Living in Shade

While poking around on consumeraffairs.com I came across an article entitled “Sunscreen Gets a Makeover”. This article talks about some of the changes that the sunscreen industry is having to incorporate into their products in order to stay relevant. This is good news for consumers because I feel that all these changes are just pushing innovation.

“Let’s face it: no one loved the texture and grease of older sunscreens, but people used them because they needed to protect their skin from the sun’s harmful rays,” said Taya Tomasello, senior beauty analyst for Mintel. “The latest innovative sunscreens offer sun protection in more appealing, easier-to-use ways.”

The first thing they talk about are the continued and increased prevalence of spray-on sunscreen. Spray sunscreens appeal to people because their much easier to apply and don’t make such a mess. Spray’s are usually less effective, but that can be attributed to the fact that it’s an emerging technology. The more the companies see the want for spray’s the more attention they’ll give it and we should see much better products. In the last year 1 in 5 new sunscreens on the market were available in a spray form. This percentage is expected to increase this year.

While spray on sunscreens are the current rage. The next rage could be the powdered sunscreen. Powdered sunscreens are convenient because of their ease of portability and are also extremely lightweight on the skin. The powdered forms don’t have to deal with the ineffectiveness rumors that swirl around the spray ones. Most of the powdered sunscreens coming out containing sun blocking ingredients that people are familiar with such as zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. The main hurdle that the powdered sunscreens have to overcome is the look they convey. People want to look sexy when their at the beach and being covered in a thin powder doesn’t really get that done.

Sunscreens are also trying to incorporate ongoing trends into their products just like basically everyone else. The whole organic or “green” craze has hit just about every sector, sunscreen is no different. There are all sorts of sunscreens coming out with their claims to be all-natural, herbal, or botanical.

The sunscreen industry is also facing an attack from other sectors of the skincare industry. More and more skincare products are incorporating UV protection into their products to try and kill two birds with one stone. Why should a girl go and put on some sunscreen when her regular makeup has UV protection already in it. Sunscreen companies are being forced to adapt. Much like the skin care products are incorporating UV protection, sunscreen companies are going the other way and incorporating skincare benefits into their products. Its your basic merging of two different product sectors, instead of concentrating on doing one thing right, people want the ease of a product that does it all. Unfortunately when you try and do too much with one thing, the overall effectiveness of the product suffers.

Innovation is a good thing, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. I find that a lot of the time companies sacrifice the effectiveness of the product for the ease of use and that’s something that I don’t necessarily agree with. I’m all for the sunscreen industry’s push forward, I just hope they don’t forget where they came from.