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Editors' Top Reads: News from NEXT, Daise, Harrods and more...

TheIndustry.beauty Team
31 January 2025

Here are some of this week’s news and features highlights handpicked by TheIndustry.beauty team.

The Interview in partnership with CEW: Mia Collins, Buying Director for Beauty, Harrods

Luxury department store Harrods has significantly invested in beauty over recent years, both through its ‘Beauty Masterplan’ - an investment project that saw the opening of a new 90,000 sq ft beauty hall at its Knightsbridge store in 2019 - as well as the launch of its H beauty concept.

These concepts are strengthened by the brands and products available at Harrods, which is spearheaded by Mia Collins as Buying Director for Beauty. Since taking on the role in 2023, she has continued to expand the department store's offer by onboarding beauty businesses such as skincare brand PERS and haircare brands Flora and Colour Wow.

In this exclusive interview with TheIndustry.beauty, Collins speaks about the biggest opportunities and challenges in the beauty sector today, her role at Harrods, the retailer's buying and selling strategies for beauty, and how it positions both Harrods and brands for success.

Sophie Smith, News Editor & Senior Writer.

Monday Haircare Founder introduced new brand Daise

Back in my day (wow, did I just say that?) Victoria's Secret Pink body mists were all the rage for us hormonal teenagers. Remember the days when the bottles were cubed-shaped? You either had to smell like Victoria's Secret, Lynx Chocolate or Charlie spray if you wanted to be considered cool. If your budget stretched a bit further, it was either Abercrombie or Juicy Couture fragrances. But that was really it - we didn't have skincare products dedicated to us teens. Now, beauty and skincare brands are tapping into the rapidly growing teenage market.

This week, Jamie Lupton, the co-founder of one of TikTok's most followed haircare labels Monday Haircare, launched Daise Beauty – a range of brightly packaged, mood-boosting bodycare products catering to Gen Alpha and Gen Z. Luptons aim? To democratise beauty by creating premium offerings at accessible prices.

This latest venture was created "as a world where beauty meets play" and its brightly coloured, daisy-shaped packaging embodies just that.

Targeting Gen Zers and Gen Alphas, the fastest emerging cohort of beauty consumers, Daise looks to enter the growing market by joining brands such as Indu and Byoma, which appeal to teens. With affordable prices ranging from £2.50 to £6, pocket money will likely end up being spent on these jazzy-looking deodorants and body mists.

Chloé Burney, Senior News & Features Writer.

UniDays

59% of students still concerned by cost of living, UNiDays reveals

According to a report by student discount platform UNiDAYS, 59% of students are concerned about the cost of living, down compared to 68% who expressed concern in the year prior. Better, yes, but definitely not good.

Are we surprised? Student loans didn't have much elasticity when I started university in 2017, and that was without the unending financial turmoil that today's student has to contend with. If it wasn't Brexit finally "getting done", it was Covid, the Truss/Kwarteng Budget, or the Russia-Ukraine War all contributing to the pyre that is the UK economy at present. Plus, we just about missed the rise of TikTok, meaning there was less pressure for us to look so pristine at all times, mostly because we just didn't have the wealth of information. For context, I never washed my face apart from with water in the shower and thought skincare was something you graduate to around the age you might get a National Trust membership. I box-bleached my brown hair without reading the instructions. We looked awful, but we barely knew or cared.

Loans are increasing by £414 per year, which amounts to less than £8 per week. This is effectively nothing for someone whose existence hinges upon going out a lot and looking increasingly photo-ready whilst doing it. Currently, the average student's disposable income is £182, and according to data from the report, 41% are spending this on fashion and 38% are spending it on travel.

Alex Gallagher, Chief Strategy Officer at UNiDAYS, said: "Our data confirms that students today are not only resilient but ambitious too. Despite their concerns around the cost of living starting to subside, it still remains a big worry for them. Students are increasingly juggling their education with a side hustle to top up their disposable income and are taking practical steps to achieve financial stability."

Hats off to them. Attempting financial stability on a base of £182 per month during a period of unending economic turbulence sounds more intellectually demanding than the degree itself.

Katie Ross, Content & Events Executive. 

NEXT boss uses his Lordship to table NI amendments

This is why we need more business people in politics. Sadly, we are so sorely lacking any real world business experience among the current crop of ministers (and despite what her embellished CV might have us believe, the Chancellor) that is actually quite terrifying. Surely in future we are going to have to make sure that Chancellors meet a minimum requirement of business experience and maybe pass some sort of exam before they are allowed to let rip on our economy?

Anyway, in the absence of that, we are where we are and Rachel Reeves seems steadfast in her plan to impose the ruinous NIC hikes on businesses. It has now landed on the shoulders of NEXT chief Simon Wolfson to call for some feathering of the measures with a proposed amendment to enable "a phased introduction of the reductions to the secondary threshold" of National Insurance.

In the Autumn Budget, the Government increased the rate of National Insurance paid by employers from April and also reduced the threshold that employers start paying from £9,100 to £5,000. This is set to hit the retail sector and beauty salons and hairdressers particularly hard.

Wolfson is using his position in the House of Lords to seek a phasing in of these measures rather than a blanket introduction that puts thousands of jobs at risk all at once. This is not the first time I have found myself wishing Wolfson ran the country and not just NEXT.

So jaded and despondent am I at this point that I doubt Reeves will listen (if she had any humility and sense, she would). She seems to think her disastrous Budget is behind us now and she can distract us all with grandiose infrastructure projects that will deliver growth (or not) long after she's left office and long after many of us have retired or died. I'm not going to question the rights or wrongs of a third runway at Heathrow, but frankly I'd rather she just reintroduced tax-free shopping now so that Heathrow, other airports and our entire economy would see some benefit now. But if she doesn't listen to Lord Wolfson then I doubt she will listen to me.

Lauretta Roberts, Co-founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief.


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