Key Takeaways:
- Pumpkin spice has shifted from a seasonal trend to an annual beauty ritual.
- Pumpkin spice products generated $66.5 million on Amazon, up 17% YoY.
- Brands are reinventing it through more sophisticated gourmand and autumnal profiles.
The leaves have hardly begun to fall. The calendar has flipped from August to September. You can still wear a T-shirt on your commute without fear of catching a chill, and following record-high temperatures, SPF still needs to be slathered on as the sun shines overhead. But no one’s drinking a refreshing lemonade or iced tea. Why would they, when the ultimate indicator of fall has landed back at Starbucks and in the beauty aisle? The Pumpkin Spiced Latte (PSL) is back. Though the weather may say otherwise, the marketing calendar has overruled it—fall is here.
At some point in the past ten years, pumpkin spice stopped simply being a flavor and became a seasonal cue. “Like the first cool day of autumn or the changing of the leaves, pumpkin has become a cultural signal that fall has arrived,” Jenine Guerriero, Head of Marketing and Consumer Insights at Givaudan, told BeautyMatter.
Beauty has become part of this ritual. Pumpkin spice now appears across fragrance, bodycare, deodorant, haircare, home scent, and increasingly unexpected corners of the personal care aisle. This year, Spate recorded a 17.3 million year-over-year (YoY) increase in pumpkin spice’s Popularity Index, its proprietary measure combining consumer interest across Google Search, TikTok, and Instagram, driven by an additional 14.5 million TikTok views. Meanwhile, at Givaudan, consumer awareness of pumpkin sits at 87%, while searches for pumpkin are up 25% YoY.
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