The beauty industry has spent the last few years fixated on Gen Z men experimenting with concealer, serums, fragrance, and “looksmaxxing” culture, especially on TikTok. However, a quieter and potentially more commercially significant consumer is reshaping the market: the male millennial (born 1981-1996) and boomer (born 1946-1964). Where these older men shop shows their preference for convenience and low-friction discovery. According to Front Row data, male consumers in the US now spend 54% of their skincare and grooming budgets on Amazon, compared to 14% at specialty beauty retailer stores such as Sephora. Men’s fragrance sales on Amazon also grew 19% year-over-year between 2023 and 2024.
While younger men may dominate the online conversation around grooming, older male consumers are increasingly driving spending in categories ranging from anti-aging skincare to hair loss and fragrance. According to Grand View Research, the global men’s grooming market was valued at nearly $299 billion in 2025 and is projected to surpass $506 billion by 2033, with skincare emerging as one of the fastest-growing segments. For many men over 40, beauty has become deeply intertwined with longevity, confidence, wellness, and professional identity.
“What’s driving it is pretty simple. People are living longer, and they don’t just want to be alive, they want to be healthy, strong, and looking good while they’re at it,” Ayal Ebert, CEO of Particle, a men’s grooming and skincare company, told BeautyMatter. “Wellness, longevity, anti-aging [are] all converging into one mindset for this demographic.” According to Ebert, the brand reaches its core audience of men 40+ through education-led marketing across Meta, YouTube, and TV, while leveraging AI across creative, targeting, and product development to scale efficiently with a lean team.
Unlike younger consumers who often approach beauty as experimentation or self-expression, older men enter the category with urgency. “Younger guys are often buying skincare for the purpose of prevention,” Ebert said. “Men over 40 are coming to us with a problem they’ve been living with, sometimes for years. They look in the mirror one day and decide enough is enough.”
That behavioral difference is forcing brands to rethink everything from product development to merchandising. Particle operates with this playbook. Founded in 2019 with just a $100,000 investment, it is fully self-funded. The brand has scaled from $500,000 in year one to $70 million in 2025, and is projected to hit $100 million in 2026, driven by a retention-first model rather than wholesale expansion or aggressive fundraising. High repeat purchase rates and strong lifetime value underpin consistent, predictable growth.
Despite the market momentum, beauty adoption among older men remains psychologically complicated. “The traditional stigma is still very much there,” Chris Salgardo, founder of skincare brand Atwater Skin, said to BeautyMatter. “Once you get to Gen X and beyond, there's still this internal voice that says, ‘This isn't for me. I'm embarrassed to be standing in this aisle. I don't want to ask the questions.’”
Salgardo believes the industry itself has exacerbated the issue by failing to adequately represent older men in beauty environments. “He doesn’t see himself in the marketing, he doesn’t see himself in the merchandising, and a lot of the time he doesn't even see himself in the products,” he said.
Still, executives agree that perceptions around masculinity are evolving rapidly. “It used to be that caring about your appearance as a man required a label or an explanation,” said Ebert. “That's largely gone now, and terms like ‘metrosexual’ aren't really used anymore.” Michael Gilman, founder of Grooming Lounge, a male grooming and services company, said the over-40 consumer is becoming increasingly pragmatic. “This over-40 crowd is less and less encumbered by the traditional stigma around beauty and kind of just wants the results,” Gilman told BeautyMatter.
Yet there remains a line many older consumers are unwilling to cross. “They have little to no issue getting involved with grooming and hygiene basics, even if they’re a bit beyond the norm,” he said, pointing to categories such as waxing and hair color. “But definitely stop short of any glam-like primping.”
That nuanced relationship with masculinity is shaping how brands communicate with this demographic. “The first thing is to drop the clichés,” Salgardo advised. “For decades, men in beauty marketing have been forced into three boxes: the bro, the dude, or the Sasquatch. None of those are how this customer sees himself.”
The over-40 male beauty consumer is not interested in a 12-step routine. “These guys know what their issues are and want solutions asap,” Gilman said. For brands, that means simplifying education while emphasizing performance. “Men over 40 are running companies, raising kids, managing busy lives,” Ebert enjoined. “They're not looking for a 90-day glow-up challenge. They want to identify a problem, find something that solves it, and move on.”
The products drawing the strongest engagement reflect this mindset: eye creams, shave care, anti-aging moisturizers, dark-spot treatments, and thinning hair solutions. Particle has seen strong demand for products targeting visible signs of aging. “The products that resonate most with this audience are the ones that solve something real and visible: eye bags, dark spots, wrinkles, thinning hair, skin that's starting to lose its firmness,” Ebert said.
Importantly, older men also tend to enter the category later in life, often after decades of neglect. “The vast majority of men over 40 spent decades doing basically nothing for their skin,” Ebert said. “No cleansers, no moisturizers, even no sunscreen.” That creates a fundamentally different product-development challenge than formulating for younger consumers already immersed in skincare culture.
At the same time, Salgardo argued that the industry still underestimates the complexity of male skin concerns. “You can walk into a Sephora or Ulta right now and see endless suggestions for women—every concern, every skin type, every step of a routine,” he said. “Then walk over to the men's section and you'll often find one cleanser and one moisturizer. As if he doesn’t have the same range of skin types and concerns that she does.”
One of the most commercially attractive aspects of the 40-plus consumer is spending power. The opportunity is particularly attractive because the category’s growth is increasingly being driven by older millennial and Gen X consumers entering peak earning years. According to Dataintelo, adults aged 25 to 59 accounted for nearly 62% of male beauty market revenue in 2025, with men aged 40 to 59 increasingly investing in anti-aging skincare and premium fragrance. “In my experience, the over-40 customer is much more willing to invest,” said Salgardo. “The older customer is the one who actually has the disposable income, and when he commits, he commits.”
Gilman echoed that sentiment. “Price sensitivity as men age into this demo definitely drops,” he said. “They are more likely to pay what it takes for products that get the job done.” What matters most is efficacy. “For men this age, it seems that efficacy is far and away the number-one driver, followed close behind by convenience,” Gilman said.
Brand heritage, by contrast, appears less influential in men’s beauty than in traditional prestige skincare. “How many male skincare brands are there that have been around for decades and built real trust?” Ebert questioned. “This is a young market, and in a lot of ways we’re building it as we go.”
Instead, brands are winning loyalty through simplicity, accessibility, and credibility. That demand for clarity is influencing everything from packaging design to retail strategy. “That’s why something as basic as our packaging is color-coded. Blue for oily, gray for combination, gold for dry,” Salgardo said. “Little signals like that take the friction out of the decision.”
The rise of the 40-plus male beauty consumer is also accelerating a shift away from traditional “anti-aging” language toward wellness and longevity. A 2026 survey from Just For Men found that 68% of men care more about their appearance today than they did five years ago, while nearly 70% said they are willing to take external measures to reduce age-related changes in appearance.
Executives increasingly see skincare as part of a larger self-optimization ecosystem alongside fitness, supplements, and preventative health. “As he becomes more aware of taking better care of himself, anti-aging and longevity stop being two different conversations and become the same conversation,” Salgardo said.
Gilman believes the category is moving toward a healthier and more aspirational framing of aging. “There seems to be a sort of regalness in the men's grooming/beauty realm about getting older and aging well,” he concluded. “While they want to look younger, it's more important to look healthy and feel healthy.”
