Skin-First Primers: How the Pre-Makeup Step Became a Skincare Category in Its Own Right

The primer — that somewhat ambiguous product category that sits between skincare and makeup, applied after moisturizer and before foundation — underwent a significant transformation between 2020 and 2024. What had been primarily a makeup-performance product (fill in pores, extend wear, create even base) evolved into a skincare-forward category populated by products that offered measurable skin benefits independently of any makeup worn over them. The category's growth reflects both real innovation in formulation and a cultural shift away from heavy coverage toward what the beauty industry calls "skin-first" aesthetics.

Glossier Futuredew: The Product That Named the Category

Glossier launched Futuredew in September 2019 as "the first oil serum hybrid that creates a dewy, healthy-looking complexion — with or without makeup." The product, retailing at $24 (£18), was positioned explicitly as something you might wear alone rather than under other products. Its formula combined rosehip and sea buckthorn oils (for brightness and nourishment) with a serum base that provided light hold without setting powder.

Futuredew became one of Glossier's best-selling products and was instrumental in establishing the skin-first primer concept in mass-market beauty. The product's success reflected Glossier's broader positioning — founded by Emily Weiss in 2014 from the Into The Gloss blog platform, the brand had built an audience that was explicitly interested in skin health over concealment. Futuredew translated that philosophy into a single product that served as both the last step of a skincare routine and the first step of a makeup routine, dissolving the categorical boundary between them.

NPD Group, which tracks beauty sales data across major US retailers, identified "skin-tint and primer hybrid" as the fastest-growing subcategory within face makeup in 2021 and 2022, directly attributable to the Glossier effect and the products it inspired. The category grew 67% in unit sales between 2020 and 2022, according to NPD's annual beauty industry reports.

Drunk Elephant and the Ingredient-Focused Generation

Drunk Elephant, founded by Tiffany Masterson in Houston, Texas in 2012 and acquired by Shiseido for $845 million in 2019, built its brand around the concept of eliminating what Masterson called "the suspicious six" — fragrance, essential oils, drying alcohols, silicones, chemical screens, and SLS/SLES sulfates — from all formulations. This negative-definition approach to ingredient philosophy resonated strongly with a beauty consumer cohort that was simultaneously becoming more ingredient-literate through social media platforms.

Drunk Elephant's Protini Polypeptide Cream (£52) and the Lala Retro Whipped Cream (£52) became gateway products that familiarized a broad audience with active ingredient philosophy. The brand's primers — including the D-Bronzi Anti-Pollution Sunshine Drops (£34), which functions as both a serum additive and a standalone pre-makeup treatment — brought that philosophy to the primer category specifically.

The Shiseido acquisition, at a $845 million valuation for a brand that was only seven years old, signaled how significantly the ingredient-conscious consumer segment was valued by the traditional beauty industry. Drunk Elephant products were, at acquisition, generating estimated revenues of approximately $130 million annually — significant but far below the acquisition multiple, suggesting Shiseido was buying the brand's consumer relationships and ingredient philosophy as much as its current revenue.

The Ordinary and the Democratization of Active Ingredients

The Ordinary, launched by Deciem in 2016 under founder Brandon Truaxe, introduced perhaps the most radical disruption in modern beauty retail: pharmaceutical-grade active ingredients sold in minimal packaging at prices between £4 and £15. The brand's Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% (£5.50) became the best-selling skincare product on ASOS and repeatedly sold out at Boots UK, at a price point that made high-performance skincare genuinely accessible.

The Ordinary's expansion into primer-adjacent products — including the High-Adherence Silicone Primer (£4.90) and the Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 (£7.90, which functions as both serum and primer base) — brought its democratizing philosophy to the category. The brand's commercial success forced the wider beauty industry to justify price points that had previously been accepted without question.

Deciem was majority-acquired by Estée Lauder Companies in 2021 for an undisclosed sum following a valuation of approximately $2.2 billion — a staggering multiple for a brand whose average unit retail price was approximately £8. The acquisition confirmed that The Ordinary's disruption of beauty pricing norms had created genuine, large-scale consumer loyalty that the traditional industry needed to own rather than compete against.

K-Beauty and the Glass Skin Ideal

The K-beauty concept of "glass skin" — a complexion of near-translucent clarity, luminosity, and smoothness that appears to have no texture or pores — became the dominant global beauty aspiration of the early 2020s, promoted through social media by creators including Jude Kang (@jude.kang) and Dr. Shereene Idriss (@shereeneidriss). The glass skin protocol typically involves multiple lightweight, hydrating steps — essence, serum, ampoule — before a final luminous primer that creates the characteristic lit-from-within glow.

Korean brands including Laneige (a subsidiary of AmorePacific), Innisfree, and COSRX brought their primer-adjacent products — sleeping masks, essences, glow serums — to global markets through Sephora, ASOS, and dedicated K-beauty platforms including Olive Young's international shipping service. The cultural transfer of glass skin as an ideal shifted Western beauty consumers toward the skin-first primer philosophy, since achieving glass skin requires prioritizing skin health over coverage.

NPD Data and Market Trajectory

NPD Group's 2023 US Prestige Beauty Industry Report identified face primer as a $420 million annual category in the US prestige market alone (products sold through department stores, specialty beauty, and direct-to-consumer prestige brands). Growth in the category was driven almost entirely by "skincare-hybrid" primers — products with measurable active ingredient content — rather than conventional silicone-based pore-filling formulas, which declined 12% in unit sales over the same period.

The report noted that "the boundary between skincare and primer has effectively dissolved in consumer perception" and that brands attempting to market conventional primers without skincare claims were underperforming significantly relative to those incorporating hydration, brightening, or anti-aging positioning.

Sources & Further Reading