Top 50 beauty brands: We reveal 2022's most valuable cosmetic brands

By Julia Wray | Published: 4-May-2022

L’Oréal’s comfortable lead has closed slightly amid a bumper year for Estée Lauder, as we unveil the first 25 brands on Brand Finance's cosmetic league table

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The world’s most powerful beauty brands have emerged from Covid-19 largely unscathed, but without the turbo-boost that some industries enjoyed as a result of changed habits during lockdown, according to Brand Finance.

The UK-headquartered global brand valuation and consultancy company, which famously compiles an annual global 500 of the most valuable brands across all industries, has just released the 2022 version of its annual top 50 most valuable cosmetics brands – and it seems brands in our sector are packing a little less punch than in previous years.

“When we look at the number of cosmetics brands in the global 500, this year there were nine, last year there were ten and the year before there were 11, so we’re seeing that number decrease slightly,” says Annie Brown, General Manager of Brand Finance.

“Although we’ve seen quite a good recovery this year, in terms of the overall brand value of the cosmetics brands [in the top 50], they did see quite a significant dip last year because of changes in consumer spending.

“What we’ve noticed is that cosmetics brands have recovered, but they haven’t benefited from the pandemic in the way that some other brands (like tech brands) have with people changing their ways of working, or changing their preferences – that’s had a really beneficial impact on some brands.

Whereas, for cosmetics, the challenge is still to get back to the glory days of pre-pandemic.

“And although consumer spending seems to be moving in that direction, there is also the challenge of rising prices and inflation, and people having less disposable income, therefore, to spend on luxury goods.

“Additionally, there is still a bit of hesitation to travel and that has hit travel retail.”

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