Market Overview

Size of the hair salon and barber shop cosmetics market for FY2020 dropped to 93.8% of the previous fiscal year to attain 138,900 million yen, based on the shipment value at manufacturers. The market has been scaling down due to the decrease of prospective customer segment led by declining birthrate. The situation got worse in FY2020 with the outbreak of COVID-19 from the beginning of the year. Consumers refrained from going out for fear of getting infection, which led to both frequency of salon visits and a total number of salon users to drop. Meanwhile, during the pandemic people spent more time at home and consumed more at home. Rise in demand for home care products, particularly haircare items, contributed to the strong sales of salon exclusive products. 

Noteworthy Topics

E-Commerce System as Leading Sales Channel During Pandemic

To promote sales of salon exclusive products that normally require face-to-face customer engagement, makers and dealers of cosmetics became focused on introducing e-commerce system to engagement with customers. While COVID-19 crisis made consumers prefer staying home and refrain from visiting salons and barbers, commodity sales through online sales channel increased importance. This trend is antitipated to become major for the entire industry hereafter.

While makers and dealers of professional use cosmetics already had online stores on e-commerce marketplace platform,  they shifted the channel to in-house platforms during the COVID-19 calamity. Their intentions are to provide easy-to-shop environment for customers by saving customers the trouble of visiting hair salons, and promote direct sales by barber shops and hair salons using dedicated apps.

Future Outlook

Despite the unprecedented drop in the number of salon users during the state of emergency declared in April-May 2020, customers are gradually returning to hair salons and barber shops from June. As the upward trend is continuing, the hair salon and barber shop cosmetics market anticipates positive growth for FY2021. 

Although decrease of domestic demand associated with the population decline cannot be avoided after FY2021, it is assumed that the consumption activities in the market recover eventually as the COVID-19 pandemic calms down.

Nevertheless, the market of hair salon and barber shop cosmetics is projected to continue shrinking in “with-corona” and “post-corona” era. There is a strong doubt for the industry to recover to the pre-pandemic level.

Research Outline