Innovation in wellness, health set for 2022
SPINS, a wellness-focused data research company, has released a year-end report on what trends are expected to carry-over into 2022. Using product intelligence, SPINS is predicting what trends and innovation are attractive consumers, giving insight to private label brands. The company recently teamed with Cornerstone to develop a technology that provides digital information on private label products.
“2021 will go down as one of the most challenging years for retailers, from supply chain issues, staffing struggles, shifting shopper behaviors, and meeting the needs and demands of smarter consumers,” said the company. “SPINS Product Intelligence (PI) helped the wellness industry navigate these issues and is poised to help retailers and brands accelerate innovation in 2022. SPINS predicts that for the retail industry, this coming year will see accelerated investments in innovation and more rapid consumer adoption of products that fulfill the needs of their wellness journey.”
Highlighted data in the SPINS Product Intelligence trend report includes insights on vitamins and supplements, body care and alcohol.
"Product Intelligence plays a critical role in helping retailers understand emerging trends and identify the innovation they need to help meet the changing requirements of their customers," said Tony Olson, CEO of SPINS. "We currently have over 380 consumer-facing attributes and over 1 billion data points that are able to identify actionable insights around innovation for both brands and retailers. An example of the power of our Product Intelligence is our omnichannel view of supplements, which shows that while in-store has over 70% of volume, almost two-thirds of the growth in this category is coming from online.”
In the vitamins and supplements category, SPINS reported that new consumers were introduced to supplements during the pandemic, with the category seeing 43% YoY growth on Amazon. Areas within the category like cognitive health, sleep support and performance nutrition are on the rise, with probiotics, adaptogens and nervines also seeing growth. SPINS found ashwagandha, a plant known for its stress-reducing properties, was the fastest growing item in the category.
In body care, clean label products are driving growth. Shoppers are choosing cleaner label products, causing all brands to shift their formulas to fit the trend. SPINS said that ingredients that are growing in the body care category are bakuchiol, charcoal, turmeric and hyaluronic acid.
Finally, in alcohol, ready-to-drink cocktails were up 143% over the past two years as an alternative to beer. Hard seltzers are slowing down in growth, but still continue to outpace beer. Non-alcoholic beverages are up 29% in 2021 compared to last year.
The full report can be found here.