cream and a face scrub. In Australia, the exclusive stockist is MISTR , a new e-commerce platform devoted to men’s grooming. Advertisement The Grey’s products, according to Jaspers, are not only as good as the unisex or women’s alternatives, they also have particular characteristics that men will appreciate. “Take the face cream,” he says. “[Unisex] creams are always too rich. They leave the skin looking shiny, which guys don’t want. Women want this damp-looking glow, but guys want a mattifying look and feel.” Products by The Grey aim for a low-fuss routine. They also want a low-fuss routine, which is why The Grey’s moisturiser ($127 for 50ml) doubles as an eye cream. The cleanser ($95 for 100ml) purportedly softens facial hair, preventing in-growns, and the face scrub ($95 for 100ml) contains organic bamboo particles corrosive enough to “get this really scrubbing feeling, which guys like” but round enough to prevent them micro-scarring the skin. Jaspers’ assertion that he founded The Grey out of “personal necessity” rings true, but rapid growth in the market for men’s skincare products no doubt lent encouragement. Leading the way are heritage skincare brands including Clinique. That market is projected to expand about 6 per cent a year to reach $US18.92 billion ($26.08 billion) in 2027, according to Grand View Research . In another measure of the changing times, shaving products, once the only toiletries made specifically for men, accounted for just 32.7 per cent of overall revenue in 2019. Leading the way are heritage skincare brands including Clinique, Kiehl’s and Nivea, all of which have developed comprehensive men’s ranges in recent years. Clinique’s retail education manager for NSW, Paula Al Achkar, says Clinique For Men products are not pared-back versions of their main-line counterparts but formulated from scratch to address men’s skin concerns. Advertisement “Besides having facial hair, there are structural differences between men’s and women’s skin,” she says. “In general, men’s skin is about 20 per cent thicker, due to testosterone levels. Men also tend to have oilier skin because they have more sebaceous glands. And they have a higher risk of irritation and ingrown hairs.” Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, Clinique (owned by Estée Lauder) has men’s options tailored for normal, oily and ageing skin. Its latest men’s moisturiser, the Maximum Hydrator ($65 for 50ml), is particularly suited to older men with dry skin, says Al Achkar. “It helps the skin create its own internal water source to continually rehydrate itself for 72 hours, even after washing your face. It contains activated aloe water, hyaluronic acid, caffeine and a new polymer to help reduce water loss.” Of the big department-store skincare brands, Clinique’s main competitor in the men’s space is Kiehl’s. The company, owned by L’Oréal, debuted its first product for men – White Eagle Brushless Shave Cream – in the 1970s, and now sells more than a dozen others. Cammie Cannella says men need to see results fast. Cammie Cannella, vice-president of global education and customer experience at Kiehl’s, says men and women have different priorities when it comes to skincare. Men, she says, generally want multi-functional products and a simple skincare routine, and they need to see results quickly, or they lose interest. Which is why Kiehl’s does not offer speciality products such as serums and toners in its men’s range. Rather, says Cannella, many of its core men’s products, such as the Facial Fuel moisturiser ($45 for 75ml), do double duty. “Facial Fuel is a non-oily moisturiser fused with ingredients that revitalise dull and fatigued skin, including vitamins C and E, caffeine, chestnut extract and soy,” she says. Clinique For Men and Kiehl’s are available from skincare emporium MECCA , where they compete with a range of boutique unisex brands. Like Al Achkar, MECCA’s skincare education manager, Lucy Shaw, singles out sebaceous glands as a key differentiator between men and women’s skin. Advertisement “Sebum is a naturally occurring moisturiser,” she says. “It keeps skin soft and prevents it from crinkling, but it does increase the chances of breakouts and enlarged pores.” Dr Dennis Gross, whose products target oiliness and enlarged pores. Shaw often steers male customers towards products by New York-based dermatologist Dr Dennis Gross , not only because he is exceedingly popular in the US but also because many of his products target oiliness and enlarged pores. Gross himself is sceptical about products that claim to be tailored for men. “This is a marketing tactic,” he says. “My motto has always been that ‘human skin is human skin’ – meaning that I treat my patients based on their skin type, not their gender.” But he agrees the men’s market is booming. “Over the past few years, I have seen an uptick in men interested in skincare – both in topical regimens for at-home and professional treatments like Botox at my practice,” he says. New from Dr Dennis Gross this year is the Pore Perfecting Moisturiser ($103 for 60ml), which he says is ideal for people with problems caused by oily skin because it is “oil-free and incorporates alpha and beta hydroxy acids which help increase cell turnover and clear pores, all while delivering a lightweight hydration”. Dr Dennis Gross is battling “skin myths” with products such as his Pore Perfecting Moisturizer. “People with oily skin avoid moisturisers because they think they will clog their pores,” he says. “This is a skin myth. All skin types should use a moisturiser.” In Europe, the brand generating some of the loudest chatter among women and men this year is Augustinus Bader . It offers The Cream, a product suitable for both genders and all skin types, according to the eponymous brand’s founder, a German stem-cell researcher. “Our skincare technology moves in the field of epigenetics – in other words, it works with the skin’s own intrinsic repair needs by delivering various active ingredients that control and influence the skin cells in a targeted manner,” he says, cryptically. Advertisement The Cream and its counterparts, The Rich Cream and The Face Oil, are based on a wound gel that Bader developed to rehabilitate the skin of burn victims without the need for grafts. In layman’s terms, his claim is that this patented formula energises stem cells in your skin, turbo-charging the body’s healing process. Augustinus Bader, whose product The Cream is eye-wateringly expensive: $120 for just 15ml. “The products work independently of gender, ethnicity or age differences, adjusting to the skin’s needs,” he says. “It’s about creating the optimal environment for your body’s natural regeneration processes to achieve the best possible result for all skin types.” The Cream is eye-wateringly expensive: $120 for just 15ml. But – aside from a cleanser and a sunscreen – Bader says it is the only skincare product men need. It can even stand in for shaving foam. “I dilute it with water before shaving and just let it absorb afterwards,” Bader says. “My skin does not dry out any more, and I do not cut myself any more. It also saves time.” For men who find the idea of a multi-product regimen intimidating, that’s an attractive proposition. Save