What makes a personal care company successful?

These collected crafts emerged into a mass consumer industry by the middle of the 20th century. Over the last 25 years the industry has again undergone some massive structural changes. Today the personal care industry could be considered highly concentrated throughout each stage of the supply chain. Yet paradoxically, the industry is now more fragmented and layered than ever before, if one knows where to look. This leads to the question of “what is needed to make a personal care company successful in today’s environment?”

Personal care items range from products that are important to a person’s hygiene, to those that are used purely to enhance self image and develop a persona for others to see. Consequently people tend to use personal care products for reasons other than the primary functions, i.e., hygiene or colour, etc. Personal care products have something to do with acceptance, approval, image, and hope. When an underdeveloped economy progresses towards development, one of the first consumer sectors to emerge is the personal care industry. This shows the importance of these products, although many are considered luxury items. In addition the industry is also one of the heaviest users of media advertising.

What constitutes personal care products has become very blurred in recent times. Personal care products take on the characteristics of cosmetics, fragrance, aromatherapy products, pharmaceuticals, and even insecticides. A very rough breakdown of personal care categories is listed in Table 1.