It is anticipated that a growing demand for male beauty treatments such as tanning, waxing and facials will help create 11,000 jobs in the £6.2bn beauty industry over the next 12 months, according to research by Kantar Worldpanel.
The study of 1,500 businesses across the UK did however reveal some unexpected regional divides. In Scotland, the number of grooming treatments bought by men has gone up by three quarters, which is the largest increase anywhere in Britain. A fifth of these were for sessions on the sunbed so that men could top up their tans.
The research found that Welsh men were found to favour both tanning and waxing, with hair removal constituting nearly half of all male treatments. The findings were more varied in England, but men in London had a preference for massages and skin treatments over other pampering. Tanning was not found to be popular in the capital and accounted for just 6 per cent of all treatments.