The Mini Beauty Revolution is Upon Us

We are in the midst of a mini beauty movement.

Earlier this week I moderated a panel discussion on mini cosmetics, fragrance, and personal care packaging at the 3rd annual ADF&PD event in New York City. And just in case you missed the talk, here are my edited remarks from the event:

As editor of Cosmetics Design, I publish daily news about the business of beauty. My articles go up on the website and are also circulated as email newsletters.

Under each headline in those emails is a short blurb about the article And while I happen to know that some of my readers don’t click through to the site every day; I also know that they do really appreciate seeing these mini news items in their in-box.

They read the headline. They read the blurb. They know enough about the day’s beauty business news to feel informed.

And this brings me to my topic, which is not Mini Beauty News Articles, but Mini Beauty Packaging.

Mini Everything

Miniature-sized everything is popular now. We’ve got mini cars, mini handbags, and mini cupcakes.

On something of a personal note, if I may, I grew up on the prairie of Eastern Montana. So in developing and preparing my panel discussion on mini beauty packaging, I was a little bit excited to discover that there are now mini cows, which you should google (later). They are ridiculously adorable, and I might add, practical as well.

Mini sized products are available in nearly every consumer goods category. And as a culture, we are even experiencing what’s been called a Tiny House movement. While that living option is attractive to a very particular sort of person, I would wager that we’re also experiencing a mini beauty movement—a Mini Beauty Revolution.

It’s a movement that’s as much about the charm of tiny things as it is about practicality (like those tiny Montana cows).

Mini Beauty

Mini beauty is eminently popular!

Brands as diverse as LOLI Beauty, I Dew Care, SK-II, Dior, Smarty Pits, and Benefit Cosmetics are making and selling minis.

Suffice it to say, mini beauty is a big deal across categories, across retail channels, across media venues, and across consumer groups. 

On Cosmetics Design, I’ve been writing occasional articles about mini beauty packaging since as long ago as at least summer 2016, when I published a piece about the Little MAC color cosmetics collection.

And we’ve see very recent news items about mini beauty from sites like Brit & Co and renowned general interest consumer publications, including Forbes.

Mini beauty is everywhere, in makeup, fragrance, skincare, and haircare, in sun care with products like sun screen and self-tanner. There are mini bar soaps from brands like Senteurs D’Orient, mini Supplement packages from brand like Tonk, mini wipes, mini deodorant, mini masks and eye gels, even mini nail polish.

You name it, it’s available somewhere as a mini.

There are event mini makeup applicators. In fact, I often a mini facial powder puff in my handbag.

Mini Considerations

There is no one rule of thumb on how minis fit in a brand’s product portfolio or for what precisely a mini is.

But I can say that mini beauty packaging is almost always TSA compliant; minis simplify the original product in some way; and they are certainly always portable (this is even true for the mini houses that we talked about earlier, so it has to be true for beauty.

and, minis Must. Be. Charming.

It seems that now, everyone in beauty enjoys mini packaging. Editors love it. Influencers love it. Consumers love it.

I spoke with founder Eunice Charles about her indie lifestyle brand Natralee for a video piece I posted on Cosmetics Design about the Project Beauty Expo event here in New York City back in August.

Eunice told me that she decide to launch mini-sized body butters at PBE 2018 because even though her brand’s regular sized products are TSA-approved, people were still asking her for tiny versions.

Mini Data

I recently checked in with Market Research Provider, Euromonitor International about mini beauty. And that firm’s Senior Communications Executive Marissa Bosler, affirms what you might suspect by now.

To quote Marissa, “In 2017 beauty and personal care witnessed an increase in the use of small packaging sizes, which facilitate greater convenience for consumers in terms of portability, and allow a wider range of consumers to access premium brands which also offer high-end products in these formats.”

Many factors are driving the mini beauty revolution: new natural ingredient trends, sustainability concerns, the realities of remote working, and more itinerant lifestyles.

All these things, combined, are nudging beauty shoppers to be more practical, less conspicuous, consumers. And, consumers are looking for information about products that they never expected before.

Again, I quote Marissa Bosler of Euromonitor International, “A niche subset of manufacturers are including expiration dates on their products to communicate value in small pack sizes which can be finished before the end of product’s shelf life, such as beauty specialist retailer, Lush.”

So where a beauty consumer in the past didn’t look for a use-by date on packaging, now, a growing number of consumers fully expect to see one.

Mini Examples

Two fairly new brands have hit upon what is truly revolutionary in terms of both mini packaging and consumer satisfaction.

1. Lilu Lip Care

Lilu Lip Care is a brand and patented packaging design created by Meg Meranus that launched at this year’s Indie Beauty Expo event here in the New York.

I met Meg at IBE and asked her why mini beauty packaging is so relevant now. She attributes the mini beauty revolution to consumer demand for “on-the-go convenience, green packaging, less waste, and clean ingredients.”

I shared a couple of Euromonitor insights earlier; and while I am not at liberty to share all their commentary on this topic with you because market researchers are in the business of selling market research, I can tell you this: Meg is spot on in her understanding of the mini beauty revolution.

So I’ll quote here further: “LILU focuses on extreme convenience,” she says. “After all, you can’t use your lip care if it isn’t with you. Our products use a small dose packaging innovation, LILU LIP BALM PEARLS to create wearable jewelry and accessories that keep lip care at your fingertips.”

The necklaces, a sort of secondary packaging for LiLu lipcare, are not sensational, flashy, or performative but rather practical, stylish, and delightfully convenient. And Meg is just getting started.

She tells me that, “Our patented, small dose packaging has a wide range of applications and we are launching new products this fall including a [stack of] 3 colors in [a] lipstick-sized cosmetic, and products for kids and athletes, all built on the small dose balm pearl.”

I also asked Meg Meranus, What advice she would share with beauty brands considering a mini packaging option?

She advices brands to “Make it clean, green with a focus on ingredients you can eat, because your skin “eats” whatever you put on it. Use portion sizes that keep it fresh, and offer introductory mini multi-packs with choices.”

2. OLIKA Life

You may recognize the OLIKA hand sanitizer mini (pictured at the top of this article) as an ADF&PCD Innovation Awards winner.

The brand’s full-sized version is known as Bridie and the mini size isn’t just a smaller version, it is, in fact, named Minnie in the same way that Minnie sometimes might be a person’s name. 

So both name and stature make the OLIKA hand sanitizer a mini. The design is—again—practical and charming. Plus, the formula is distinctive; very understandable but unlike conventional hand sanitizer gels.

Mini Brands

I hope it won’t surprise you at this point, to learn there are several entire brands built around mini beauty packaging.

Trinny London made its debut in late 2017 with color cosmetics that are both personalized and miniaturized.

And, well before that in early 2015 a brand called Stowaway got its start with what it calls “right-sized” makeup. Stowaways is a color cosmetics brand that I have mentioned in almost every beauty packaging talk I’ve given for the past couple years now.

…at this point, I introduced Kristen Perry, President of Stowaway, and Daphne da Silva, the North American Market Manager for Albéa Dispensing Systems—both experts in mini beauty packaging, who spoke on the panel. All told, our nearly hour-long discussion was just the tip of the iceberg.

The mini beauty revolution is upon us and I’d love to hear your thoughts! If you're obsessed mini beauty, have a comment, or question; let me know.