The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Solid Beauty Products
Solid beauty products: worth the hype or just another passing trend?
Our in-depth guide below reveals why the solid product format is here to stay.
We explain how you can create your own professional solid beauty range, and reveal the three biggest benefits of switching to solid for your small business and your customer base.
Plus, we reveal the one major disadvantage of solid products and provide tips on how to overcome it.
What Are Solid Beauty Products?
Solid cosmetics are an alternative to traditional liquid, cream, or gel-based makeup, skin care, body care, and hair care products.
Solid shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion bars are the most popular solid format options to date, however, there is an ever-growing list of new innovative solid beauty, including:
Face serums
Face cleansers
Sunscreen sticks
Stick foundations
Solid perfumes
The Rise Of Solid Cosmetics
Thanks to an industry-wide focus on reducing waste and conserving water, solid beauty’s popularity is on the rise. For example, according to Verified Market Research, the market for solid shampoo bars is valued at $10.08 billion as of 2023, with a predicted CAGR of 5.4% between 2024 and 2030.
However, the solid product format is nothing new.
Lush founder Mo Constantine and cosmetic chemist Stan Krysztal claim to have invented the solid shampoo bar back in 1987. Solid products have gained a steady following since, with more and more brands launching products in solid form each year.
Judging by the overwhelmingly positive response to solid beauty from customers, this newer product format has real staying power in the market.
For example, Lush’s Scrubee solid body butter and Charity Pot Coin solid body lotion feature on their US bestsellers list with consumer ratings of 4.6/5 and 4.5/5 respectively.
There’s even data to support solid beauty products working just as effectively - or even better - than liquid alternatives. An analysis of solid shampoo formulas by Ferrera Dario and colleagues showed that some solid formulations have better hair strand cleaning abilities (80%), relative to commercial liquid shampoos (60%).
The Benefits Of Creating Solid Beauty Products
Why would your target market choose your solid beauty product over tried-and-tested liquid alternatives? There are three major benefits of solid products where traditional liquid formulas just can’t compete:
Plastic-Free & Less Packaging Waste
Let’s face it: the modern cosmetic industry has a huge packaging waste problem. However, switching to solid products would make a significant difference.
According to a 2022 study, the beauty industry generates a whopping 120 billion units of packaging annually. Progress to date is slow, with Gouveia and colleagues highlighting that the industry’s plastic use is actually increasing by approximately 2.5% each year.
Cosmetics consumers demand change: CleanHub’s survey found that 70% research beauty companies’ eco policies and 81% believe brands should reduce their plastic packaging.
From adopting recycled ‘PCR’ bottles to swapping plastic covers for cardboard, brands are beginning to make improvements in response. National Geographic notes that major corporations L'Oréal and Unilever launched initiatives to make their packaging reusable, compostable, or refillable in the coming years.
While this progress should be applauded, waste elimination efforts are limited for standard liquid cosmetics that still require some form of container.
Enter the game changer: solid beauty products.
With no bottle necessary to store the contents, the solid product format dramatically cuts packaging requirements. In most cases, the only packaging necessary is a simple cardboard box, with some clean and sustainability-focused brands managing to go almost 100% packaging-free.
Not only is this great news for environmentally-conscious consumers, but it also dramatically cuts costs for your business, as packaging is generally one of the most expensive costs of production for beauty products.
Looking to reduce packaging waste for your cosmetic products? Learn more about Genie Supply’s 50% PCR range in our full packaging catalog.
Solid Beauty Products Significantly Reduce Water Consumption
The beauty industry’s sustainability issues extend beyond the packaging problem. Overconsumption of water resources during the formulation phase contributes to even more pollution and waste.
As noted by research from 2024, many solid shampoo, conditioner, and body wash formulas are completely water-free. Therefore they are much more sustainable and are less likely to cause allergic reactions like allergic contact dermatitis.
According to Euromonitor, the cosmetics industry consumes approximately 10.4 million tonnes of water each year, with over half of this total attributed to the formulation of hair and shower/bath products.
If every hair and shower/bath product were converted to solid form, it would cut the amount of water consumed by the beauty industry in half!
The benefits of solid products don’t stop there: these water-free formulas require fewer preservatives. This means it’s much easier to formulate paraben-free solid products. As noted by Rizzi and colleagues, solid beauty products like solid shampoos have a longer shelf life due to their more stable formula composition relative to liquid alternatives.
Plus, these anhydrous formulas save on testing costs, as preservative efficacy testing (PET) is not required for products formulated without water.
Interested in formulating environmentally-conscious beauty products? Learn more about creating a sustainable cosmetics range at Genie Supply here.
Travel-Friendly Format: Reduced Logistics Costs And More Convenience For Customers
An underappreciated benefit of solid beauty products is that they take up much less space compared to liquid alternatives.
From a logistics point of view, switching to smaller products will reduce your brand’s carbon footprint and cut the overall storage and freight costs for your business.
Solid products’ non-liquid format and compact size are also selling points for customers, especially frequent travelers:
Solid products take up much less space at home, in luggage, or in hotel rooms.
There are fewer travel restrictions placed on full-size solid products relative to their liquid counterparts. The TSA limits airplane passengers to just one carry-on quart-size bag of liquids, each no more than 3.4 ounces. Solid toiletries eliminate the liquid limit issue and make it easy to carry light, long-lasting, full-size hair and body wash products from state to state or country to country.
The Major Disadvantage Of Going Solid
Solid products are better for the environment, can perform just as well as liquid alternatives (when formulated correctly), and save on packaging and transport costs.
What’s the catch?
The biggest disadvantage of adopting this format is that large segments of the market are hesitant to even try switching from liquid to solid.
A 2014 report by Kearney found that 53% of all online beauty and personal care shoppers are ‘replenishment customers’. These are the creatures of habit who stick to the same product format again and again and rarely deviate from their usual purchases. It will be difficult to convince this chunk of the market to try out your solid products.
Here’s an effective strategy to capture as much of the market as possible: optimize for choice and release a mix of solid and liquid products throughout your product range. Additionally, focus on highlighting the benefits of switching from traditional cosmetic formats to solid products in your marketing campaigns.
How To Formulate Clean, Vegan, And Cruelty-Free Solid Beauty Products
Have an exciting idea for a solid beauty product?
Tempted to formulate it at home?
Here’s the truth: making your own solid products is not as easy as it seems. It’s difficult to heat and cool the formula consistently to the exact right temperatures, achieve the perfect level of firmness, and keep the product consistency uniform from one batch to the next. Learn more about the dangers of formulating at home in our full blog post here.
Additionally, the new MoCRA legislation is hindering small beauty businesses’ ability to formulate cosmetics at home. Learn more about the new MoCRA rules in our full post here.
It’s time to level up and partner with a professional cosmetics lab to create high-quality, safe, and batch-consistent solid cosmetic products that your customers will love.
Looking to create clean, ethical, and sustainable solid beauty products from scratch? At Genie Supply, we are experts at formulating new clean, vegan, and cruelty-free skin care and color cosmetics.
We specialize in novel chemical research, new-to-market concepts, turning ‘dirty’ cosmetics clean, and hybrid products. Plus, we offer up to 200% of your formulating and testing fees back as manufacturing credits. Learn more about our custom formulating services here.
In sum, the key benefits of formulating solid beauty products include:
Eliminating the need for plastic and severely reducing packaging requirements entirely
A water-free formula helps conserve water resources and also makes solid products easier to test and formulate without parabens
Solid products’ compact size helps save on logistical costs for your business while also making it easier to travel for your customers
Ready to formulate your own professional solid beauty products? Genie Supply would love to work with your brand! For more information, call: (812) 329-1105 or email: customerservice@geniesupply.com
