Winning with the New General Market: The incremental value of inclusion

Over the past 15 years, studies have indicated how different America will look in the future — in 2020, 2040, 2050 and beyond. However, the United States isn’t on the brink of change. It has indeed already changed well beyond demographics, and the cultural shift that we are now witnessing will continue as a defining part of the landscape and future of the nation.

(To view the full Special Report, click here.)



So, what does this mean for the beauty industry? As manufacturers and brands, we have an extraordinary opportunity to shift how we approach and serve all of our consumers and, as a result, reshape the beauty landscape from one of standardized ideals to one of inclusive representations.



I have often said that the only place in America where segregation is still legal is in the beauty aisle. So, at Sundial, we transformed our General Market approach to a New General Market journey more than two decades ago, first using this term to describe our community of consumers more than 10 years ago. We recognized early on with our SheaMoisture and Nubian Heritage brands that little value existed — for our global community, our business and our industry — to operate within the constructs and constraints of traditional segmentation and the myopic labeling that often results.



As such, we have defined the New General Market as an amalgamation of cultures, ethnicities and demographics aligned against commonalities, need states and lifestyles. For us, the most important part of this definition is commonalities. It is not a segmentation approach; it is an approach of inclusion. It also is not part of a multicultural or ethnic strategy; it is a multi-need strategy in which the heterogeneity within populations and the similarities across populations are simultaneously acknowledged and understood. We all share very common needs, and when we begin to focus on what those are, we can begin to solve for much larger population sizes and serve consumers in a much more meaningful and relevant way.



In fact, women are telling us that they choose beauty products not based on race or ethnicity, but on desired benefits. In a May 2015 study commissioned by Sundial and conducted by Global Research Partners, we found that half of women said they engage with beauty based on hair or skin type, or beauty need. Only 7% said they engage based on race.



But our own family taught us the lesson of commonalities first. My grandfather was white, and my grandmother, who was from Sierra Leone, was left to raise four mixed-race children in the 1940s in a rural village in West Africa after becoming a young widow. To support her family, she made natural skin and hair care preparations and sold them primarily to missionaries, as well as villagers. Through both her personal experiences and her experiences as a village merchant, she learned — and taught me early on — that with an efficacious natural product, the consumer is very broad, and not to be typecast. This is the legacy of my family and of the brands we build at Sundial.



I was born and raised in Liberia and came to America to attend college. When I graduated in 1991, Liberia was in a civil war, and I was unable to return home. It was then that I started Sundial with my college roommate and my mother, and we began selling soaps developed from my grandmother’s recipes on the streets of New York City. As our company grew and we began growing our family stateside, our different cultural influences and walks of life helped us better understand the criticality of an inclusive point of view. With heritages ranging from Liberian and Sierra Leonean to Irish, Swedish, German, Indian, Filipino and beyond, no one in our family looks the same — but they often desire the same benefits.



Our community has continued to teach us that there are far more similarities in what they desire — and the solutions we provide — than there are differences based on culture, ethnicity or demographics. Because of this, we fundamentally believe that the United States is the New General Market. By focusing on the unmet needs of consumers who want better and more products to address their specific issues, we can all begin to serve New General Market consumers in ways that bring more value to them and that uncover significantly greater incremental value and opportunities than yesterday’s general market versus multicultural approach.



When we engage with segmentation strategies, we tend to look at data. Granted, we have a lot of it. But while there are certainly many proper uses of data, the New General Market approach mandates that we first think about and have honest engagement with our consumers as “real” people.



What do they need? What are they feeling? What are they experiencing? How do they want to be acknowledged? What can we do to create more meaningful engagement for and with them? In turn, what are we solving for, and most importantly, how will we achieve it for the benefit of our consumers?



By acknowledging needs first, we are able to identify connection points among all people, not the differences between them — whether African-American, Latino, Asian, Caucasian or others. Consider this: Many preferences or issues that have long been perceived as “ethnic” are not just important to multicultural communities. Research that we commissioned in 2013 from Global Research Partners found that while such preferences as “all natural” and such issues as thick/ curly/wavy hair and blemishes and scarring of skin may be more prevalent in multicultural groups, the actual number of whites who say they have the same issues often is more than double that of the multicultural populations. In the case of thick/curly/wavy hair, the total market opportunity includes almost 100 million people with the same or similar needs — far more than any one segment represents. In addition to better serving our consumers, when we begin to focus on the total needs-benefits market and how to solve for those unique issues, we also start to see new avenues for growth. For all of us, it’s win-win.



Our greatest success as a company has come because we have been consistently unwavering in our passion for our communities in reimagined marketplaces. I believe our greatest success as an industry will come when we collectively embrace the concept that every consumer deserves the best options for their needs, whether in product development, marketing or merchandising.



The idea here is not to reach alignment or consensus around our approach. It is to help our industry peers and partners think differently about strategies to develop new and different solutions for how we all serve our consumers — not just a few or the largest segment, but all of them.



I hope you’ll join us on the New General Market journey.