Lume has the highest Awareness score among challenging beauty and personal care brands, leading the set by 20 percentage points.
New beauty and personal care brands launch constantly, but shelf space and attention don't expand to match them. Most fight for a sliver of recognition against a handful of names that have broken through to reach mainstream awareness.
This analysis is based on YouGov Surveys research of 1,200+ Americans asked about 87 challenger beauty and personal care brands. The first-stage awareness test asked U.S. adults which brands they had ever heard of, with all brands achieving 10% national awareness (unrounded) advancing to the final round.
In this article, we cover:
• Which challenger brands have the highest overall awareness
• Which brands have the highest awareness among women
• Which brand has the highest awareness among men
YouGov BrandIndex tracks more than 110 beauty and personal care brands daily across 16 brand health metrics. This challenger brands study looks beyond the many established names already tracked. Some brands in this study are more established than others, but we still consider them all challenger brands within the wider beauty and personal care market.
Which challenger beauty and personal care brands have the highest overall awareness?
Lume is the challenger beauty and personal care brand with the highest overall awareness, with 60% of U.S. adults saying they have heard of the brand. Manscaped follows at 40%, trailing the list leader by 20 percentage points.
Bliss and Kylie Cosmetics complete the top four, with awareness of 37% and 34%. All four brands sit well clear of the rest of the field: fifth-placed Rare Beauty, at 26%, trails Kylie Cosmetics by nearly nine points.
Rounding out the top 10, Topicals (22%), Supergoop! (21%), Peach & Lily (19%), Rhode Beauty (17%) and Sol de Janeiro (17%) all have awareness above 15%.
Which beauty and personal care brands have the highest awareness among women?
Lume's lead increases among women, with awareness of 67%. Kylie Cosmetics follows at 44%, with Bliss close behind at 43% and Rare Beauty at 42%.
Supergoop! and Peach & Lily are tied for fifth among women, both with an Awareness score of 28%.
Manscaped and Sol de Janeiro are tied for seventh, both at 25%, followed by Billie (22%) and Rhode Beauty (20%).
Which beauty and personal care brands have the highest awareness among men?
Manscaped has the highest awareness among American men, with a score of 54%. This is followed by Lume.
The gender split in who recognizes Manscaped is sharper than the headline figure suggests. Among those aware of Manscaped, 68% are men, compared with a national baseline of 49% of U.S. adults being men.
That skew doesn't mean Manscaped goes unrecognized by women: as highlighted in the section above, 25% of women are aware of the brand.
Beyond gender, this awareness test suggests that Manscaped has broken through more with Americans aged 41-60 than any other age group.
Coming soon
The first-stage awareness test is the opening phase of YouGov’s challenger beauty and personal care brands study.
The 31 brands achieving 10% national awareness (unrounded) and advancing from the first-stage awareness test will move into the full study, which will measure a broader set of brand health metrics, including:
- Awareness
- Buzz
- Consideration
- Recommendation
- Innovation
- Whether consumers see the brand as "on the rise"
Get more insights from this study
The awareness test includes national results as well as basic demographic splits . Brands included in the first-stage research can request a short readout of their awareness results, including how they compare with other challenger brands tested across key demographics, where sample allows.
Want to see the full data from this study, or get a preview of the full results when fieldwork is complete? Get in touch to request a data snapshot for your brand.
Brands included in this analysis
87 challenger beauty and personal care brands were included in this study, which seeks to identify emerging and challenger brands in the industry. The brand list includes:
Act+Acre, Activist Skincare, BYOMA, Beardbrand, Billie, Bite (Toothpaste Bits), Bliss, Bloomeffects, Blueland, Boka, Bread Beauty Supply, Bubble Skincare, By Humankind, COSRX, Ceremonia, Cocofloss (COCOLAB), Coola, Crown Affair, Curie, DamDam, Danessa Myricks Beauty, Dieux, Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare, Each & Every, Eadem, Esker Beauty, Glow Recipe, Haus Labs, Henry Rose, Hero Cosmetics, Huppy, Hyper Skin, ILIA Beauty, Juvia's Place, Klur, Kosas, KraveBeauty, Kylie Cosmetics, Lume, Makeup By Mario, Manscaped, Marlowe, Merit Beauty, Moon, Naturium, Necessity Skincare, Nudge, Nécessaire, OUI the People, Odele, One-Size, Pacifica, Patrick Ta, Pattern Beauty, Peace Out, Peach & Lily, Phlur, Prose, Public Goods, Rare Beauty, Rhode Beauty, Rizos Curls, S'dare, Saie, Salt & Stone, Saltair, Scotch Porter, Skinfix, Snif, Sofie Pavitt Face, Soft Services, Sol de Janeiro, Starface, Summer Fridays, Supergoop!, The Ordinary, Topicals, Tower 28 Beauty, Twice, UOMA Beauty, Urban Skin Rx, Vacation, Versed, Wild Deodorant, Youth To The People, ZitSticka, cocokind
110 beauty and personal care brands tracked by BrandIndex were excluded from this study.
Methodology
This article draws on YouGov Surveys data collected among U.S. adults from October 8 to October 29, 2026.
Awareness measures whether someone has heard of a brand. The question asked was: "Which, if any, of the following brands have you ever heard of? Please select all that apply." Figures are percentages, rounded to one decimal place.
87 challenger beauty and personal care brands were tested, split into four rotating groups of U.S. adults so that each respondent was asked about a subset of the full brand list; each overall-awareness result is based on more than 300 respondents. The women's awareness results are based on a smaller base: more than 160 women per brand shown. The Manscaped gender-composition comparison is based on more than 100 adults aware of the brand and more than 1,220 U.S. adults nationally.
Disclosure: The data analysis in this article was conducted by YouGov with the assistance of AI tools.
