While baby-specific personal care products like diaper creams are nothing new, the current craze for skincare items formulated just for kids and babies is decidedly 2019 – and an exciting opportunity for manufacturers to seize upon.

Today, the global baby and children’s skincare market is valued at $3.6 billion USD, after an incredible 9% growth in 2018, according to Euromonitor. Out of all this growth, prestige and luxury brand baby and kid skincare products make up a staggering 45% of all sales. Experts believe it’s this desire for prestige kids’ skincare products that is the main driver behind the children skincare product boom.

“Customers are looking for a luxury product for themselves, and want to reciprocate this in purchases for their children,” said Alex Fisher, associate director of personal care and beauty at Mintel to Business of Fashion.

Claire Vevo, founder of adult skincare line Aurelia Probiotic Skincare, agreed that prestige brands are driving growth overall market growth:

“A lot of our customers who buy through high-end retail partners such as Net-A-Porter and Liberty are looking for a luxury product for themselves, and want to reciprocate this in purchases for children.”

The key point? Parents who purchase pricey skincare products for themselves now want to do the same for their kids – and are more than happy to shell out for expensive face creams or bathing product sets.

Additionally, many of the new baby and kid-centric skincare products tap into the parental desire for purchasing clean, natural, and green products. Millennials are now the biggest segment of parents, with Millennial women (born between 1981-1996) accounting for 82% of all U.S. births in 2016, according to Pew Research. These Millennial parents want to purchase natural, clean skincare and personal care products for their little ones – just as they would for themselves.

“We constantly see consumers becoming more aware of what ingredients they’re putting on their skin, and [we see] the increasing investment in self-care through skin care,” said Mallory Huron, beauty editor at Fashion Snoops, in an interview with Glossy. “It’s a natural extension that mothers are ensuring that their children have the same quality products and start to build healthy self-care practices through something simple like skin care.

As Millennials continue to push forward the growth of the organic, natural, and clean skincare markets, expect these skincare-obsessed parents to also drive the kids skin care market as well.

While the baby and kids skincare market is relatively new, this new segment (and their indulgent parents) represents, if you’ll pardon the joke, a growing opportunity for product planners and formulators to create children-specific skincare products that parents want to purchase and kids will grow up using, locking them in as lifetime personal care consumers.

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