The $2B Category Hiding in Plain Sight: Why "After-Sun" Deserves Your Attention
While sunscreen and SPF skincare get the lion’s share of retail shelf space and consumer attention, a smaller, faster-evolving adjacent category is quietly heating up: after-sun care. Long seen as an ancillary product line — typically a single SKU buried at the end of the sun care aisle — after-sun is now showing real signs of breakout potential.
Here’s why founders, operators, and investors in the CPG space should be paying attention.
📈 A Solid, Growing Market
The global post-sun care market is currently valued at ~$2B and growing at a 4% CAGR, on track to reach $2.5B by 2030. The U.S. makes up ~22% of this market (~$400M), with Europe and the rest of the world making up the majority.
While this is not a breakout rocket-ship category like collagen once was, it’s a predictable, under-optimized growth engine with emerging whitespace — especially in the U.S., where CPG innovation often trails skincare trends seen in Europe and APAC.
🔍 Consumer Interest Is Up
Over the past five years, U.S. consumer interest in “after sun care” (via Google Trends) has more than doubled. At the same time, interest in its core ingredient — “aloe vera” — has dropped by ~25%.
🧭 Strategic Takeaways for Brands & Investors
1. After-Sun is Becoming a Year-Round Story
While still seasonal in perception, after-sun care ties directly into larger trends in skin barrier repair, hydration, and recovery. These are relevant far beyond summer — from ski season to retinol routines.
2. Ingredient Innovation Will Win
Aloe is tired. There’s whitespace for cooling ceramides, postbiotic repair blends, or even calming adaptogens. The shift in consumer search behavior supports this.
3. Channel Expansion is Ripe
Amazon dominates the category’s long tail — but DTC, specialty retail, and clean beauty channels have yet to fully lean in.
4. This is a Platform Opportunity, Not Just a SKU
Brands that treat after-sun as a platform — not just a seasonal product — can win on routine integration, cross-sell potential, and retention.
🔮 Final Thought
After-sun care is one of those quietly large, quietly growing markets that often gets overlooked. But in today’s CPG landscape — where brand equity, channel innovation, and consumer experience matter more than ever — it’s a category worth reevaluating.
Just as SPF has evolved from a beach staple to daily ritual, after-sun may be next in line for its glow-up.
We’ve seen firsthand how founders are reimagining the category. One example: our portfolio company Naked Sundays, founded by former Australian news correspondent Sam Brett, was born from the insight that even high-SPF users were missing reapplication moments — especially over makeup. Sam saw colleagues have skin cancers removed from their faces after years reporting in the sun. That real-world need inspired her to create a SPF50 mist that can be applied over make-up after you’ve been in the sun, not just something that sits in a beach bag. It’s that kind of format innovation — functional, elegant, and rooted in behavior — that we believe is critical for suncare’s next chapter, including what comes after the sun.
XRC Ventures partners with strategics & founders building the next generation of consumer and commerce innovation. In addition to our market research work, we have built a proprietary AI tool to track 3M+ companies across multiple categories to surface acquisition and innovation targets. If you're exploring modern skin health, ingredient innovation, or after-sun as a platform opportunity, we’d love to talk.