When I first met Grace Vernon, head of Boots Ignite, Foresight and Trends, she had just returned from a business trip to South Korea where she was scoping out the latest beauty trends for the UK retailer.
Not only did this trip include the typical work-related meetings, but as the red-faced pictures she showed me quickly revealed, it also involved testing out the popular skin booster injections designed to stimulate collagen and create that in-demand glass skin look.
The aesthetic treatment has become so popular in the country, Grace told me, that no one bats an eyelid when you walk into a meeting with a face of red dots post-procedure. Which is exactly what she did.
It is this kind of on the ground research combined with her team’s data platforms and consumer research – which Vernon describes as both “an art and a science” – that has seen Boots ramp up its beauty offering in the past 18 months.
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This has included not only the buzziest brands on social media such as Wonderskin’s viral purple lip stain and Medicube’s Collagen Night Wrapping Mask hitting the retailer’s shelves, but new and up-and-coming brands such as wellness patch brand What Supp Co and gut health specialists We Are Regular getting shelf space too.
Since launching in December 2024, Boots Ignite has seen 43 brands enter hundreds of Boots stores across the country.
The initiative can get a brand onto shelves in as little as eight weeks – something that previously could have taken as long as a year, says Vernon, who has been a trend forecaster at Boots for 11 years.
Boots' ability to respond fast enough to trends was previously held back by category rebuilds – when the physical space is replanned with brands delisted, introduced or expanded – which take place anywhere from every three months for skin care, to yearly with dental.
“Trends are increasing in pace, and we just did not have the flexibility and the agility to respond. That is where the concept of Ignite came from,” says Vernon.
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