The hyaluronic acid filler class has a picture downside. After months of wanting themselves in the mirror, pharmaceutical corporations are prepared to chart its comeback.
Across the board, headlines in 2024 and 2025 reported that folks had been experiencing filler fatigue and both dissolving their fillers, pushing off appointments, or had been in any other case bored with getting fillers to start with. The aversion to fillers coincided with the resurgence of “natural-looking” make-up and “undetectable” procedures, which got here to the forefront of tradition, renouncing the now derided “Instagram face.”
Giants like Allergan Aesthetics, Waldencast and Evolus are deploying a sequence of techniques starting from unbranded stories, eschewing the time period “filler” and focusing on GLP-1 sufferers in hopes of correcting misinformation, altering notion and in the end rebolstering gross sales.
Macroeconomic elements have additionally eroded their backside traces. At a Sept. convention with Morgan Stanley, Allergan’s proprietor AbbVie famous that US customers incomes lower than $150,000 per 12 months typically deferred or skipped remedies. The common value paid for a hyaluronic acid remedy in 2024 was $1,437, in contrast to neurotoxins at $893, in accordance to a January 2025 report from healthcare intelligence agency Guidepoint Qsight. AbbVie’s filler model Juvéderm noticed its internet income lower 24 p.c year-on-year, and the firm lowered its 2025 steering.
Between 2019 and 2022, the variety of sufferers receiving HA fillers (together with manufacturers Juvéderm, Voluma, Volbella, and the Restylane portfolio) elevated by 70 p.c, in accordance to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons; by 2024, nevertheless, the variety of new procedures has levelled out.
“We’ve come into the era where filler has baselined,” stated Cece Davis, a board-certified nurse practitioner and injector at SkinSpirit. “We know what these products are capable of doing in excess and also in [less than] appropriate amounts and we’re now finding that sweet spot for patients.”
Despite a number of quarters of gross sales slowdown, new entrants have additionally emerged in the HA filler house. In April, aesthetic pharmaceutical firm Evolus launched its first HA filler model Evolysse, adopted in July by Milk Makeup proprietor Waldencast’s acquisition of medical aesthetics model Novaestiq and the US rights to Saypha. Waldencast will market Saypha underneath its Obagi skilled skincare line. Both corporations see a possibility to snap up market share and develop the general class by means of a mixture of modern advertising and marketing, product know-how and model affinity.
Don’t Say the “F-Word”
When Evolus first debuted its Botox-competitor Juveau in 2019, the firm embraced its positioning as a magnificence product, one thing that pharmaceutical corporations have hesitated to do. Juveau has since managed to seize 14 p.c of neuromodulator market share in the US. With the HA filler class at the moment in flux, Evolus plans to use that as a possibility to debut a disruptive method.
Chief govt David Moatazedi stated that when Evolus performed its personal affected person analysis, they discovered that folks felt negatively towards the phrase “filler” relatively than precise merchandise, which as a complete consist not solely of hyaluronic acid injectables but in addition biostimulators like Galderma’s Sculptra.
“The word ‘filler’ has probably been overused, and there’s a perception that when you use the word filler, it evokes a negative response,” he stated, “whereas hyaluronic acid or bio-stimulatory injectables don’t do that.”
Evolus sought to tweak the lexicon by means of a provider-focused marketing campaign referred to as Drop the F Word between April and Sept. 2025, which jettisoned “filler” in favour of “injectable hyaluronic acid.” Hyaluronic acid, a preferred skincare ingredient that has been round for many years, has undergone its personal rediscovery in the magnificence {industry} since 2024, and the firm realized that the time period has extra optimistic associations than filler. Moatazedi stated Evolus plans to earn $700 million in annual whole revenues by 2028, with HA fillers representing almost 30 p.c of whole gross sales.
While Evolus could also be embracing newer terminology, US magnificence group Waldencast is hoping it may well make the Obagi model synonymous with HA fillers and relinquish the want for the time period — like what Allergan as soon as did with Botox.
After buying Novaestiq Corp for $3 million in money (with earnouts tied to FDA approval milestones and gross sales thresholds), the firm not too long ago secured FDA approval for its injectable Saypha MagIQ for nasolabial folds in Sept. 2025, and plans to have interaction practitioners in December and customers in the first quarter 2026.
Compared to perhaps 50 rivals in the skilled dermatology house, there are solely six or seven in the HA filler class, Waldencast CEO Michel Brousset identified. Obagi already has advertising and marketing, area groups and provide chains established to serve medical workplaces, making it a decrease elevate to get off the floor.
“There are still millions of treatments happening with fillers, and as a consequence, is a fundamentally very attractive category [for] the Obagi brand with its medical history,” Brousset stated, including that the firm hopes to add different aesthetic remedies underneath the model identify in the future. The firm’s newest earnings reported a ten p.c income elevate for Obagi in the third quarter, although it was weighed down by poor gross sales at flagship cosmetics model Milk Makeup.
“Our objective is to be the first mega brand that spans skincare and aesthetics,” he stated, including that Obagi plans to add different aesthetics underneath the model identify in the future.
Filler’s Rising Tides
If Obagi is embracing its model identify to the full extent, Juvéderm’s technique runs reverse: The model hopes to restore shine to the time period filler earlier than pushing any explicit model.
In August, dad or mum firm Allergan revealed an unbranded report about the HA filler class, geared toward correcting misinformation about the security and efficacy of the product and present that 97 p.c of sufferers report excessive satisfaction with HA fillers.
Nicole Katz, Allergan’s VP of buyer engagement and company affairs, stated it was extra applicable to speak about the complete class relatively than focus solely on Juvéderm’s fame. If you have got an industry-wide downside, it doesn’t serve anyone model solely to right its personal file, Katz stated.
Allergan has distributed the report with suppliers, will current it at upcoming {industry} conferences and has repurposed data from the report for social media consumption. Notably, the report discovered that over two-thirds of customers use social media as a trusted supply to discover out about dermal fillers. Allergan will consider success by means of shopper notion surveys, with the hope that it strikes to impartial and optimistic.
“It’s puzzling that we’re having this issue in the marketplace because we see a high level of satisfaction for patients,” Katz stated. “It tells you that the challenge is really getting them [in the medical office]and once they actually have the treatment, they’re really happy that they did it,” she stated.
Dr. Terrence Keaney, a board-certified dermatologist who has consulted with Allergan on its report and supplier coaching, stated the report’s insights have already formed how Allergan provides assist to suppliers by means of its Allergan Medical Institute. Training now places as a lot emphasis on affected person communication because it does on injection method, he stated, and that Allergan is “learning how to better address patient hesitations with data and empathy.”
Nurse injector Davis maybe summarised the new dynamic finest.
Providers want to “have streamlined education across the entire industry … as opposed to everybody having a different answer for patients,” she stated. “It’s not a patient’s job to know what a product is or what a product does.”
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