Tapping trends is key to increase ethnic hair care volume

Discount Store News, Sept 22, 1986 by Charles Bowlus

Tapping Trends is Key to Increase Ethnic Hair Care Volume

The phenomenal growth displayed by the ethnic health and beauty aids department in the past has slowed somewhat so far in 1986, but I still expect the year will close with overall volume 10% above last year's.

While a 10% increase is significant, it is markedly lower than the 28% jump the industry enjoyed during 1985.

Discounters especially will feel the impact of decreased growth rate as their portion of the business continues to dip.

Discounters had 8% of the ethnic business in 1985, down from 10% in 1984 and 18% in 1983, reported the American Health & Beauty Aids Institute.

During the same three years, drug store chains were responsible for from 54% to 64% of ethnic unit movement, with food stores at or near the 30% level.

The narrower growth rate is due primarily to changing hair style fashions and the reduced maintenance these styles require.

Growth areas in ethnic lines include relaxer kits, as well as new lite line product introductions, and sales of both reflect the trend away from curls.

The move away from curly hair styles has been the major factor in this category's reduced sales performance.

While curly styles need frequent moisturizer and activater applications--up to four or five moisturizer and two or three activater applications each day during the hot summer months and somewhat fewer in cool weather--relaxed styles don't need the same number of applications for maintenance.

This means users don't need to buy as much product to keep the style they want, which causes the sales volume to taper off.

Discounters can expect that relaxed hair styles will remain popular for the balance of 1986, and maybe into the early part of next year.

I believe that the fashion pendulum will swing back to curly styles eventually. The movement will be fostered by the marketing efforts of ethnic H&BA vendors trying to restimulate the popularity of the curly hair styles.

Inspite of the fact that more people are choosing relaxed hair styles, hair curl products still dominate the product movement audit (PMA).

Soft Sheen's Carefree Curl line remains the top brand with the 16 oz. moisturizer the number one item.

Carefree Curl, the strongest national selling brand, placed seven stock keeping units in our top 15 listing.

Sof 'N Free, from M&M Products, ranked No. 2 with its 16 oz. moisturizer and placed three sku's on the listing.

Dark & Lovely kits, in regular and plus formulations, are our top selling relaxers, with Johnson Products' Gentle Treatment kit as the other relaxer on the top 15 list for the first six months of this year.

Dark & Lovely, which hadn't even ranked on the top 15 list a couple years ago, has steadily worked its way up.

New lite offerings, while still fairly new, are starting to pull sales away from traditional formulas.

For instance, TCB has introduced a new lite line that consists of five products: a moisturizer, activator, gel activator, conditioner and intensive hair conditioner.

Although none of these products has approached the volume of the top 15, they have been pulling down sales of the ethnic hair care leaders.

Hair colorings also are coming back into vogue, primarily due to the marketing efforts of Dark & Lovely. The company has taken a tremendous stake in terms of advertising and packaging. The result has been greater consumer acceptance and awareness and an expanded market.

Because the company has laid the groundwork, other manufacturers such as Revlon are entering the ethnic hair coloring business, recognizing the increased viability of this product line.

While hair colorings have grown in popularity, hair accents or highlights haven't. One example is Soft Sheen hair accent, which showed very poor performance.

Discounters should remember that while basic shampoos change faster than just about anything else in their general H&BA department, all ethnic lines change twice as fast.

Smart mix selections and sharp pricing can double your business within six months if you haven't already dedicated yourself to learning about the ethnic industry.

A couple years ago, one major East Coast discounter we work with increased its ethnic volume from $100,000 to $198,000 from January to June. What it took was fewer sku's, more facings and a 10% cut in prices.

The black population was reported to be at 29 million in 1984, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. With this figure rising, and the number of working women and children within that population making up a larger part of the whole, discounters might do well to re-evaluate the space--as well as managerial thought and ethnic segment of the health and beauty aids category.