The British Beauty industry is a resilient growth sector, with shoppers still splashing on their favourite beauty buys even in times of economic challenge – we don’t need to tell you about the Lipstick Effect.

According to the Value of Beauty Report, the whole sector contributes £27.2bn to the UK’s GDP, that’s more than the UK’s creative, arts, and entertainment sector, and the chemical manufacturing sector. It is also comparable to that of the UK’s publishing sector.

Beauty’s power has only been reinforced via new data from Circana, a market research and insights agency, which tracks consumer behaviour and sales in premium beauty. According to new findings, the UK has seen the strongest growth in sales across the EU5, making it the front runner in prestige beauty.

Whilst the countries saw a growth of 7.6% year-on-year, the UK saw an increase of close to 11%. What’s more, it saw a growth rate of almost double that of Germany’s and three times that of France. This data spans both unit sales and value.

Speaking exclusively to the British Beauty Council, Circana Account Director Emma Fishwick, said: ‘2024 was another great year for Prestige Beauty and in the UK it was the first time that as an Industry we recorded value sales over £4.1 Billion Pounds.

‘When we compare that to other countries within the EU such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the UK records one of the strongest performances across categories including fragrance, makeup and skincare.’

Fragrance has long headed up the growth in prestige beauty, with data from Circana stating that fragrance sales have seen a substantial increase in the last year, with an 8% growth in department stores and a 12% rise in other retail channels.

‘I also want to call out the exceptional growth in Skincare for the UK,’ continues Fishwick, before saying: ‘Consumers in the UK continue to lean into our skincare routines helped by increasing consumer awareness regarding wellbeing and personal care, rising concerns about skin health, and the influence of social media and beauty trends helping the UK’s Skincare industry continue to overperform whilst other countries within the EU record modest growth or are in decline.’

The UK’s leading performance has been driven by the exponential emergence of ecommerce in the territory. The stats show that the UK had the highest weight of sales going through online in the EU5.

Close to half of all sales of premium beauty were completed online in 2024 in the UK. In comparison, both Italy and Spain saw weightage of 15%.