NEW YORK — Olay is bringing a touch of sun, plus a dose of sun protection and moisturization, to the skin care aisle.
Arriving at mass stores in mid-April is Olay Complete Touch of Sun Daily UV Facial Moisturizer, the first mass skin care item to combine self-tanning, SPF and moisture elements in one product. Touch of Sun will retail for $12.99 and will round out Olay’s existing Complete skin care line, including Touch of Sun for the body, which launched last year and does not have an SPF.
The sunless skin care category is heating up mass stores. Sales of tinted hand and body lotions in food, drug and mass stores reached $42 million in 2005, up from $5 million in 2004, according to ACNeilsen data supplied by Procter & Gamble, which excludes Wal-Mart sales. But no company has taken sunless to the next level by adding sun protection and moisturization to its formulas. Touch of Sun, which in July will include another sku for darker skin tones, could generate as much as $25 million in first-year sales, according to industry sources.
Lauren Thaman, global director of Procter & Gamble Beauty Science, said the sunless tanning category is as important as the booming antiaging category. Over the past three years Thaman has been analyzing patent data and has found that the number of self-tanning patents filed rival the number of skin-whitening patents filed. This marks the fact “that skin tone is becoming a huge piece of the antiaging equation,” Thaman said. The problem with self tanning items, Thaman added, is that they give users a false sense of protection from the sun, which is why it was important to Procter & Gamble that Touch of Sun use SPF.
“This is another dimension of self-tanning. This is the next generation of sun,” said Thaman. Touch of Sun employs UVA and UVB protection.
Creating the product was quite a challenge: finding a mixture of moisturization and sun protection that did not affect the efficacy of the self-tanning agent, DHA (dihydroxyacetone) was difficult. Making the lotion smooth and silky also presented a hurdle since SPF ingredients generally make formulas sticky and tacky.
But Touch of Sun does not leave streaks, Thaman said, because it uses a high-quality DHA, and formulas are creamy so users will want to use them every day, added John Brownlee, an Olay brand manager.
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Print ads for Touch of Sun will break in May beauty magazines. TV ads will begin then, too. Ads communicate to consumers how they can “indulge in sun-kissed skin without the risk,” said Brownlee. Touch of Sun also offers women “control” in reaching a desired level of color.
“It is a very subtle color change,” Thaman said, one that builds over a seven-day period.