If there was any doubt that beauty product purchases during this time wasn't a solid consumer behavior, consider this: According to New York research firm Spate, searches for tanning oil—and its close cousin of tanning lotion—is up a whopping 11,805.3 percent from February to March of this year.
As first reported on by WWD, sales for the category similarly made a 62.2 percent jump week-over-week, ending April 26, according to data from IRI.
Also showing some big search jumps: DIY beauty across all categories, which was up 44 percent for the same time period, as well as manicures, which showed a 733 percent boost, and wax strips, which had a 99 percent search bump.
Some off-the-radar beauty solutions also made the list, with body wraps jumping 2,454.5 percent in searches and 7.3 percent in sales.
Spate data also found that hair-coloring products had a 65,000 search increase in volume between the week of February 16 versus March 29, with the specific terms of hair dye, hair bleach, root touch-up and root touch-up powder being the most popular. In contrast, searches for "hairstyle" saw a big decline by a decrease in –158,000 since the onset of COVID-19.
