When my brother ditched coconut oil

Micro-ingredients, macro expectations

• From DIY rituals to ingredient-led science, a generation is rewriting the beauty playbook—and brands must keep up

My younger brother, an engineering student at a government university, had just finished his first semester exams when he stormed into the kitchen, visibly frustrated. As my mother poured him tea, he blurted out, “I swear I could see my hair falling while I was writing that exam paper.”

It sounded dramatic, but he meant it. Stress had found its way to his scalp. My mother, instinctively, began listing her usual arsenal of home remedies—coconut oil massages, curry leaf herbal masks. But he was not listening. This time, he did not want a family ritual. He wanted a solution.

By the next day, he had researched ingredients, scanned reviews, and picked a targeted anti-hair fall serum all on his own.

Watching him that evening methodically applying drops like a lab experiment I realised something: Gen Z is not waiting to be told what to do. They are building their own personal care routines, ingredient by ingredient.

Gen Z shift: From tradition to precision

It is not just my younger brother. Across Sri Lanka’s Gen Z from university lecture halls to their first workplaces you can almost feel the weight they carry. They have grown up through a pandemic, stepped into an economy riddled with uncertainty, and are navigating workloads that blur boundaries between day and night. Stress has become a default setting.

And yet, their expectations of themselves have only grown higher.

They are chasing not just wellness, but flawlessness. Their aspirations are shaped by global beauty cultures: the poreless, ageless glow of K-beauty idols; the sculpted perfection of the Kardashians; influencers who treat their skin like tech constantly upgrading, reversing, optimising.

They do not have the patience for slow, traditional remedies like we Millennials or our mothers once trusted. Coconut oil and curry leaves have been replaced by ingredient lists that sound like science labs.

Scroll through popular Sri Lankan Facebook pages, YouTube channels or Instagram pages, and you will see this shift everywhere—content creators dissecting glutathione for brightening, vitamin C for pigmentation, retinol for acne and anti-ageing, and biotin for hair growth.

“I try products with advance ingredients. I’m going to try a new one, the Dark Spot Correcting Glow Serum, it has activated niacinamide, and all the reviews say it works 100%. I’m also planning to do this facial next month they have LED light therapy.” – Diyana, 23 YO.

And Korean beauty has brought a whole new vocabulary into their bathrooms: snail mucin for skin repair, ceramides for barrier care, and peptides to boost collagen. These are not just problem-solvers—they are enhancers, promising a level of control and transformation that traditional DIY care never could.

Also, globally personal care is also borrowing techniques once reserved for dermatology clinics and Gen Z is watching.

• LED light therapy masks for acne and anti-ageing
• Microneedling rollers to stimulate hair growth and collagen production
• Dermaplaning tools for instant skin resurfacing
• Micro-current facial toners to lift and contour the face
• At-home scalp massagers with red-light therapy to boost hair density

These technologies are widely used in global markets and often feature in brand content abroad but they are still rare in Sri Lanka. This gap represents a huge white space: local Gen Zs are aware of these tools through TikTok and YouTube, but they rarely find them accessible or integrated into local brand portfolios yet.

What this means for personal care brands

This shift is not just a passing trend, it is a cultural reset in how beauty and care are understood.

For Gen Z in Sri Lanka, personal care has become performance-driven. They are not buying a “moisturiser” or a “hair oil”, they’re buying niacinamide 10% or biotin serum. They evaluate products like engineers: checking active percentages, ingredients lists, pH levels, and before-after timelines.

This creates both pressure and opportunity for brands.

Pressure, because the old way of marketing, broad promises like “glow,” “soft skin,” or “strong hair” no longer cuts through. These consumers expect specificity, transparency, and visible results, fast.

Opportunity, because brands can now premiumise through expertise. Ingredient-led positioning can elevate brands turning something simple into something scientific and aspirational.

We are already seeing this shift in global portfolios:

• Korean brands like COSRX, Innisfree, Laneige built empires on single high-performing ingredients.
• In India, local brands like Minimalist and Dot & Key are winning Gen Z trust by presenting themselves more like clinical labs than traditional beauty brands.
• And even Unilever Sri Lanka’s Pond’s has begun weaving novel ingredients like hyaluronic acid into its local product story—signalling that ingredient-based marketing is gaining ground here too.

This signals a new competitive battleground for Sri Lankan brands. The winners will be those who can:

• Deliver targeted solutions for specific needs
• Blend local trust + global science and technology in their positioning

In essence, Gen Z is rewriting the rules: care must now be custom, fast, tech-savvy, and rooted in expertise.

Closing thoughts

Watching my brother quietly map out a plan for his hair fall like solving an engineering problem, felt like witnessing a generational shift happen in real time.

For Gen Z in Sri Lanka, personal care is no longer about tradition or routine. It is about precision, performance, and personal agency. They are not waiting for advice, they are curating their own care, ingredient by ingredient, outcome by outcome.

This shift signals a new era where brands must evolve from storytellers to solution-partners. To win Gen Z, brands can not just promise beauty, they must deliver expertise and innovation. They must speak the language of actives, science, technology, and measurable results while still staying rooted in the emotional meaning that beauty holds.

Because the next wave of beauty in Sri Lanka will not be built on heritage alone—but on precision, performance, and personalisation.

And if local brands do not speak the language of actives, Gen Z will simply import it.