The world wants to stay young. Do you know?
People are going crazy to beat aging. Skin creams, dietary supplements, medical devices and a range other solutions are helping people stay younger.
Hello, hello! I am back this week, but instead of Navigating Life, I am bringing anti aging pill. Here I will talk about what consumers are looking for in search of youth.
First, tell me how have you been?
As for me, I have been okay. Seems like work is getting to my head. I think about work too often now and that’s not healthy. I managed to work late for a few days this week. Must say, not proud of the feat. Reminds me of Myntra days, where work was life. I am not complaining but I really could never stop work from bothering me the 24 hours, 7 day a week there (fine! I am complaining 🫣 ). Okay, now let’s turn to something I have been trying to write for almost 3 weeks now.
I had decided to write about anti-aging. I recently started working in the industry and realized the scope is massive. Living in Singapore helps, if you know what I mean 😉. The world is getting older and is in pursuit of longevity. I also realize that this isn’t new. A quick google trend search showed that anti aging searches in the US picked up in 2009 onwards and it peaked in 2015. Now, Asia is catching up. There is renewed demand from countries such as Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, HK, India! Let’s say old age is catching up to the asians.
Image - “anti aging” search volume in the US.
Let me clarify the intention and objective before going further. I will use this segment of Navigating Life to write on topics in the field of anti aging. For today, I want to give you a glimpse of the anti-aging world and the commerce around it. Anti aging takes multiple forms - longevity, wellness, performance, energy boosting and the list goes on. I will write as often on this - maybe once or twice a month - as I learn of new information. I am also thinking of converting this entire newsletter, including Navigating Life, to “Out of Singapore”. About that, later. Let’s look at some numbers and insights.
Let’s break down the anti aging industry into key segments (size of anti aging in brackets). They can broadly be part of these larger industries.
Medical Devices (<0.5% of $500 B market)
Beauty and Makeup, largely skincare and sunscreen (~10% of 300 B market)
Nutraceuticals & supplements (~2-3% of 50-70B market)
Really advanced stuff that Sam Altman invested in (100% of an unknown market, still developing)
If there is an industry I am missing out on, please write back. Would love to hear from you.
The size of markets is a mental math based on search volume and not actual sales. I will keep revising this towards accuracy. The numbers tell that skincare is the largest anti-aging segment. People don’t want to look older. That’s the immediate application.
I came across some simple and interesting insights during my conversations
25 years old girls care about anti aging. An actual quote from a friend - “Skin aging starts at the age of 25. One should start using Retinol from age of 25”
Top NMN brands have 50% traffic from under 30 age demographics! This was surprising to me. I expected older, 40+ audience to key segment, but is actually younger people consuming these products.
Skin cancer is the most widely searched term when you search for skincare. People really care a lot about skin cancer. Look at the image below on skincare related search volumes.
Image - Search volumes across different skincare topics from Semrush.
You will realize that throughout the article I share keyword and search volumes. This is an way of identifying what’s happening in the market and potential size. I also use another method - find the traffic volume of competitors, apply an industry average conversion to get their sales and then deduce overall market size from there. Not straightforward, but gives you a good sense. A key challenge is that this only gives you a perspective of the online market. That’s fine for me since I am only concerned about online sales. For offline market estimation, there is another trick. Let’s leave it for another time.
Now that I established the market sizes, let’s understand what customers are looking for at a broad level. At a later date, I would like to cover trends, products and maybe even brands. During the research I came across Glanbia, which is the owner of the largest protein powder brand in the world, On Gold Standard Protein. That’s an interesting company working in the nutrition domain. However, I will focus on more specialized needs of aging such as NAD+ boosters.
We will focus on aging and NMN for this session. We will dive into skincare in the next version. Medical devices, maybe someday. While it is a big industry, it has been captured by large players like LG and Philips. You know, making hardware is tougher than making software! I have come to believe that if you deal in true hard physical goods, you have a better chance of making money in current times.
Let’s look at some interesting trends and search insights from Semrush and Google Trends. I absolutely love both tools for doing initial research.
Global searches for NMN, a longevity supplement popularized by David Sinclair.
Japan is searching for NMN, an NAD+ booster, more than US residents. Shows where aging is a bigger problem. Other countries in the list - Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and Australia are an interesting bunch!
Questions people ask about David Sinclair.
He is the one who popularized NMN and NAD in mainstream media. I can tell you that he is a sensation and superstar among anti aging enthusiasts. In fact, most NMN supplement brands bid on Sinclairs name to get traffic. Recently, US FDA banned NMN supplements in the US because Sinclair’s company is carrying out a medical study and would be launching their own approved brand in the market.
Semrush results for “anti aging” searches across the world.
India, US, Denmark and Indonesia are at the top. I cannot explain why India is on the top. Maybe a much larger size of the internet user base in english? If you have an idea, please do share. If I figure this out, I will write it down in comments of add in coming editions of the newsletter.
People are searching at an ingredient level.
Look at some examples - adapalene, meformin, differin. Ingredients and conditions are important to the consumers.
Now let’s do a quick comparison against “skincare”, which would be more widespread. This gave me the 10% market share for anti aging. I used this earlier in the article. Skincare searches are ~500K monthly. Indonesia is searching big on skincare. I will try to get more insights on this during the skincare edition.
Okay, I'll stop here today. I intended to pique interest into the anti aging segment and supplements space. There is a lot more to share. For example, a breakdown of the supplement industry - vitamins, minerals, herbs, sports nutrition, forms of consumption. I want to prevent this becoming an industry report, so I will restrict it to the insights I figure out or come across.
Why don’t you tell me the supplements you consume in comments or email?
Till next Sunday, bbye and have a good week ~~