Archive for March, 2008
In April 1968 a groundbreaking musical opened on Broadway. The theme echoed a contemporary sentiment, “Give me down to there hair. Shoulder length or longer. Here baby, there mama. Everywhere daddy daddy. Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair.”
The musical was “Hair.” And the message was clear: hair was “in.” But over the next 40 years, a sea-change shift occurred: body hair became the bane of humankind.
The 1968 debut of the Broadway musical “Hair” made long hair an icon of hippie culture. Today, long hair is out and, esthetically, body hair is out altogether.
The trend began in 1915, when Harper’s Bazaar ran the first ad to feature a photograph of a young woman with shaven underarms. The ad read, “Summer dress and modern dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.”
The underarm shaving trend then spread to women’s legs during World War II, when pin-up posters showed movie star Betty Grable with shaven legs. As they did in the 40s, Hollywood stars and movies are helping spread the hairless doctrine.
Only today’s frontrunners are Britney Spears. And the movies are of the adult variety. There are no statistics of how many women shave what parts of their bodies, or how many men are joining their ranks for that matter, but it’s clear from media coverage that going hairless is one of today’s most pervasive body-care trends.
And the viral forces at work are far more powerful than a World War II poster. While underarm and leg-shaving were once largely limited to U.K. and North American cultures, the removal of “private hair” is riding the waves of the Voyeurgasm Ubertrend, resulting in a much more pronounced phenomenon.
The hair removal market could stand a boost. According to Mintel, the global shaving and hair removal products market grew 14.5% between 1998 and 2003 to $2.1 billion, equal to only 1.5% annual growth when adjusted for inflation.
A Packaged Facts report put the 1996 U.S. women’s hair removal market, primarily shavers, at $586 million, and the European market at $861 million. Today, the global hair removal market is estimated to be north of $4 billion.
Movie stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney gave a lift to the facial hair trend, yet 55% of women surveyed by a 2004 Harris poll said they didn’t like kissing a man with stubble, while 70% prefer a clean-shaven man. The number one reason why men don’t like to shave, mentioned by 58%, is laziness. Luckily, the challenges of shaving are being reshaped by rapidly changing hair-removal technology.
On March 24, Israel-based Home Skinovations received FDA approval to market Silk’n, the first photo-therapeutic hair-removal device in the U.S. designed for home use.
This week, the FDA approved the second appliance designed for home hair removal. Israel-based Home Skinovations, founded in 2006 by Moshe Mizrahy, announced on March 24 that its Silk’n “Home Pulsed Light” device ($800), which still requires a prescription, was approved by the FDA.
On February 8, Pleasanton, Calif.-based SpectraGenics received FDA approval to market the first laser-based hair removal device, the TRIA ($995). SpectraGenics has been selling a version of the TRIA, called i-Epi, in Japan since 2005, and uses the same diode-laser technology used in professional hair removal for more than a decade.
Silk’n by comparison uses a “pulsed light” system, a technology that’s also found in professional systems and which increasingly is being adapted for a wide range of uses, including acne treatment.
Laser hair removal is the fastest growing non-surgical aesthetic laser application, reports Millennium Research Group. A projected annual growth rate of 18% will lead to 6 million laser hair-removal procedures in 2010.
While hair removal is most popular among women — with virtually all of them ages 12+ engaged in the practice on a regular basis — laser hair removal for men already comprised 15% of the total procedures performed in 2005.
Consumer-products players, like Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and L’Oréal are also said to be pursuing these technologies, eying growing consumer spending on medical procedures to improve appearance. In 2007, Americans spent $13.1 billion on such procedures, up from $7.7 billion five years ago, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Hair removal alone accounted for about $547 million of spending last year. It was the most frequently performed aesthetic treatment for women under age 35, and the second most popular, after Botox anti-wrinkle injections, for older women.
In one respect, the musical Hair was right on the money, this is truly the dawning of the “Age of Aquarius.”
March 27th, 2008
On U.S. television, there’s a game called “Amnesia.” Object of the game is to recall as many details as possible of one’s past life. A Dallas-based outfit called Memory Technologies Institute teaches “Mnemonics, the science of memory.” Nintendo, meanwhile, has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide of its Brain Age videogame for the DS player.
Brain fitness is on its way to becoming a big business. Nintendo’s uber-popular Wii videogame console is now being used to help memory-impaired patients recover some of their lost mental dexterity. One facility offering this new form of therapy has dubbed the treatment, “Wii-hab.”
Since its launch in May 2005 Nintendo has sold 17 million copies of Brain Age, a Nintendo DS videogame created by Tohoku University professor Dr. Ryuta Kawashima.
In San Francisco, a new “brain gym” promises to exercise your brain. vibrantBrains claims its “Neurobics Circuit Training” enables participants to work on such skills as memory, reasoning, visual scanning, word recall and quantitative facility using games and exercises. Industry reports suggest that the “brain industry” already generated $250 million in 2007.
As 450 million baby boomers in the western world head into retirement, they’re confronted with something no generation has ever faced before: a massive collective memory loss. Culprits: faster living, multitasking and less mental exercise.
If you can’t recall the name Sarah Marshall even though you just watched a movie called “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” you’re not alone. Welcome to a brave new world of senior moments. Like millions of others, you’re suffering from MCI — mild cognitive impairment.
Scientists report that average scores on memory tests decline steadily after age 25. By midlife, memory erosion accelerates, with humans losing, on average, about 1% of their brain volume each year. A growing reliance on BlackBerrys, calculators and speed-dialing have reduced the need for mental exercises and remembering, causing the brain to deteriorate at a faster rate than ever before.
Another new-age problem may be multitasking. Research by psychologist Denise Park at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana shows that adults who juggle too many balls have more memory complaints than their 70ish parents.
National Institutes of Health research shows that older adults with mild memory impairment can benefit from cognitive training, although not in areas reliant on memorization. While memory training may deliver mixed results, the biotech industry is hard at work developing new drugs that can cure such serious diseases as Alzheimer’s, treatments that are bound to lead to the first “lifestyle” drugs to deal with forgetfulness.
We’ve dubbed this new category of wonder drugs “Memory Protection” — because like computers, which require memory protection to prevent crashes, human beings increasingly appear to be headed in the same direction.
Besides training courses and videogames, many books now deal with the memory loss phenomenon, including Martha Weinman Lear’s Where Did I Leave My Glasses?
At the biotech forefront is Irvine, Calif.-based Cortex Pharmaceuticals, whose Ampakine CX717 clinical trials have drawn widespread media attention. The memory protection market could produce the biggest lifestyle drug yet, because who wouldn’t want to stroll down memory lane faster?
Ubertrends: Digital Lifestyle
Value Propellants: Speed, Time-saving, Convenience
March 17th, 2008
The luxury travel explosion has another entrant. This week, Singapore Airlines announced it would enter the all-business-class arena by offering single-class planes on its non-stop flights between Los Angeles and Newark and Singapore. Like SilverJet, which flies from London’s Luton airport to Newark and L’Avion, which plies the same route from Paris, all-business-class airlines are riding a tidal wave of Time Compression.
The trend began in earnest in 1996 when British Airways launched the industry’s first seats that could lie completely flat for a superior sleeping experience. As globetrotting executives and jetsetters increasingly log more miles to monitor their far-flung activities, the trend caught on with Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and, in 2005, with the emergence of all-business-class airlines.
British Airways was the first airline to offer a real flat-bed seat in 1996. At a recent company event in San Francisco, BA shows how it has upped the ante with even more experiential seats.
While the major U.S. carriers have yet to test the model, international airlines are forging ahead. In 2002, Lufthansa tested an all-business-class flight between Newark and Duesseldorf, Germany, a service it has since expanded. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways have announced plans to start all-business class flights of their own.
The all-business-class model only works on heavily traveled routes between major financial centers, such as London and New York. While the Singapore corridor is nowhere as popular, it’s Singapore’s sterling reputation that has lead to an “almost daily wait list” for business-class seats, according to a company spokesperson.
Singapore Airlines plans to operate all-business class service between Newark and L.A. and Singapore using a modified Airbus A340-500 that seats just 100 people.
The Newark/Los Angeles and Singapore non-stops also happen to be the world’s longest routes, at 18.5 hours for the L.A. ride, while the Newark journey is the longest by mileage, but shorter in duration due to polar route wind differences.
Singapore will create its all-business-class air service by stripping economy seats out of its Airbus A340-500s to turn the 181-seat two-class configuration into 100 business-class seats. Singapore plans to charge about $8,100 round trip, up from the current $7,800.
Higher fares will help offset revenue loss from its “Executive Economy” seats, which were unique on these flights and whose removal will likely lead to much chagrin among cost-conscious fliers dreading these uberlong flights.
Singapore recently opened terminal three, T3, at Changi airport, which features, among others, a butterfly garden and restrooms with a view.
Once landed, premium travelers can be met by Singapore’s JetQuay service which whisks VIPs through immigration and customs, a truly enjoyable experience. If these services are any indication, it looks like business class is about to go luxe.
Ubertrends: Time Compression, Generation X-tasy
Value Propellants: Convenience, time-saving, indulgence, affluence, exclusivity
March 7th, 2008
