With the maturation of beauty-from-within and supplement categories, the market is shifting from promise-led positioning to proof-driven product development.
In this year-end Q&A, Ritual founder & CEO Kat Schneider shares her perspective on what will shape the next phase of innovation—from the rise of traceability as a new transparency benchmark to a growing demand for clinically substantiated outcomes across skin, hair and women’s wellness.
For brands and suppliers navigating this evolution, Schneider’s insights highlight both the opportunities and the accountability that will define 2026.
Q: You’ve described 2026 as a turning point where “traceability becomes the new transparency.” How does that shift change what consumers expect, and how should brands and suppliers be preparing now to meet those demands?
Kat Schneider: At Ritual, we think about traceability as transparency with receipts, and we believe our customers have the right to see our homework. Customers are skeptical of supplements and they are asking important questions about the safety and efficacy of the products they purchase.
Given the explosion of products on the market and no major updates to our federal supplement safety laws in the last 30 years, it’s on brands to ask harder questions when developing wellness products.
When I launched Ritual nine years ago, we were in what I call the “trust me” era of wellness. We’re now in the “prove it” era of wellness and customers are asking for more proof from brands in how they know their products work and are safe.
We’ve been building the proof points through our traceable science and sourcing, showcasing the clinical rigor and ingredient traceability. The receipts of our work speak for themselves, we have four clinical studies complete, we’re the first and only brand to openly share all of our ingredient suppliers names and where they are manufactured on our website, and we played an integral role passing the California law that will require prenatal brands to share heavy metal test results with their customers.
This traceability has earned us deep trust with today’s consumer, and we are now one of the largest privately held women’s health supplement brands.
Q: Women’s health has rapidly expanded beyond fertility to include hormones, metabolism, stress and sleep. What opportunities do you see for ingredient and product innovation in this broader, more holistic definition of women’s wellness?
Kat Schneider: For a long time—women’s health was treated as episodic—fertility at one moment, pregnancy at another, rather than as a continuous, interconnected system across a woman’s life. The opportunity now is to innovate with the realities of women’s health and life stages in mind.
Hormones don’t operate in isolation from stress, sleep, metabolism or mental health, and ingredients shouldn’t either.
From an innovation standpoint, Ritual has worked hard to strategically provide solutions for women’s health stages with solutions that are clinically studied, thoughtfully dosed and designed for real-world use. We’re not throwing new products on the market and hoping they stick, we’re carefully launching only what is needed to meet the unmet needs for women.
Our formulating approach also means investing in research where women have historically been underrepresented. Many brands speak about filling the women’s health gap, but at Ritual we’re actually investing our own dollars in clinical trials that feature diverse women and then we go on to publish them in peer-reviewed journals, open for all to see.
The most meaningful innovation will come from combining rigorous clinical evidence with formulations that respect how women actually live: simple routines, clear outcomes and products that evolve with her needs from TTC through menopause.
Q: As “proof over promises” becomes the industry standard, how do you see the role of clinical validation evolving across the supplement and beauty-from-within spaces?
Kat Schneider: According to a McKinsey report, 50% of U.S. consumers report clinical effectiveness as a top purchasing factor, and we see this with our customer base. Clinical validation will move from being a differentiator to being table stakes, but consumers must have a sharp eye since not all “clinically studied” claims are created equal.
In the past, brands could rely on ingredient buzzwords or theoretical benefits. That’s no longer sufficient. Consumers are demanding evidence that products work as intended and are safe at the doses being sold. Eighty percent of consumers will pay more for a premium product if they trust the brand.
I hope we will see well-designed human clinical trials, transparency around study limitations and alignment between clinical doses and what’s actually in the capsule. Ritual has set an ambitious goal to have highly credible best-in-class clinical trials on all of our products by 2030. We are well underway with four publicly available.
In beauty-from-within, especially, claims around skin, hair and aging will need to be supported by outcomes that are measurable. We have proven that clinical validation becomes a trust-building tool. Our skin health supplement HyaCera has a strong clinical study showing impressive results to reduce fine lines, wrinkles and crows feet within three months of taking the product.
Brands that invest early and share their results openly will earn long-term credibility, while those that rely on vague claims will struggle to keep up.
Q: The intersection of beauty and wellness continues to blur, with ingestibles and skin nutrition now part of the mainstream conversation. What signals are you seeing that point to where this “inside-out beauty” movement is heading next?
Kat Schneider: The biggest signal is that consumers are becoming far more educated about the connection between internal health and external appearance. Skin is no longer viewed as purely cosmetic, it’s understood as a reflection of hydration, inflammation, gut health and overall nutrient status.
Where inside-out beauty is heading next is toward specificity and substantiation. Consumers want to know why an ingredient works, how long it takes to see results, and what mechanism is being supported. We’re also seeing a shift away from short-term aesthetic promises toward long-term skin health, barrier function and resilience.
Q: Consumers are increasingly looking for products that deliver both efficacy and sustainability. How do you anticipate brands, and their suppliers, will balance scientific innovation with environmental and ethical accountability in 2026?
Kat Schneider: We have found that ingredient traceability allows us to solve for both the scientific rigor and sustainability concerns. The more you know your suppliers, the better confidence you can have in the clinical rigor that has gone into their products and where and how they are sourced.
A great example is our skin health supplement HyaCera—we use two clinically studied ingredients at the same dose that was used in the clinical study.
The traceability of the ingredients also helped us select more sustainable ingredients than many of the industry staples (collagen has well-documented environmental and human rights violations).
Q: Ritual is known for its leadership in traceable sourcing and responsible manufacturing. What does ethical innovation look like to you in 2026, and how can other brands and suppliers uphold those same standards while scaling responsibly?
Kat Schneider: Brands are welcome to follow Ritual’s playbook, it’s part of the reason I chose to openly share the supplier names and final place of manufacturing for all of our ingredients. When I launched Ritual, people thought it was wild that I wanted to share this with our competitors and consumers, but it drives trust.
Ethical innovation in 2026 means designing supplements with the highest standards for efficacy and safety; brands and CEOs need to be ok without taking shortcuts.
For brands, that means embedding high standards and your mission into product development from day one: For Ritual, that means choosing clinically studied ingredients, insisting on supplier transparency, aligning claims with evidence and designing for long-term trust rather than short-term hype. For suppliers, it means being willing partners in that transparency—sharing data, opening up sourcing practices and investing in quality systems that scale responsibly.
The brands that will lead the next era of wellness are the ones that treat trust as their most valuable asset. Ethical innovation isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s a competitive advantage in a market where consumers are paying closer attention than ever. Ritual’s success is proof of that.
