Hair color is having a moment.
Brands are coming out with new innovation on the professional and retail sides, and despite much to-do around consumer departure from hair dye during the COVID-19 era, the market for hair coloring remains large.
In the U.S., retail hair color is estimated to have brought in nearly $1.9 billion in sales for 2021, according to Euromonitor, a slight dip from 2020, but more than the $1.76 billion the category posted in 2019. Prestige hair color, however, is much smaller, with about $48 million in sales for 2021, up from $27 million in 2019, said Larissa Jensen, vice president and industry adviser, beauty, at the NPD Group. The category grew in 2020 as salons closed early in the COVID-19 pandemic and continued growing through 2021, Jensen said.
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“For all the women who said, ‘I’m going to embrace my gray,’ there were many more that were going down fighting,” Jensen said.
For those consumers, there are several new product lines on the market, both on the professional and retail sides. In March, Walmart said it would pick up a line of color from Bleach London for 3,500 stores.
Ulta Beauty has also been building its hair coloring assortment in recent years, and stocks Madison Reed, DPHue and other lines. In Ulta’s salons, Redken Express Root Touch Up has been in high demand since it launched in late 2021, said vice president of merchandising Jessica Phillips, as has Olaplex, which can be added on at Ulta salons for coloring processes.
“We’ve seen guests return [to salons] and then some, but also have that flexibility to do their own color at home,” Phillips said. “Part of that is driven by content and social conversations, and part of it’s driven by innovation that we’ve seen coming from the brands.”
That innovation includes better-for-you positioning and cleaner formulations, Phillips said.
Recent examples at retail include Clairol’s recently launched at-home lightning system sans bleach, as well as a gloss that contains argan oil and shea butter. Clairol also launched a new Root Touch Up System contains zero ammonia earlier this year.
On the professional side, Moroccanoil launched its first professional hair color collection in February, including permanent and demi-permanent color and lighteners that contain the brand’s proprietary ProArginine + ArganID System, meant to keep hair healthy.
Moroccanoil’s vice president of global education, Robert Ham, calls the line “care-infused hair color.” By the end of the year, the brand estimates the color option will be in several thousand salons, and chief executive officer Americas Jay Elarar estimated it could make up 20 to 30 percent of the business in the future.
In prestige color, IGK in January launched IGK Color, a line of at-home permanent hair color for $25 sold at Ulta and online.
“COVID-19 happened and a lot of people were doing their hair color at home. We were inspired by those customers,” said Dan Langer, group president for prestige hair at Luxury Brand Partners. “They were using products that didn’t necessarily reflect their lifestyle or their aesthetic.”
So, with IGK Color, the brand aimed to make at-home color products that resonated with Millennials and Gen Z, Langer said. The goal was to create “something that was now and fun and of the moment and fresh,” as well as “vegan and healthy and high-performance,” Langer said.
Younger customers are approaching hair color differently than prior generations, Langer said. “It’s about adding lavender, adding a highlight, part of their fashion ethos.”
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