Why every brand has a lip balm now

0:00Welcome back to another episode of The Curious Consumer. I'm Nate. I'm Jenna. And we run a bi-weekly newsletter and media company called Express Checkout. We cover the latest in the world of consumer brands like food and beverage, beauty, skincare, and also retail news. We cover the trends and analysis, all about that space. And we're back with our weekly podcast, which is still crazy to me, talking about the latest in CPG. Yeah, we are. So exciting. There's always news. Just when I think there's not going to be news in this space, we're nearing the holidays. How many more launches can there be?

0:40Wrong. They are packing it this week. It's a heavy week. It's a heavy week. And the first story I want to talk about is small but big. Lip care. I think it's a good way to describe it. Lip care. On multiple levels, that's a good way to describe it, actually. Yeah. And the category itself has become very big, but the catalyst for this conversation was that a former Goop VP, Jamie Holmes, launched her own lip care brand called Fell Beauty at Sephora with her first product, Kissy Lips. A lip, but also a cheek bomb combination in a kiss lip shaped compact. Exactly. It is like, it's this little container that looks like lips.

1:27And like that launch alone is not necessarily that interesting, but Nate and I were thinking about it and it's just so indicative of a much larger shift that we've seen in skincare and beauty and just like a cultural moment that is happening around lip care. Generally, a lot of news outlets and stuff have been referring to this as the lipification of beauty. So it's this moment when apparently everyone's buying lip products and we're seeing it even in the data too. I think it was the global lip care market hit 2.4 billion in 2024, but it's projected to reach 3.48 billion by 2030. So the growth is pretty enormous right now.

2:12And it's not just that shoppers are buying just one kind of lip product, 40 % of women aged 18 to 34 are now using four or more lip product. So there's something happening here. Oh yeah. They're putting together these, these wardrobes of lip care, just like with fragrance where people are building wardrobes of fragrance, they're doing it for lip care as well. And I think it's a mix of, there are a lot of different brands out there. People want to try them. They have different ingredients. They have different colorways, colorways. It's not sneakers, different tints. And also there's different virality cycles of the Rode peptide lip serum going viral for their phone case or the Summer Fridays ones or the Edom one or Tower 28 had one that went viral.

3:04Everybody has one. It's no longer just the Eos lip ball that's on your desk. There's so many. Such a throwback. Right? And like that one's still popular and that brand is still pumping out products. People really like their body lotion I saw online. But one of them is just there's a lot of opportunity for these brands to go viral. Yeah. I mean, lip products are one of those things that is like used daily and habitually. So it does really, really well on platforms like TikTok, where the lip combo hashtag is one of the most popular beauty hashtags. Like everyone's sharing what they're putting on their lips.

3:46And I think part of that is because like, I mean, since like the dawn of time, there happened the dawn of time, the dawn of the internet, there have been makeup tutorials, but that's kind of evolved more into just get ready with me videos have been viral now for a long time. And slathering on some lip balm has become part of people's habitual skincare routine. But what's different about it from other skincare products is it's actually accessible. So while like a serum can cost you easily upwards of$70, a lip balm, I mean, some of these like the Summer Fridays lip balm, which is a really popular one amongst the youths, is I think$20 at most retailers.

4:26And a lot of them are around like$18 to$20 for these nicer ones. But then you can get a$5 to$7 one like Starface, which is a skincare acne patch brand actually recently launched a lip balm that I've been obsessed with. That's$7. And so when something is that approachable, but also is part of this coveted skincare routine moment. It does really well with young consumers. It does really well with impulse shoppers. And it's a really great entry point into a skincare brand that you like want to try out, but you don't want to dish out$70. Right. And there are other brands that traditionally haven't had any lip care.

5:06There's a hair care brand that launched. They launched, so they have hair serums and they also have shampoo and conditioner, but they also just launched a lip serum as well. Yeah. And apparently people are really loving it. So yeah, I think it's a really good way to get consumers into the brand where they might not have tried the other products, but they try the lip balm, they try the lip serum and they like it. And then they go off and buy the other products. Yeah. It's interesting because there is something called the lipstick index that's used to measure where like discretionary spending goes when budgets are otherwise tight.

5:39People often spend a lot on like little treats or like little treat economy, people say. And that has historically been referenced as like the lipstick index. And now it's more like the lip care index. Like people aren't really spending on lipstick necessarily. But this like whole like lip care, lip treatment thing is the little treat economy. And when people are financially struggling, this is an option for a way to like indulge or feel part of this like fancier, more luxurious experience. Right. And luckily, like a lot of these lip products also do have some color to them as well. So they can get the color side of lipstick, but also the skincare and like functional side of lip balm all in one, which is really nice.

6:25It's like Makeup X skincare, which I think is another reason this product does so well right now. Because I feel like the no makeup makeup look has become such a thing where people try to look like they are just naturally flawless in some way. and a lip balm really offers that because especially a tinted one like you're saying it's like a little flush of color so it's almost makeup but like it's technically skincare still and I think that that feels really approachable again for like a younger consumer and for someone who's trying to achieve this like effortless almost like filtered makeup look right and then the other side of this like why this is becoming so popular is from the business end for the for the brands where these are relatively low cost products to make usually high margin and high impulse which is the holy trinity uh it's it's the best way to to make a product and you know we were talking to lisa from experiment and you know one of the experiment which is a skincare company yes that has a lip care product called software which i love and they just launched tinted versions of that skew as well.

7:32And one of the things she was also saying was helps increase repeat purchases and encourages people to also buy multiples to try the different flavors or tints. And from the brand side, you want to figure out ways to increase purchase rate and get people to buy more and also get people to try your product as well. Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's getting people to try more, but it's also really easy for them to just slightly change the shade of a product that they already have the base for, or slightly change the scent of a product that they already have the base for. So from the business side, it's like really easy to innovate slightly and enough for them to capture intrigue.

8:11And from the consumer side, there's all of this new innovation and it's like a collectible almost. It's like how many different flavors of this collection do you own? And that's like a status symbol in a way, especially with some of these that have some of these brands that have these fun flavors. I know like a lot of Rhodes marketing was this really like sensory imaging, like a cinnamon bun with like a lot of like gooey icing on it. And it's not advertising for a cinnamon bun. It's advertising for a cinnamon bun lip balm. And that like multi-sensory experience is like, well, okay, I don't just want to try this lip balm.

8:50I I want to have an experience with this and then I want to try the other flavor. And I think this might be out there, but I have a guess that all of these like very indulgent sweets flavors are probably doing a little bit better in our, in our GLP one Academy where it's like, if I'm not eating my sweet treat, I want to lick it off my lips. I don't know, but I swear there's some correlation. It's probably part of the equation here. I wouldn't be surprised if that is part of it. Like it does scream a little of the negative sides of diet culture. I wouldn't be surprised. I just, I remember when I was a kid, my dad in particular loved the chapstick smoothie flavors.

9:38I totally remember those. Of course I do. Of course I do. Also, when Chapstick collabbed with like every soda, like the Coke. Oh my God. Dr. Pepper, Saffinup. It was everything. Lip Smackers. It was Lip Smackers. Lip Smackers. Yeah. I remember I used to buy that at Claire's too. Claire's always had some of the fun scented ones. I love the image of Little Nate entering a Claire's. They had great candy at Claire's. That's so funny. And Little Tchotchkes. I used to go downtown Westport. I'd get some Claire's. It was great. That's you and me both. You and me both. That's amazing. Yeah. But yeah, I think to close out the conversation, I mean, it'll really, this is going to be interesting because if now we're at a place where it feels like every brand, every skincare brand, now we have hair care brands, whatever, are all launching their version of a Lepron.

10:38So which are the ones that are going to stick around and what's going to be enough to capture and maintain consumer interest? Because I even feel like a few years ago, Laneige sleep masks were like the lip product. And we've already kind of seen them phasing out a little bit in favor of the summer Fridays and the roads in these like really satisfying tubes. Like where are we going to see this go and how are brands going to continue to stand out when it's now debatably a little oversaturated? A little bit. But I want to talk about another potentially saturated space that we've talked about before on this podcast, energy drinks.

11:13There's so many. There's so many. And there's another. There's another. So Alex Cooper, who many know from her podcast, she launched Unwell Hydration last year and has just rebranded it to Unwell Beverages because they are officially launching a line of energy drinks called, you guessed it, Unwell Energy. Clever name. So it's going to have 150 milligrams of caffeine, green tea extract, biotin, and a little sugar. Three grams. Three grams of sugar. That's not too bad. And this line extension isn't surprising the slightest. I mean, energy drinks in general have actually been growing as a category, but energy drinks targeting a female consumer has been growing significantly.

12:02Yes. And I found a recent survey that apparently 37 % of women aged 18 to 34 have consumed a fitness energy drink in 2025. So Celsius, Alani, New, something in that category. And that's up 10 % from last year. Up 10 % is enormous. Yeah, it's crazy. I think it's probably higher. Like this is one survey, but I actually think it would be higher. It's truly like a slept on target consumer. It is. And that is clearly why Monster is developing their own. They're developing Flirt. We talked about it in an episode a few, two weeks back. And look, we have opinions on the name, but they're doing it for a reason.

12:45And it's very clear that the female consumer is consuming more energy drinks and that it's clearly doing well quickly. Because Bloom Nutrition, the supplement brand, they have greens powder and they have everything under the sun at this point. They launched Bloom Sparkling Energy last year, and they've already sold over 35 million cans. They're rising in the ranks of top energy drink brands. They're just behind, I think, like a C4 right now. It's crazy. They launched last summer. They're already booming. And obviously, there's Alani Nu, which Celsius acquired this year for almost$2 billion. And Alani Nu is also rising in the rankings.

13:28I mean, over a 13-week period ending in November of 2025, they did about$400 million in sales. That's a 52 % increase from a year ago during the same period. It is absurd. And Alani News, arguably, I think, after Celsius sort of grew in the rankings, Alani News, another one that's really brought in a big female consumer demographic. Yeah. And we had a whole podcast called Energy Drinks are for the Girls. Yeah. It's worth going back and maybe listening to that because we definitely go through each of these brands in more depth in that podcast episode. But yeah, I mean, it's such a booming category right now, this like female positioned energy drinking in particular.

14:10And I think what's interesting about the Unwell energy launch, one interesting that Alex Cooper tried to do hydration in the first place. So this like appears to be an afterthought, especially because they had to go back and change the name to Unwell Beverage, which means that it wasn't intended that they were going to be moving to a different category other than hydration. But clearly like the numbers don't lie. Alex Cooper is a brilliant businesswoman. And I think this probably came with a lot, a lot of data to make this decision. Um, some of which nature shared, but the one thing that is standing out about this energy drink is most of them have like almost identical labels and ingredients and just like a little bit girlier packaging, whatever that means.

14:54This has slight, slightly different ingredients. The thing that's standing out to me most, and we're going to talk about sweeteners more later in this episode is the sweeteners in this. So even bloom nutrition, which has like a facade of being like all natural better for you uses sucralose which is a sweetener that's in a lot of zero sugar beverages but a lot of more like natural shoppers don't love sucralose whereas unwell hydration appears to be using actual cane sugar so there's three grams of sugar in this and stevia which is a more like natural sweetener or sugar alternative so it's still a lower sugar than like a red bull full sugar, but it has a smidge of sugar in it and isn't using like fully artificial sweeteners.

15:43I bet it's going to taste really good. I actually do think it'll taste good. I often find that brands that mix like cane sugar and kind of natural sweetener, it's good. The blend of sweeteners I think is really smart, but I'm excited for the unwell. I posted it to my story and he got some comments where like, what is this brand doing? I actually think energy drinks is going to do really well for them. I think the hydration product was a little confused because I think that actually had a little caffeine in it. Some of their SKUs had protein. It didn't really quite have a zone of influence. It didn't really have like an audience that made sense necessarily.

16:23And I think energy is very clear. As a functional ingredient, caffeine has a very clear use case. It gives you energy. There's no conflicting it with anything else. There's no confusion. You know what you're getting. So to sell this, it makes a lot of sense. And then I think the added cane sugar, there might be some people being like, what is this? But I bet it's going to taste good. It's not that much sugar. You're drinking an energy drink anyway. So it's like energy drinks can't be that great for you. I think you're totally right. It's a much clearer thesis than the other brands or the other lines in the Unwell brand.

17:02And people, yeah, people know what they're getting. And I think it's, I'm just really fascinated that like the one call out on the package, like the main call out on the packaging for these drinks is no artificial sweeteners. It's not how much energy it is, which it is a little bit lower than like a monster. It's 150 milligrams of caffeine. It's not that it's not like added B vitamins, which it does actually have. And a lot of brands like to tout that. It doesn't even say like the biotin on the front, it's no artificial sweetener. So I do think that there's gotta have been some market research that showed that that's one of the things that female energy drink consumers are looking for and haven't been able to find.

17:37And because of that, and this isn't just like a celeb backed drink that's relying on the fact that it's celebrity backed to be different. It seems like there is actually a smidge of product differentiation. So it might actually do really well. And her audience is so obsessed with her like I again I don't know about the hydration drinks like maybe just didn't have enough like differentiation to pull but I do think if her consumers are already drinking in an Alani new they will be happy to switch over or they're just trying to emulate her like boss woman owns multiple businesses vibe and they're like I need energy to get me through the day to be an Alex Cooper in my day right right right it's clearer it makes more sense to me so 100 that's exciting yeah honestly if unwell wanted to expand into some of the categories that that bloom is expanding into i could see it i could see it i could see it the name the name's kind of good the name is unwell also being a wellness product is so fun yeah oh yeah ironic enough it's like a little self-deprecating yeah yeah i really like that yeah it's good i mean it also feels like she's she's trying to take ownership of this like wellness category and make it a little bit more irreverent and more mindful in a way where it's like you can be like normal and fun and also have a wellness side to you.

18:58You don't have to be super crunchy and in Austin. Well, watch it. Yeah, I completely agree. It's a more approachable entry point to wellness. So speaking of wellness products, Oreo has just launched a zero sugar cookie in their regular stuff and double stuff so obviously oreos had some like healthier products in the past with the nabisco oreo like chips the 100 calorie bags oh my god i forgot about those i know but this is this is oreo and it's zero sugar and the internet or at least some like health nuts on the internet have opinions what's new so people seem to not like sugar alcohols people seem to not like sugar alcohols when it slaps them in the face.

19:47Otherwise they don't seem to buy, like, I feel like there's something so interesting to me about how people are attacking Oreo right now. The zero sugar label ingredient label is pretty much the same ingredients, except instead of sugar, obviously it is malitol and sucralose. There are three different sweeteners instead of sugar. Everything else is kind of the same. And now everyone's coming out and being like, this is a chemistry lab ingredient list. What did you think Oreos were? Oreos were also an ultra processed food. And I feel like because this was a loud launch in some ways, people came out and attacked it.

20:24But the brands that we kind of consider health food brands in a lot of ways are, a lot of them are using these sweeteners. Like I was curious and I looked up what Bear Bells uses to sweeten their protein bars and it's malitol and sucralose like literally the same thing and we don't hear the same like people coming out being like this is a crazy chemistry experiment and how could oreo launch you know like it has more of like a health halo around it when it is in a category that was supposed to be better for you with which if anything i think that should be criticized more as opposed to a category that is already like we already think of cookies as indulgent If there's a zero sugar option, it's still indulgent.

21:08The messaging around that is still like only have two or three in a serving and you'll probably be fine as opposed to criticizing brands that have this health halo around them because they're a protein brand using the same sweeteners. I just don't get that logic. The other thing I saw around Oreo zero sugar cookie launch was that there were two like more health focused content creators who basically said hey be careful about eating these because you might end up in the bathroom for a while because sugar alcohols for some consumers not all might be poorly absorbed in the small intestine so it can lead to a gassy a gassy day for you this video this guy was like pleading this video had like one point something million views pleading people.

21:56It's like, hey, you're going to poo. Like, okay, where was all of this? All of the other products that have been using artificial sweeteners forever. If anything, I love that this product exists because there are consumers who can't have sugar and probably couldn't have Oreos. And now maybe a consumer who has diabetes, for instance, and is managing their blood sugar can have two or three zero sugar Oreos and can And indulge in Oreos the way that people indulge in normal Oreos. Which, again, if the full sugar ones, you also should not be having more than two or three. Because that's a lot of sugar.

22:34But what if I want the sleeve? And that's with you and God. That's your choice. And that's fine. You told me it was okay. Making it accessible to consumers who couldn't otherwise eat the product. And people are throwing a fit. Right. I think what's interesting here, too, though, is they're not positioning this as a better for you product. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. It's not like green packaging now that's like with a leaf on it. Like it's not like this is healthier. It's just this is zero sugar. And I think it would be a different conversation maybe. And critique could be warranted if someone was like this is healthier because healthy is subjective.

23:11And artificial sweeteners to some are not as healthy as normal sugar, whatever. But they're not making that claim. They're just like here's a zero sugar version. And that's just for different consumers. So I think it just, I mean, this is like the classic issue that a brand, especially as big as Oreo, but any brand will come to at some point is you become so popular that you're like nearly ubiquitous, but there is one potential target market that you're not yet reaching. And so you make a product for them. And in this case, I'm talking about like maybe consumers with diabetes or consumers on a low or no sugar diet.

23:42You make a product for them and that everyone thinks that the brand is being prescriptive and saying everyone should have this instead of our original one, which isn't necessarily true. They're just trying to be a new private audience. Welcome to the internet. Welcome to the internet. Oh, my God. People's comments about these things, but it's like, this is not for you. Right. Don't eat it. Regular Oreos and all of the unique flavors, even Oreo Thins, which are very good, by the way. Oh, yeah. Still exist. Great ratio. Oh, my God. It's perfect. The Tiramisu one is my favorite. I've never had that.

24:14Oh, it's so good. Tiramisu Oreo Thins. Perfection. I believe it. Yeah, people have opinions. Yeah. For sure. And it's just like, just eat. The other thing that's funny about this is I'm like, the people who are critiquing this, like, do you even eat normal Oreos? Right. You probably are like making your little Nara Smith Oreo from scratch using butter that you churned yourself. Like you're not eating normal Oreos anyway. This isn't for you. Everybody has to have an opinion on other people's things. All right, let's move on to our next story. So this week, along with, I think, every week for the past decade, there have been supplement launches.

24:54But this week in particular is very interesting because there were two supplement launches at opposite ends of the spectrum. Yes. So our first one was the Allbirds co-founder, Joey Willinger, launched Biologica with his wife, Liz. It is a woman's health supplement brand targeted at hormonal needs at different stages of life. They also raised$7 million in seed funding. Good for them. And the other one is from Jim Murray, who is the co-founder of Feastables with YouTuber MrBeast. He is launching Anomaly Health, which is a proactive daily supplement designed for the entire family. And it has some interesting ingredients.

25:36Right, Jenna? Well, interesting is really just one. So apparently the three main ingredients of this multi-use supplement, I was about to say multivitamin, but it's more than multivitamin. The three main ingredients of the supplement are probiotics slash prebiotics, some minerals and vitamins, and colostrum. So apparently the entire family needs colostrum in their diet. Those are like the three core, the three core ingredients of this new supplement brand. And I am really fascinated in what the whole supplement for the whole family actually means. Yeah. Because I mean, the doses needed for someone, a child who weighs 60 pounds should be really different than like the dose of vitamins needed for an adult man who weighs 250 pounds.

26:26So I assume it's like you can change the dosing of it. But what's most interesting about this is we've just seen the complete opposite and even Biologica, the other launch, is, as they alluded to, like kind of the complete opposite in the sense of totally customized to a certain target audience at a certain point of their life versus this is apparently for the whole family at any point in their life. Really interesting because Biologica, which is a woman's hormone health supplement, it has three skews. One for while women are still having their cycle. One for, I think it was perimenopause and one for menopause.

27:05So it's like very specific for women and for women in these like three life stages versus Anomaly, which is Anomaly. It is for everyone, apparently. Yeah. No, and like every week there's kind of the situation where there's like a hyper-focused one. like even the other week, Parallel, which is somewhat similar to Biological, plays in a similar space, released. And I'm sure that week there was another just regular general multi-use supplement of some kind launching. So I think we're going to see this even more in 2026, especially just as wellness. And as we saw in the new consumer report, that optimization mode is a big thing amongst Americans, especially younger Americans.

27:47And a lot of them are taking it through supplements alongside diet and other activities. But if you want to optimize yourself, supplements are a pretty easy way to do it. Well, I know that it's an effective way to do it, but it's well marketed. And as I will say multiple times, and I already have said, we're all suckers. In the report that you're referring to from the new consumer and coefficient capital, which is also a fantastic report on consumer trends in 2026, they cited that 80 % of Gen Z are taking supplements right now, which is, oh, that's pretty enormous. That's a lot. So I was kind of interested in digging into that too.

28:25And they had some stats around that as well. 32 % of those who are taking supplements describe the routine as like more targeted. So they're taking, it said two to four specific items for specific goals. So that would be something more like on the biological end of the spectrum, whereas 39 % are sticking to a single multivitamin. So that would be more on this anomaly side of the spectrum. So it's still like 32 % versus 39%. I think it's kind of still relatively split enough that there's room for both approaches to win. And there are always going to be the more health conscious consumers who have a whole medicine cabinet full of different things that are customized just to them.