What do sunscreen brands get up to in the winter?

This October, Bask’s sales plummeted. But founder Michael Huffstetler wasn’t worried — the cooler months could often be like this, given Bask is in the business of selling SPF.

“It goes like this, every year,” he says, drawing a bell curve in the air with his finger. “August is a big cliff, September is a big cliff, and October is the biggest.”

Five years into running the business, the rhythm is predictable, Huffstetler says. Things start to pick up in March, April sees Google searches for sunscreen “go crazy”, and in June and July, sales are at their peak. After mid-July, things start to ebb in the other direction, with sales via Bask’s own website slowing first, Amazon sales following by early August, and retailers more slowly transitioning into winter.

Bask’s seasonal swings are a typical challenge all sunscreen brands face — demand plummets when the weather cools, and the sun has set in consumers’ minds. Still, makers of SPF products are putting plenty of time and effort into pursuing the “deseasonalization” of the category. Supergoop! has led the charge for more than two decades, advocating for daily sunscreen use before it became mainstream, while newer brands are finding creative ways to talk about sunscreen, and target customers who are seeking sun themselves, during the colder months.

How seasonal is sunscreen today?

Most people today have heard they should be wearing sunscreen daily, and according to Mintel, 51% of people say they actually do put SPF on their face every day.

But for sunscreen brands, lumpy sales don’t always reflect that. “I know people say they wear sunscare all year round,” says Eniye Okah, the founder of UK suncare brand BEAME. “But they’re not wearing it as frequently as they were in the summer, they just say they are. Unless they’re going on a trip, they don’t wear it all the time.” The proof is in the sales figures, she says. “My sales dipped massively. [People are] thinking about Christmas, not suncare, and that makes sense.”

BEAME, which had its first summer in the market in 2025, is currently working on expanding its distribution channels to target locations — like the US’s sunnier states — where the sun shines for more months of the year than in the notoriously cloudy UK (the UK clocked around 1,600 sunshine hours last year compared to 4,000 in Yuma, Arizona, the sunniest city in the world).

Chasing winter sun

So, where are SPF brands focusing their efforts in October, November, December and January? Looking at sunscreen brands’ social channels gives some hints — with pictures of sunscreen products nestled on powdery slopes, or packed in suitcases destined for sunnier climes, filling feeds.

Having products for sale that work with these use cases is crucial — it’s hard to convince someone to slather a thick, greasy SPF 50 on themselves at the sunniest of times, let alone the winter. “For the first several years in business, we only had body products,” says Huffstetler. “Launching our daily invisible gel a couple of years ago really helped us fight seasonality.” This winter, Bask launched an SPF 50 sunscreen in a stick format, with the logic that it’s easier for skiers to apply mid-piste than a lotion. “As we look at the product pipeline going forward, there’s a big focus on daily facial sunscreen applications that we know will perform well in the high season, and help us fight against seasonality in the low season.”

At Good Weather Skin, which launched last March, a production delay led to its second SPF product being ready to go in September — not ideal timing. The marketing messaging needed a total rethink, says founder Franchesca Hashim, to stay relevant. “It was originally supposed to launch in July, but because of the launch in September we really dialed in the idea of fighting winter dullness,” she says. “It helped balance the drop in seasonality that we expected to see in September, and actually our sales spiked in November compared to July. Even for our original product, we’ve switched all messaging around its hydration properties, knowing that winter air leaves people with dry skin.” Logging on to Good Weather Skin’s website, people are greeted with the words: “Say goodbye to dull winter skin.”

For BEAME, tapping up experts to spread the word that sunscreen should be worn year-round has also paid off (and stops customers rolling their eyes at the “brand thinks we should buy their product more often” message). One video posted to Instagram featuring dermatologist Amy Perkins, explaining how UVA rays affect the skin year-round, received 300% more views than BEAME's other posts this winter.

When asked how they manage cash flow during the quieter months, the founders we spoke to all said their first move is dial down costs, pausing PR agencies and waiting until the summer to resume work with freelance copywriters. “We pause all our marketing on the DTC side,” says Huffstetler. “In previous years we haven’t, but after three years we learned to accept reality, which is that typical marketing acquisition channels for direct-to-consumer sales aren’t going to work for us at this time of year, no matter what targeting we put on there.”

Changing perceptions

Sunscreen has come a long way since the early noughties, when it was seen as a product for summer or for holidays, and not much more. “In 2005, when I started my journey, SPF was never mentioned [in magazines] outside of May or June,” says Holly Thaggard, the founder of Supergoop! “But if you look at editorials and online now, not a single day goes by that there aren’t 25 mentions of SPF.”

Supergoop! pushed its product into the mainstream by convincing retailers and editors to think differently and present sunscreen to their audiences year-round. In 2010, when Supergoop! was offered a 12-week placement in Sephora, Thaggard pushed back. “I said I need to deseasonalize this category, and I’m not going to do it if we’re distributing 12 weeks of the summer and pulling it back off the shelf,” she says. “So decide how many inches of space you can give me, but promise it will be in the same location for 365 days.”

Sephora allocated Supergoop! six inches of shelf space, enough for two products, including the now-discontinued Save Face A.M. daily moisturiser. “It was about providing the hydration to the skin that’s needed to get through the winter,” Thaggard says.

It got Supergoop! through the winter too, and before long, the brand had a full shelf at Sephora. The fight against seasonality is far from over — but what started as a summer product is now a year-round staple for many consumers.