Some ingredients are more suitable than others when targeting the multicultural market, as our article on Ethnic beauty shows. There are for example specific hair care needs in Asia and Latin America and actives for skin brightening are especially interesting for a lot of markets outside Europe.
Strong demand for brightening products
Sederma’s Mediatone is an active especially designed for populations with black skin and medium skin tone. These consumers show a strong demand for brightening products. The active is a skin tone mediator which brightens the skin and evens the skin tone by reducing dark spots. It has a proven efficacy both on African skin type V-VI according to Fitzpatrick’s scale and on Asian skin. Its mechanism of action is gentle and reversible. It acts along the pathway of melanin from the nucleus to the melanocyte environment up to the skin surface. Its cosmetogenomic approach enables an activity on melanin production followed by a limited dendrite expansion and melanosome transfer. Additionally, epidermal differentiation and maturation is controlled, which reduces stress-induced pigmentation. Consequently, skin pigmentation disorders are reduced.
Specific hair care needs in Asia and Latin America
The inclination of consumers in emerging markets to invest in new products and formats is driving change in the personal care industry. There are a number of global ingredients suppliers that conduct primary research in these markets to predict the types of ingredients and formulations likely to be in demand in the years ahead, e.g. in terms of modern hair care and styling formulas in countries such as Brazil, South Korea and Indonesia. Their global technical and marketing teams have a range of qualitative and empirical data that help the company tap into consumer thinking and ingredient preferences in particular markets. “Surveying consumers in Asia and Latin America, it is increasingly clear that the tendency toward specific hair care practices, and preferences toward actives of local origin, and next-generation ingredients, serve as essential areas of consideration in new product formulations,” says Linda Foltis, Vice President Care Specialties Research and Development from Ashland.
Plant-derived peptide to reconstruct barrier structures
Seiwa Kasei’s Vegetamide is a special hair care ingredient made from plant peptide. With its cuticle-like structure composed of plant peptides and alkyl groups, it selectively adsorbs to the damaged part of hair surface caused by perming or combing for hair styling. It replaces lack of hair surface and reconstructs barrier structures of the hair cuticle. Thus the texture of the hair comes back by using the ingredient for damaged hair. The surface of healthy hair is hydrophobic because it is covered with F-layer; on the other hand, damaged hair acquires hydrophilic properties due to the destroyed F-layer. As the ion complex of plant peptides is designed to focus on the structure of healthy hair structure, it adsorbs to the damaged hydrophilic part and repairs effectively. It keeps the hair’s structure as smooth as silicone does, but without accumulating on the hair surface in daily use, which is a downside of silicone.