Pandemic pause sparks innovation in the UK’s beauty and wellness arena

The last 12 months have represented a landmark moment for the beauty and wellness arena in the UK.

The first Coronavirus lockdown in Britain resulted a ‘Zoom Boom’ of cosmetic surgeries and procedures such as Botox and fillers, with clinics across the country reporting a marked increase in new patients emerging from lockdown. All the while, months of lockdown meant that surgeons, cosmetic doctors and beauty experts have turned their focus towards R&D, to create and bring new products to market.

Recent reports from Laing Buisson suggest that the non-surgical cosmetic treatment market is worth over £2bn in the UK alone, with the global beauty market worth over £400bn. Now, as Britain prepares to slowly emerge from lockdown in the coming months, and with 38% of people (17.4 million) reporting that 2020 has aged them more than any year*, the beauty and wellness sector is likely to see rapid growth alongside an explosion in popularity for new treatments and technologies.

One such example of this radical development in the beauty and wellness sector is Uvence, a company which has perfected the cryogenic storage of patients’ tissue whilst in lockdown last year.

The company, headed-up by Profit500 business leader Reece Tomlinson and leading cosmetic surgeon Dr. Olivier Amar, combines minimally invasive liposuction and tissue purification with cryogenic storage to make high-end, regenerative treatments available in clinics across the UK. The treatment represents the UK’s first on-demand, natural biofiller treatment, using a patient’s own super enriched tissue to accelerate the skin’s self-repair process and provide immediate and long lasting skin rejuvenation.

This comes amidst a growing desire for customisable, personalised beauty products, as the beauty and wellness industry responds to calls for more diversity and inclusion in their range of products to enable consumers from diverse backgrounds to benefit from new products and treatments.

CMO of Uvence, Dr. Olivier Amar, explains why technology is transforming the beauty industry and gives predictions on what the most popular treatments will be in the near future:

“The development of technology in recent years has in turn boosted the capabilities of surgeons, cosmetic doctors and beauty experts to deliver better, more effective treatments. However, the pandemic forced clinics across the country to close, and as a result the industry has devoted far more time to focus research and development, enhancing their capabilities and bringing innovative treatments to the table.

With this in mind, I believe we will see more cosmetic treatment companies offering hyper-personalised products in the very near future to cater to calls for increased diversity, but we will also see high-end regenerative treatments become more readily available.

These ‘bio-hacks’ will become mainstream within the next few years, and some companies are already starting to offer these treatments in an on-demand format. These regenerative treatments, such as Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) and ADSC (Adipose-Derived Stem Cells) simply harvest the rejuvenative properties hidden within our own cells, and reinject them to boost recovery, repair cells, and rejuvenate our skin.”