2023 will see shifts in how consumers shop online D2C & retail space: Kaushik Mukherjee

The start of a new year is seen as bringing in new operational efficiencies, stronger strategies, a far greater emphasis on building deep bonds with various stakeholders and consumers. In keeping with the current market ecosystem, technology and a human approach are seen as going hand in hand. 

As 2023 kicks off, Adgully has approached key industry leaders to Crystal Gaze into 2023, as part of our annual Trending Now series, to highlight the major trends and developments that they see dominating the industry in the year ahead. 

Kaushik Mukherjee, Co-founder and COO, SUGARCosmetics, highlights the key trends that are expected to dominate the beauty and personal care industry in 2023. He also shares the beauty brand’s performance in the year gone by, as well as the major focus areas for SUGARCosmetics in 2023. 

Key trends dominating the industry in 2023 

Looking at the current market growth, we strongly believe that 2023 will see notable shifts in how consumers shop and make purchases in the online D2C & retail space. This will largely be driven by factors such as higher mobile usage, personalized experiences, omnichannel marketing, and more. As an industry, we expect D2C businesses to gain momentum by expanding niche categories, new market entrants, and investors’ positive investments. Brands will continue to invest in technology and innovation that will help them in making an impact and disrupt the market. 

Major expectations 

We look forward to further cementing our position as a fan favorite and creating new pathways for customer acquisition, especially with the Gen Z and millennial audiences in India. The rise of minimalism beauty trends has accelerated; we assume new makeup products will be skewed towards skin-care benefits. Along with the launch of such hybrid products that come with multipurpose uses, lipsticks in innovative, newer textures and formulas, and fun colorful eyeshadows will see a surge. Keeping our audience in mind, we are also looking forward to tapping into different categories of the beauty industry. The brand will also focus on creating solid content to keep educating and engaging its community across all platforms – digital and others. Over & above the consumer space, we expect Online D2C & the Retail industry to equally fuel with growing acceptance of omnichannel, online payments, consumer-friendly pricing, finding buyers through social media, innovative technology integrations offline & beyond, experiential marketing and more. 

Focus areas for SUGARCosmetics in 2023 

You will see us consistently building and expanding our core pillars – Product, Distribution, Content, and Community. Apart from keeping the brand’s fast-moving product range ahead of the curve, the team is relentlessly building both digital and retail distribution to further our reach in existing and new geographies.  Our plans for 2023 include targeting and achieving a 100% Y-O-Y revenue growth over last year, expansion to more than 60,000 retail outlets, making our D2C platform base stronger & larger, and growing our team size to 3,000 employees. SUGARCosmetics will also be seen creating solid content to keep educating and engaging our large community across all platforms – digital and beyond, and targets to become the number one brand in this space. We will also be collaborating with like-minded personalities, events, IPs across newer media and enhance the retail marketing and visual merchandising experience, explore newer product lines while enhancing our existing ones.

Rewind 2022

The year 2022 was a year with almost negligible restrictions, leading to many brands like SUGARCosmetics as well, being experimental & innovative with their marketing approach. The year saw some powerful campaigns and great collaborations with strong yet appealing personalities. Brands went beyond money marketing and took memes and experiential marketing to the next level. Innovation in AR & VR tech along with experiments into gamified filters saw some of the emergences of viral trends across social media platforms. The emergence of Metaverse too shook up the world of marketing. 

Macro and micro-influencers continued to influence purchasing habits and are in fact one of the prime reasons why thousands of businesses and brands experienced continued growth over the past decade. We also saw an uptick in short-format videos; not just nationally but also at a regional level. There still remains a huge demand for vernacular content and untapped opportunities for regional platforms. 

While digital advertising remains a more accessible space, traditional advertising took a jump upfront and was in its prime. Marketers were able to reach out to the deep pockets of the country, in their native language and created an audience base that aligns with the same. 

Additionally, the digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising industry in India has seen considerable growth in recent times. Many traditional billboards have taken a turn and digital formats are on the rise, indicating the change. 

Key trends and developments in 2022

The beauty industry is ever-evolving and digitization in the past years has accelerated its growth and ever-evolving trends. In recent days, hybrid beauty products have gained momentum as consumers become more conscious of the ingredients in their makeup and demand more from each product. Additionally, the rise of minimalism beauty trends has heightened this growth. Consumers will be seen opting for single coverage products rather than layering a lot of products for their base. 

2023 will be a year of makeup maximalism in terms of colours, graphics, and pigments. We do expect consumers to be more intrigued to try new pigments & textures in lip products and experiment with popping colors for their eye makeup. Hybrid cosmetics with skin benefits are a growing beauty category that is expected to explode next year. The hassle of using more products comes to an end with this innovation. While traditional beauty and makeup focus on cosmetics that reduce the appearance of blemishes, treat acne, or clear dark spots, it does not do it all together. Hybrid beauty opens a new avenue of customization for skin-specific concerns. At Sugar, we have always put our consumers first and ensured that we cater to their requirements. 2023 will not be any different, the consumers will be seeing a lot more in terms of innovative products in all categories (eyes, lips and face) coming their way. 

Performance during in 2022

The year 2022, was finally a year that saw almost no pandemic restrictions, after the previous few years which were a bit unpredictable. In 2022, SUGARCosmetics touched larger milestones like never before, as the brand managed to almost double its sales over the previous year. The brand’s omnichannel approach has led the company currently be one of the Top 3 cosmetics brands in India, with 45000+ retail touchpoints across 550+ cities, making us one of the select few brands that have launched 120+ of their own stores in retail and furthering their international presence across US, UAE, Russia, Nepal and exponentially expanding more. The brand-owned app has also garnered over 4 million downloads, shipping to more than 20,000 unique pin codes solely through the App. 

Sugar’s social media platforms are an active engagement from their fans and followers, reaching more than 48 billion women, as just on Instagram the brand crosses 2.4 million+ followers making it one of the top consumer brands in India to get that to the level of reach. We also along with our experiment into gamified AR filters that hit virality on platforms like Instagram and Moj. 

Our #ShukarHaiSUGARHai campaign with our campaign ambassadors Ranveer Singh and Tamannaah Bhatia was also a huge viral success! We also received solid support from impactful investors, namely L Catterton and Ranveer Singh (who made his first-ever investment with Sugar).