Circana’s tally of the first nine months of 2025 are in — and they show a rosy outlook for beauty’s holiday season.
For the first nine months of the year, sales in the prestige market grew 4 percent to $24.1 billion, with unit sales showing equal increases. In the mass market, sales grew 5 percent to $54.5 billion, and units swelled 2 percent.
For Larissa Jensen, senior vice president and beauty industry adviser at Circana, it’s a continuation of the themes that have shaped beauty’s year, from the small-but-growing presence of pure-play e-commerce as a sales channel, to the continued success of fragrance and hair.
“The market is stabilizing itself,” Jensen said, adding that sales have gained momentum consistently since a sluggish first quarter. “That’s the trend — nothing’s really shifted, it’s all consistent.”
Makeup is up 3 percent in the prestige market, reaching $7.9 billion, with new launches driving growth across segments like eye, face, lip, nail and sets. Jensen reasoned that growth in eye makeup stemmed from new formats, such as sticks, as well as anniversarying tougher performance for the same period in 2024.
On the fragrance front, sales are up 6 percent to $5.9 billion, driven by high concentrations and luxury fragrance brands, the latter of which jumped double-digits. On the other end of the pricing spectrum, sales climbed 12 percent in units for travel sizes, and travel-sized sets saw units soar 41 percent.
Skin care is relatively flat, only notching 1 percent gains, though Circana said the category grew faster in units. Facial skin care reaped rewards from e-commerce, while body care and sun care did well across channels. Facial serums and facial moisturizers performed best in the mass market (which saw 5 percent growth year-over-year), and masstige brands outpaced growth in both channels, with sales boosted 14 percent.
In hair, prestige grew 8 percent and the mass channel grew 4 percent. On the prestige side, shampoos and conditioners grew single-digits while styling and treatment products had double-digit increases.
As for what that means for holiday, “the outlook is positive across both mass and prestige beauty,” Jensen said. “We are anticipating fragrance will have midsingle-digit growth, and I know the industry looks to that as a bellwether for how the industry will perform. We are forecasting positive performance and we do anticipate prestige will be stronger than mass.”
Citing consumer data gathered by Circana, “when we asked consumers about their purchase intentions for holiday, for beauty, about a third of consumers say they’re looking to buy a beauty product as a holiday gift. That’s actually up 3.7 points,” Jensen said. “The consumer groups that are more likely to buy beauty products as a gift are also the same consumer groups that are looking to buy gifts for themselves as retail therapy. That’s a very optimistic, potentially positive spin for the beauty industry, because we are the little luxury that you can indulge in.”
That being said, “It will be positive, but softer than years prior,” Jensen predicted. “It’s been very strong and consistently getting softer over the last several years. We do believe that that will continue to stabilize, and we are forecasting fragrance to be the stronger performer.”
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