The $200bn industry sucking tweens in – and parents dry
For the kids, it’s no longer about ordinary brands like Clearasil and Neutrogena. The soaring spend on beauty is driven by creams and sprays that cost $110 a pop. But is it doing more harm than good?
Over a century ago, the grandest bookshop in the world stood at 299 Bourke St, Melbourne. It was founder Edward W Cole’s brainchild; an emporium unique in the nation – and possibly the world – that housed, its proprietor claimed, two million books but also a toy land, a lolly shop, games and stationery supplies, a perfumier, tea salon, greenhouse and much more (even monkeys and talking birds). A sign over the entrance to Cole’s Book Arcade read Stay as long as you like, no obligation to buy. The Arcade remained for a decade after Cole’s death before it closed in 1929, when the building was demolished and rebuilt. Now the hallowed ground is being redeveloped again; and, in what is surely a sign of the times, the site will be reincarnated as the 3000sqm flagship store of cosmetics giant Mecca. It’ll be the biggest beauty shop in the southern hemisphere – and possibly the world. Here, Melburnians and their children (in particular their children) will slather lotions, potions, serums and balms on their faces with no obligation to buy. But buy they certainly will.
The beauty business is booming – and skincare (rather than, say, makeup) is now the biggest slice of that pie, expected to rise from $US190 billion in 2022 to $US260 billion by 2027 according to the latest research from The Business of Fashion and McKinsey. The baffling twist is the part that Generation Alpha (who are aged 13 and under) are playing in this epic growth story.
As just about any parents with a daughter (and in some cases, a son) aged from about 10 upwards would know, tweens and teenagers are inundating beauty stores and pharmacists to indulge a raging obsession with skincare products. For the kids, it’s no longer about ordinary brands like Clearasil and Neutrogena. The soaring spend on beauty is driven by creams and sprays that cost $110 a pop (for 50ml of the wildly popular Drunk Elephant brand’s polypeptide cream, currently sold out at Mecca), or the equally coveted Glow Recipe cloudberry essence toner ($65 for 75ml, in stock at Mecca), which “visibly reduces the look of dark spots and hyperpigmentation while hydrating and strengthening dull, dehydrated skin”.
In the US, where retailer Sephora dominates, investment bank Piper Sandler’s semi-annual Taking Stock with Teens revealed teenagers were spending $US324 (about $500) on beauty (cosmetics, skincare and fragrance) a year, a 23 per cent jump on the previous year. In Australia, a haul from Mecca, which started out with a single shop in South Yarra in 1997, is currency for a certain demographic.
Fuelled by some of the most potent social media marketing ever trained upon consumers, tweens’ fanatical desire for expensive cosmetics with ingredients designed for older skin has raised some concerns from dermatologists, particularly as rip-offs of expensive brands cash in on the demand. There have also been calls for tighter regulation.
Interviewed by The Weekend Australian Magazine, Jo Horgan, Mecca’s founder and co-chief executive, admits the influx of pre-teen children now clamouring for products took her slightly by surprise. “We do try and stay ahead of customer trends and this is one that has morphed relatively quickly,” she says. “Tweens are emerging as a much bigger segment, it’s true.”
Wanting to look after your skin seems like a harmless enough craze – if you can afford it. Some experts welcome the attention being paid to sun protection by younger people (as long as the brand is trendy, of course). Others query the harm in chasing impossible beauty standards.
Most parents just want to know, how did we get here?
“It’s nuts. Our bathroom is just full of my daughter’s stuff,” says Melanie Williams of Castlecrag on Sydney’s north shore, who remembers back to her own teenage regimen of soap and water. Melanie is lucky she can get into the bathroom at all. To indulge their skincare hobby – or fixation – Australian teenagers are spending hours a day, morning and night, on elaborate skin routines to make their skin “glowy”. But for some it’s not all about looks. As it turns out, much has changed in the past 100 years since Cole’s Book Arcade closed. Young girls used to read books to soothe the soul; now they’re turning instead to semi-ritualised skincare regimes with a kind of fervour that suggests something deeper.
Horgan, who confesses she was a bookworm as a girl and a “massive” Enid Blyton fan, explains it’s “human nature” to want to nurture one’s self – to form a “cocoon”.
Furthermore, “if girls are finding an opportunity to understand the value of their one skin, their one body, their one brain, and start looking after it from an early age, that’s something to be celebrated,” Horgan says.
In many ways she is right.
My own 12-year-old daughter Abbey arches a not-yet-manicured eyebrow when I ask if her elaborate skincare routine is about keeping her skin looking young.
“No,” she says kindly, although something about the way she looks at me makes me feel like a dinosaur who has asked a very silly question. “I don’t care about that. I like the self care. It feels good to do and it’s very calming.” Over in Castlecrag, Melanie’s daughter, 15-year-old Olivia, agrees. She loves the “ritual” with cleansing and says it’s a nice way to start and end the day. “When I’ve finished cleansing my skin it just feels really nice and smooth,” says Olivia. “I feel so much better.”
So what is actually in this stuff? Social media is bubbling with stories of children who have developed rashes and reactions from applying unsuitable products on their young, sensitive, and often unblemished skin – products they were influenced to buy on those same platforms. Choice, the consumer website, published an article earlier this year headlined “TikTok influencers pushing costly and inappropriate skincare for tweens”.
Skincare fads have led manufacturers to include potent ingredients in their products such as a topical retinoid made from Vitamin A that can permeate through the surface layers of skin, typically used for anti-ageing or to treat severe acne, as well as hydroxy acids and peptides (made up of amino acids). Applied to young skin it can cause (usually temporary) contact dermatitis – irritation and inflammation. Worryingly, it can also cause sun sensitivity and if used for too long, can dry out the skin (arguably requiring more skin care).
Earlier this year, the BBC reported that children as young as eight were using skincare products that could leave them with irreversible skin problems, and Australian dermatologists are also increasingly speaking out about the use by young people of products that are unnecessary at best and potentially harmful at worst. The British Association of Dermatologists warned of “allergic reactions which can be life long” after receiving reports from members that young children were being influenced to use skincare products for ageing skin.
“Many of the creams are harmless,” says Dr Tess McPherson of the British Association of Dermatologists. “However, there are concerns around products designed for older skin – including strong ingredients like retinol, vitamin C, hydroxy acid and things labelled as brightening or anti-ageing. These can cause skin irritation which may be more severe in younger skin and/or sensitive or eczema-prone skin.”
In Australia, a child can walk into Priceline pharmacy and buy popular brand The Ordinary’s 1% retinol serum. A spokesperson told The Weekend Australian Magazine that “Priceline only endorses the use of products for those who they are intended for. When asked for advice, Priceline staff will work with its customers to understand their needs and offer appropriate solutions.”
The Therapeutic Goods Administration, which does regulate sunscreen, says that skincare products such as “anti-ageing creams, toners, serums, exfoliators, masks, make-up, soaps and cleansers etc” are not within its remit. “Ingredients in cosmetic products are regulated as industrial chemicals under the Industrial Chemicals Act 2019, which is administered by the Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme (AICIS).”
In answer to queries about the products containing retinol, a TGA spokesman says: “This would be the remit of the ACCC if they are not therapeutic goods and don’t make therapeutic claims (such as treating a disease)”.
Horgan reveals demand for child-unsuitable products has prompted Mecca to get the message out about retinol. “We’ve done an article in the Mecca Memo about how do you tell your tweens they’re not ready for retinol? How do you talk to your tweens about what is appropriate for them? And interestingly, that was the most-read article in a week that we’ve ever had,” Horgan explains. She also says Mecca spends over 4 per cent of its turnover on “education and engagement” and staff speak to every shopper from tweens through to its oldest known customer who is 103.
Horgan acknowledges that parents are struggling to ride the wave, and that her store has a direct line to their kids. “We have to get it right, now, otherwise we will break that bond of trust at the earliest period and that’s just not what Mecca is about. So we have really educated the team on how to engage with tweens and young teenagers in a way that they feel heard, and then how to ask them questions. And they’re very clear on what products are, and are not, appropriate for tweens,” she says.
Online, however, Mecca’s retinol product page does not obviously flag any warnings associated with the product. “We also need to connect with the parents,” Horgan says, and she encourages parents to come into the store with their kids. It can, she says, “be a good bonding experience because rather than the parents having to do all the heavy lifting you’ve got some fab person in the store that can really connect and steer them in a direction”. Often that’s easy enough as “it’s as much about the brands that they want, rather than the actual product,” she says.
Beauty brands have harnessed the reach of social media to give them staggering influence. Sol de Janeiro, loved by my daughter Abbey and her friends, has 1.9 million followers on Instagram. The L’Occitane Group-owned brand has previously tapped the likes of Kathleen Fuentes (2.1 million Instagram followers), and Erika Priscilla (1.2 million TikTok followers) to promote its Brazilian Bum Bum Body Cream (which claims to help “visibly smooth and tighten the appearance of your skin thanks to potent, caffeine-rich Guaraná Extract”).
Drunk Elephant has 2 million Instagram followers and has tapped the power of mega influencers who amassed their audience via make-up tutorials such as UK-based Ling KT, (1.2 million Instagram followers) to promote its products – in one 17-second video Ling KT dots cream from four different tubes on her face, above the caption that emphasises the soothing properties of her skincare routine: “satisfying skincare using @Drunkelephant #satisfyingskincare ad”.
Yet Drunk Elephant has also come under intense pressure in recent times for the surge in both popularity and unsuitability of some of its products, leading founder Tiffany Masterson to post on Instagram about what kids should and shouldn’t use. “Many of our products are designed for all skin, including kids and tweens,” wrote Masterson.
“First, I would say stay away from our more potent products that include acids and retinols – their skin does not need these ingredients quite yet,” she continued, before listing the Drunk Elephant products that were “safe for kids and tweens to use”.
Influencers can earn big dollars spruiking skincare, depending on their numbers of followers. According to Cosmetify, TikTok’s biggest beauty earner last year was Kylie Jenner, who earned $US87,000 per TikTok video, ahead of James Charles on $60,732 per video.
Mecca uses Instagram and TikTok to reach its audience, while the brands it stocks – Nars, Mac, Charlotte Tilbury and Augustinus Bader – also prompt kids to head to Mecca to stock up.
Horgan acknowledges that there is plenty of bad advice on social media platforms but says her most popular influencers are over 45 years old, and get 20 per cent more eyeballs than Mecca’s younger influencers. She says Mecca does not use influencers who are under 18.
Of course, increasingly, young people actively follow only a handful of influencers – before TikTok’s powerful algorithm takes over and serves them an endless scroll of skincare routine and product videos.
Says Horgan: “Like everything in life, you just cannot control all the messages out there, whether it’s on Instagram or TikTok or in a schoolyard or on a bus or wherever it is. We focus on what we can control. And we try to make it really simple and clear. So if there is disinformation out there, our role is to clarify what is the real information. We have these customers and we want them for life.”
It’s perfect timing for the market – coinciding with rising pocket money inflation. Australian teenagers have been rewarded with an 18 per cent jump in allowances from their parents in the past year alone, according to data from Commonwealth Bank’s “Kit” money app for children, which also shows 12- to 15-year-olds’ spending has jumped 31 per cent this year compared to last, on various goods and services.
Kit managing director Yish Koh says teenagers spend a lot of time on social media, which “makes them much easier to advertise to, and they are influenced by their peers, so from a marketer’s perspective I can understand why they would see that as a growing market – they are relying on what they see on social media – compared with their parents.”
Back at my house, Abbey says her interest in skincare came mostly from TikTok, where she sees many of the brands that Mecca sells – Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe, Sol de Janeiro – as well as a bounty of Korean skincare brands. “Skincare is trendy,” she says. “At birthday parties most of the present bags are from Mecca, and the first thing you think of when you get someone a gift is to get it from Mecca.”
Abbey’s morning routine involves putting her hair back in a skincare headband (which looks much like the one Ling KT wears in her videos) from Amazon, then a Cetaphil cleanser from Chemist Warehouse, where she and her friends also like to visit for lower-priced basics. “If I want to clean my skin really well I use a Glow Recipe toner, once a week. It’s a really good product and makes my skin really glowy,” Abbey says.
She then uses a face mist from Florence By Mills, a range produced by actor Millie Bobby Brown; and then comes the sunscreen. Abbey likes Naked Sundays and also carries it in her school bag to top up during particularly sunny weather.
At night her routine includes the addition of Korean brand Cosrx Snail 96 Mucin, to hydrate what looks like perfect tween skin. (Snail mucin is basically mucus that snails excrete; the prestigious Mayo Clinic says it shows real signs of having skin benefits). For a while she used a Drunk Elephant polypeptide cream; although she didn’t know much about peptides, she did like the way it felt on her skin for a while, and a special pump dispenser she said helped prevent germs.
Over in Castlecrag, 15-year-old Olivia says she has refined her technique over the past few years to deal with some blemishes that I’ll confess are difficult to see with the naked eye. “In the morning, I just use toner and moisturiser with an SPF, and at night I use two cleansers, a toner and serum and moisturiser and a special type of cream,” says Olivia.
Why two cleaners? I ask, echoed by her mother listening in on the interview.
“The first one is an oil cleanser and that removes all the dirt from inside your pores,” says Olivia. “You have to really rub it in to get rid of the dirt, and the second cleanser is just to get the outside excess dirt off, so it makes your face feel really clean and gets all the dirt and oil off.”
While definitely a Mecca fan, Olivia finds a lot of their products “so expensive”, so these days she spreads her spend to include a variety of Korean brands from W Cosmetics at Chatswood, on Sydney’s north shore.
So could all this cleaning and soothing be good for girls and younger women? Face doctor to the stars Dr Joseph Hkeik, whose clients include Elle Macpherson, says many teenagers who are taking care of their skin will have an advantage over most of their parents. “The fact that they are aware of skincare and skin protection means they’re going to be way better than us,” says Hkeik.
To be clear, Hkeik’s All Saint clinic does not treat children or offer any products for them, but he hears about what his clients’ daughters and some sons want – skincare preferably from Mecca, and preferably Drunk Elephant – consistently. The Double Bay-based doctor points out that most sun damage his clients are now trying to counteract happened in the teenage years. “We were just out in the sun playing for hours with no protection and we got sunburnt many different times. These injuries will take about 20 to 30 years to appear on your face, so these kids are far more likely to actually not have the same issues as us,” says Hkeik.
He agrees teenagers with good skin should be avoiding active ingredients such as vitamin A and “shouldn’t really exfoliate” unless they have acne prone skin or oily skin – a message plenty of young people won’t be hearing.
Does he think these kids – some as young as 10 – really need to be spending 30 minutes to an hour twice a day on this process? Not quite, he says. “All they really need is to cleanse and to use a sunblock in the morning and then just cleanse and moisturise at night-time.”
Horgan says it’s great that young people are into sunscreen. Beyond that, she says, “I also think that tweens just cleansing their skin and putting on a simple moisturiser – that’s all good. If they then want to put on great, fun-smelling body stuff too, that’s also another way of looking after yourself and nurturing yourself and giving yourself a good sense of self. So, you know, I think that’s all really positive.”
But chemist Michelle Wong, who educates almost half a million social media followers on beauty myths on her own Instagram site, says many tweens don’t even need moisturiser. “Many people don’t need it unless their skin is dry. Skin is designed to moisturise itself. So you might not actually need one.”
Earlier this year, the shadow of bad publicity fell fleetingly on Mecca when a former employee on maternity leave sued the firm for unfair dismissal. The former head of brand withdrew her claim in March after reaching a confidential settlement with the company. Horgan won’t comment on the case, which is believed to be unusual for the firm.
Mecca has 110 stores and currently employs about 8,000 people, and Horgan would like to double that figure in the next five years. She’s seen off a challenge from LVMH-owned cosmetics giant Sephora which entered the Australian market in 2014 but has not been able to match Mecca’s phenomenal growth here.
Horgan runs Mecca with her husband, former Boston Consulting Group executive Peter Wetenhall; he guaranteed his future BCG salary to give the fledgling firm access to the debt markets, and became the co-CEO in 2005.
Last year’s financial results showed Horgan and her husband chose to take a 40 per cent smaller dividend – despite buoyant profits. Costs associated with the new flagship store aside, the decision raised suggestions the co-owners are looking to push further into overseas markets with their own products, Mecca Cosmetica and Mecca Maxima. Last year Mecca started selling its best-selling own-brand Mecca Cosmetica’s To Save Face SPF50+ sunscreen in the UK, and an SPF20 lip gloss is being sold direct-to-consumer from a new dedicated website. Horgan is coy about her plans, saying only: “The offer that we have is globally unique … One of our mantras is logical incrementalism. So we will just take one step ahead of the other. We won’t say where that goes because it could go anywhere.”
In 2020, Mecca opened what was believed to be the biggest beauty store in the Southern Hemisphere – the 1800sqm store in the Gowings building in the Sydney CBD – only to announce with great fanfare the following year its redevelopment of 299 Bourke St. Mecca said at the time that its Melbourne flagship would open in 2023. Things have been delayed.
Mecca and the other retailers who will share the tenancy are yet to take the keys from the developer, which is working through “complex heritage planning and demolition,” says Horgan. There had been “no documentation around what was there, what was underneath it [the site], so it’s had to be done so delicately”. Once that’s done her builders will need another five months to reskin the inside of the building.
Then will Mecca have the biggest beauty store in the world? “We are going to try and work out whether we are the biggest,” says Horgan. “Edward Cole had the building originally with his bookstore, which was the biggest in the world 100 years ago. If we can continue that narrative wouldn’t that be fabulous?”
Horgan remains hopeful of a 2024 opening for the new store.
“So we’re being patient, which is something we’re not very good at,” she says. “The upside of that is that when we do finally get handover, it’s given us additional time to really push ourselves to dream bigger, be more ambitious.”
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