Gillette Venus has teamed up with Remi Cruz, an entrepreneur and YouTube personality, for the launch of a limited-edition razor. The Venus x Remi razor has a handle printed with a tropical design and is available for the holiday season exclusively on the new Venus Direct subscription platform. [Image Credit: © Procter & Gamble]

Walker & Company Brands, which makes health and beauty products for people of color, announced it will be acquired by Procter & Gamble for an undisclosed amount. The company’s brands include grooming line Bevel, targeting men with coarse or curly hair, and FORM Beauty, a hair care line for women with textured hair. The brands are primarily sold direct-to-consumer, but Bevel can also be found in Target stores, and Sephora stocks Form Beauty products. Bevel has taken a different approach to marketing Dollar Shave Club, relying less on paid media and more on social-media and word-of-mouth. P&G says it wants to learn about how Walker builds and uses authentic connections, and Walker aims to leverage P&G's expertise in developing, distributing and marketing products, and how to build the brand internationally. [Image Credit: © Walker & Company Brands]

A Google search trends study for the UK found direct-to-consumer brands lagged larger brands in search interest last year, but some are closing the gap. Gillette had double the searches of Dollar Shave Club in 2018, according to the study commissioned by Marketing Week. Searches for DSC grew by over 430 percent, and but searches for Gillette fell 2 percent. Huel, a meal replacement drink brand, saw about two-thirds of the search volume of established rival SlimFast, and its UK search volumes grew 92 percent in the year. The top fastest-growing D2C brands for search volumes in 2018 were Dollar Shave Club, Brushbox (403 percent), Huel, Glossier (85 percent) and Simply Cook (45 percent).  [Image Credit: © Dollar Shave Club]

Neutrogena is using the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES) to debut the Neutrogena MaskiD™, a new personalized skincare solution using a 3D-printed sheet mask. The user takes a selfie on a smartphone with a 3D camera to generate a 3D map of the face. Personalized data in the Neutrogena Skin 360™ system assesses the skin care needs and what ingredients would be best. Finally, the ingredients are printed onto the customized mask using a proprietary 3D-printing system in the areas where they are needed most. It will be sold exclusively on Neutrogena.com in the US later this year. [Image Credit: © Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc.]

Direct-to-consumer cosmetics and personal care retailer Lush is to open its first dedicated ‘Naked’ concept store in January, in the UK city of Manchester, selling products free of plastic packaging. There is also a new app, Lush Lens, providing product demos and information. On the same day, Lush will launch a new skin care line of oils, cleaners and eye mask, to be available worldwide. [Image Credit: © Lush Retail Ltd]