Founder Piers Le Moignan blended clay and sea salt in his kitchen four years ago. Today, his start-up outranks Gillette on Google.

Want to get a full scope of this market? Click here to read our male grooming market report. 100+ brands ranked across search/social/brand.

The UK men’s grooming market is booming, worth roughly USD 10.4bn in 2023 and forecast to expand 9.5% annually to 2030.

In a space ruled by Philips, Gillette and Braun, an eight-product challenger called Salt Grooming has jumped from 6k to 30k organic visits in twelve months, a 399% surge that now puts it #8 for visibility in the entire sector.

How did a brand with <1k monthly name searches elbow aside household names pulling 27k-plus? 

 

The Numbers that Matter

Brand Visibility Mar 2025 YoY% Monthly brand searches Take-away
Philips 221 719 +8% 27,100 Still king of volume
Gillette 109 581 -8% 27,100 Brand inertia showing
Braun 82 213 +18% 14,800 Steady climber
Salt Grooming 30 326 +399% ≈ 480 Content beats clout

Data: Salience Index 2025

 

What Salt Did Differently

Market context – surf’s up

“Foil shaver” and “head shaver for men” are climbing 71% and 50% respectively. Salt spotted the spike and created long-form answers before the big dawgs refreshed their PDPs. 

The output? First-page ownership for rising intent while competitors chased declining “beard trimmers” seraches.

Brand numbers – David in a metric suit

Salt’s visibility outperforms nine bigger rivals despite sitting 29th for brand search volume. In plain English: Google trusts their pages more than consumers recognise the logo, an enviable place to scale from.

Mullet Mania

When TikTok resurrected the ’90s mullet, Salt’s blog shipped a styling guide within 48 hours, with internal links to “Hybrid Hair” clay. The post peaked during spring “lads-on-tour” season and still pulls 1k visits a month. Philips and Braun? No editorial response, just catalogue updates.

Tactics at play

  • Content engines – 150+ how-to posts answering “real men’s hair questions”, each mapped to emerging keyword clusters.
  • Technical fundamentals – clean taxonomy and ruthless internal linking push topical clusters, offsetting a sluggish 47 mobile PageSpeed score (proof that relevance trumps perfect tech).
  • Authority – PR hits in GQ, Telegraph and Men’s Health, plus niche YouTuber reviews, landed high-DR links and triggered extra branded searches.
  • Community flywheel – founder-led Instagram/TikTok demos, re-shared by barbers, create UGC that feeds PR pitches and embeds product CTAs.

Engagement → conversion

Traffic is vanity unless it moves stock. Salt pushes visitors straight into a Marine Mist + Hybrid Hair bundle, lifting AOV to £34.99.

Military-style product pages carry review stars, no-nonsense returns, and Klarna badges; classic trust signals that mirror Google’s E-E-A-T wishlist.

 

Key takeaways for marketing leaders

  • Act like a publisher, 150+ articles beat 150k TV spots.
  • Exploit the long tail before giants notice: answer questions, earn snippets, bank links.
  • Don’t sweat perfect tech until content saturation; 47/100 mobile speed still scales when intent is nailed.
  • PR ≠ vanity—every quality link sharpens rankings and sparks brand searches.
  • Balance sheet over buzz: bundle SKUs, surface social proof, own the checkout.

 

Conclusion

Salt Grooming proves 2025 still rewards the search-first, audience-obsessed challenger. Out-publish the incumbents, ride micro-trends fast and build authority where it counts. Keep doing that; the giants’ brand budgets will look like ballast, not rocket fuel.

P.S. Click here to get the latest Male Grooming Market report.