Concepts for new men’s grooming products

I started my career in the cosmetic industry in 1983. A few days in I got my first project, which was to reformulate a shaving stick. It was not the biggest project, but it did lead my manager to make a prediction. He said that unlike him, I would probably be spending half my time formulating products for men rather than women. He quoted some statistics which I believed, even though he probably made them up on the spot – 95% of cosmetic and personal care products were bought by women. But that was obviously going to change in the gender fluid world of the 1980s. After all, a lot of male pop stars were wearing mascara.

But it turned out that even Robert Smith of The Cure did not buy enough to significantly impact the sales figures. Women continued to buy cosmetics. People continued to predict that men were about to start buying cosmetics. Marketing people continued to pay attention to female consumers and more or less ignore men.

After a while I came to regard the arrival of a significant male grooming sector as one of those predictions that everyone believed but that would never come true. A bit like the jet packs we were all supposed to be travelling around with by the year 2000.