Two decades after first launching its namesake skincare line, Clear Skincare has unveiled a re-mastered product catalogue to consumers.

Notable updates to the brand include packaging changes, reformulations, revised RRPs, and new product names. A fresh retail strategy has also been put in place in a bid to re-identify the Clear Skincare brand within the professional and consumer markets.

Anna Swanson, Head of Skin MediAesthetics Wesfarmers Health – which includes Clear Skincare, Australian Skin Clinics, and Silk Laser Clinics – shares how changes were made following the results of new qualification testing. She says the original, active-rich Clear Skincare product line came about as an in-clinic solve, offering pre and post-treatment preparations.

“As a result of its origins, the range had an unclear product architecture, basic packaging and formulas, a skew towards two key categories: acne prone skins and pigmentation, as well as challenged visual merchandising, and lack of clear shelf navigation in clinics and in Priceline,” Anna tells Professional Beauty.

At the back-end, all manufacturing has shifted to a single, end-to-end partner. “Updates” and “improvements” have been made to Clear Skincare’s current formulas, “championing our clinic credentials.” Its product portfolio has also been refined, and product claims optimised to “leverage efficacy and hero ingredient inclusion,” Anna explains. The brand strives to serve as a major player in the anti-aging and acne categories.

Sizing and prices have been updated to reflect “industry standards and competitor analysis”, and product names changed to “aid differentiation.” Product packaging has been modernised and made appealing to a variety of skincare users.

“Highly engaged consumers are confident in adapting their routines. They know how to extract the most of their products. The category can be daunting and intimidating to less engaged consumers. It takes time and effort to research and personalise a routine. So, the challenge we had was that our final design needed to be appealing to both groups!”

Through research, Anna says the look and feel of the remastered Clear Skincare brand better reflects “the needs of highly educated and engaged shoppers”, with a new design that “dials up ‘high quality’ and ‘trustworthy’ perceptions, and pushes the dial further on ‘clinical efficacy’”. Focus has been placed on highlighting ingredients and application instructions on products. On the results of qualitative testing, Anna says “it was great to get this ‘validation stamp’ from the customers who agreed that updated design sparks curiosity and brings the brand closer to unlocking its full retail potential.”

New product formulations have remained as close as possible to the brand’s original formulations. Products are Australian made, fragrance-free, and were made to reflect therapists’ feedback. The brand’s Restoring Serum (formally Copper Peptide serum) remains a best-seller.

Looking ahead, Anna shares the key trends she’s witnessing in the skincare and device market. Those include: ingredient-led beauty (driven by the pandemic), barrier-bettering ingredients (such as peptides, ceramides and lipids), a rise in ‘pre-juvenation’ skincare, the normalisation of ‘tweakments’, microbiome beauty, increased interest in wellness and women’s health, as well as increased consumer demand for products containing hyaluronic acid and retinol.