One could generally call the cosmetics industry homogenous. Most companies have a specific image of their customers in mind, and for traditionally, that image has been white. It’s no coincidence then, that recent years have seen slow growth and declines among almost all the big names in makeup. But they haven’t just been sitting on their perfectly manicured hands, watching it happen. All the big brands need to get on top of the sales trends, and here that means multicultural makeup.

In this case, “multicultural” basically means not white, and there’s no doubt that it’s where cosmetics need to go. OROGOLD Cosmetics discovered that while sales have stagnated across China and most of the Western world, they’re on the up and up everywhere else, particularly in Africa, South America and the Middle East. The reason for this is heartening. These areas in particular not only have a strongly emerging middle class, but the last decade’s spread of female education has given women a lot more purchasing power than they used to have, with a decent amount of that going towards cosmetics.

Even inside the United States, “multicultural” demographics (Asian, Hispanic, African-American and anyone else who isn’t white) are outgrowing the entire rest of the industry. This mirrors the change in the economy as a whole and is generally indicative of a decrease in wealth disparity. It’s definitely a good sign.

Naturally, big corporations such as Estée Lauder, and other companies with accents in their names, are doing their best to stay ahead of the game by introducing new product lines. As we’ve mentioned before, the best cosmetics are extremely complex and high-tech creations. Delivering the most effective stuff means tailoring it beyond simply changing the color of foundation to match skin tone. This is because there are also ethnicity differences in things like pore size or density, hair type and more. With three quarters of the world’s population simultaneously being not-white and buying more product than ever before, it’s become very apparent that any brand intent on supplying top quality cosmetics will need to make some adjustments. They’re going about this in two main ways.

Firstly, they’re buying up smaller companies that already have dedicated multicultural consumers and products. This lets them bring their big money to the production and distribution of already-existing tailored brands, to better spread them around emerging markets across the world. Secondly, they’re investing a lot more into research and development than they used to, and creating their own brand new product lines specifically designed for particular skin or hair types. All this is good news for everyone. While we admit that, barring the most unlikely of circumstances, makeup won’t be a matter of life and death, its trends are still an excellent economic indicator. And as it stands, it’s nothing but good news.