Cosme Tokyo 2024: [Show Report]

The 12th edition of Cosme Tokyo, Japan’s largest retail beauty trade fair, took place from 17th to 19th January 2024 at Tokyo Big Sight expo centre. As usual, the show was held as part of Cosme Week Tokyo which also includes Cosme Tech (OEM/ODM, ingredients, supply chain), Inner Beauty (functional foods/beverages, nutritional supplements), Hair Expo (salon hair care), Esthec Japan (salon face/body care) and Beauty Marketing Expo (services for the Japanese cosmetics industry). Cosme Tech, incidentally, was the first beauty trade show in this format, Cosme Tokyo only followed seven years later.

I remember visiting the 2014 version (back then it took place in October) and the show was so tiny! My next Cosme Tokyo was the 2018 edition, followed by Cosme Tokyo 2019 and Cosme Tokyo 2020. Cosme Tokyo 2021 and Cosme Tokyo 2022 were digital events for me, with Cosme Tokyo 2023 finally (!) an in-person trade fair again.

Cosme Tokyo 2024 was very busy throughout the three days of the fair – a total of almost 34,000 visitors was registered across all Cosme Week shows – and I enjoyed it tremendously.

This year’s show felt like an entirely different trade fair to Cosme Tokyo 2023: Barely any CBD (which was a BIG trend last year. This time I saw a couple of CBD brands and that was it) – instead the major ingredient this year was exosomes! So many exosome launches.

Another change: The dominance of Korean beauty brands at the expo. That’s something I immediately noticed last January during my first trip to Tokyo since the pandemic: The Japanese drugstores and variety stores are now practically wall-to-wall K-beauty. We’re not talking about a trend corner with half a dozen brands or so – no, visit any Matsukiyo, Loft or Plaza store: At least a third of the available shelf space is dedicated to Korean beauty brands, primarily makeup but also skin care.

In fact, in 2022 the import volume of Korean beauty in Japan overtook France for the first time in almost 30 years. The fun, innovative and – most importantly, affordable – Korean beauty brands especially resonate with younger consumers, GenZ and so forth, a development further driven by the on-going popularity of K-pop and K-drama in Japan.

And at Cosme Tokyo 2024, the KOTRA and IBITA sponsored Korean exhibitor presence – mostly communal distributor booths featuring a dozen K-brands at a time – completely dominated the Cosme Tokyo halls. And they were mostly brands that are not yet available in Japan, at least not in offline retail so there might be another influx of Korean beauty brands into the Japanese personal care retail market soon.

COSME TOKYO 2024: MAJOR TRENDS

This show was all about ingredients, especially exosomes! Dozens of new product launches and reformulations, all with exosomes based on various ingredients (I came across exosomes manufactured from, amongst other, umbilical cord blood/human stem cells, fish collagen, cica (centella Asiatica), and human adipose fatty tissue).

Almost always, the exosomes were combined with other actives and they appeared in all sorts of products – makeup, sun care, facial skin care, body care. Other prominent ingredients were PDRN and NMN – neither of these are new in the Japanese beauty care sector but it felt like they were more present this year than at previous Cosme Tokyos.

Another major trend: Skinification (the presence of classic facial skin care ingredients in other product categories such as body care, hair care or colour cosmetics), especially in the makeup category.

Functional beauty: Also huge, primarily because of the strong presence of Korean beauty brands which, after all, excel at this kind of product – essences, serums, ampoules, lotions formulated with highly concentrated active ingredients were everywhere at Cosme Tokyo 2024. I also noticed quite a few GenZ-focused gender-free/clean beauty brands at the show.

And now let’s jump right into some of the most interesting brand launches I came across at Cosme Tokyo 2024 – as always, brands appear in no particular order.

ALEN INTERNATIONAL (Japan)

There were several new launches from Japanese beauty manufacturer Alen International and all of these products were reflecting current trends in the Japanese beauty sector – I love it when I see several trends at one expo booth! The Merique brand, for example, was extended with undereye sheet masks (I saw this type of product at several Japanese exhibitor booths – the K-beauty influence at work again).

Alen also introduced a new lip and eye makeup range: Ra Makeup offers a lip serum, eyelash serum and eyeliner – all products are packed with skin care ingredients; and a new multi-purpose face, body and hair oil which I really liked: Purel Essence is based on various plant oils and essential oils.

WAVE CORPORATION (Japan)

Wave Corporation is one of the biggest Japanese salon beauty manufacturers. I see them at Cosme Tokyo every year and at Beautyworld Japan as well. Always a ton of new launches to look at. This year, of course, many of the new products featured exosomes – in fact, the company reformulated one of its best-selling undereye sheet masks in the Spa Treatment HAS range with exosomes, launched a matching face sheet mask and a highly concentrated facial serum and renamed the entire range Exosome.

There is also a new Real C Essence Lotion, a liquid essence/serum formulated with several retinol derivatives that are stabilised with a careful blend of other anti-ageing ingredients, including hyaluronic acid, panthenol and niacinamide. Great texture.

Also new is the Glow Cushion Foundation which is another example of skinified (is that a legit word?!) makeup. The product formula is absolutely packed with classic skin care ingredients inclzding lactic acid bacteria, saccharomyces ferment, hydrolysed yeast extract and various plants such as loquat leaf extract and saxifrage plant extract.

LADY BIO (Japan)

Lady Bio is a – well, they are positioned as a femcare/femtech brand but I’m not really seeing it. They manufacture beauty products for women, sure, but it’s mostly face care, makeup, the usual stuff. I wrote about their AI Mist launch at last year’s Cosme Tokyo. This year, Lady Bio had a ton of new launches, all with exosomes and human stem cells based on umbilical cord blood.

Maybe as a quick background info: Human stem cells (based on human blood) has been very popular anti-ageing ingredient in Japan for years, if not decades. And stem cell cultures that use umbilical cord blood are considered to be of especially high quality, as this blood is especially pure.

Amongst the new product launches of Lady Bio were two products in the Femtech Eucera brand which is sold primarily via teleshopping: A cushion foundation and a skin care spray. The foundation has been selling very well since it was launched last autumn, I was told, and the texture is certainly lovely. The foundation launch is also a good example of the skinification trend at Cosme Tokyo 2024.

Lady Bio also owns the Dualvie brand (see pic above) which was extended with the Clocell Therapy Cream (featuring bakuchiol and exosomes), the Cell Vital Serum and Dualvie Cell Vital Ampoule (both with umbilical cord blood stem cell-based exosomes). There is also a new Double Repair Cream (cica and exosomes) in the Femlancte brand.

NINE TAILS (Korea)

Nine Tails is a salon beauty brand from Korea that I’ve seen at various trade shows in the past and their new products are always interesting. At this year’s Cosme Tokyo, the brand presented three new face care products – exosome-based, of course – the Exo Collagen Serum (which I bought because the formulation looked so good), the dual-phase Double Drop Ampoule with tamanu oil and Rebalancing Booster which is a kind of first essence.

In its home market, Nine Tails (launched in 2016) primarily sells through teleshopping (a massive retail channel in Korea) as well as in some duty free malls.

GLOW (Korea)

This indie brand was at one of the communal expo booths – I think it was their Japanese distributor perhaps? Although several of the Korean brands at this expo stand were not yet sold in Japan. Anyway, this particular booth presented around a dozen K-beauty brands, face care and makeup. I really liked the look of Glow which is very much the stylish GenZ makeup brand (I think there was a tie-in to a Korean celeb or something but the language barrier kind of intervened so I’m not certain. Maybe a celebrity/influencer brand?)

Anyway, Glow caught my eye primarily because of their new BB Foundation cream. Unlike most Korean foundation ranges which offer anything up to a dozen shades in a very narrow colour spectrum (very light/porcelain, nude, peach, beige), the Glow BB Cream only comes in three shades – white, beige and dark brown.

You can blend all three shades together for a truly customised foundation (the brand also sells little acrylic dishes to make the blending process easier) or use the colours to tweak existing foundation products. Or to add a hint of colour to a regular day cream. I think this concept is brilliant – I’m a huge fan of these kind of glow drop products; I like anything that let’s you add colour or shimmer to other face care products – and this particular launch really stood out amongst the usual Korean foundation ranges. Stylish packaging, too.

SOMSAJANG (Korea)

Somsajang was originally a cotton product manufacturer – cottons pads and so on – and a couple of years ago, the company branched out into cleansing wipes. The wipes are individually sealed and available in two variants (oily skin and dry/sensitive skin). I was given several wipes as product samples and tested one of them on the evening of my flight back to Berlin.

And what can I say – it totally does what it says on the pack. Removed my makeup (admittedly I only tinted mineral powder but still) and cleansed my skin so it really felt (and looked) clean without leaving it tight – which is the main reason why I rarely use cleansing wipes, even the most sensitive versions always leave my skin unhappy and blotchy. Or if they are „moisturising“ my skin feels sticky afterwards. The Somsajang wipes did neither – my skin felt very comfortable, clean but not dried out. And not tacky either. The wipe is completely fragrance-free (no scent of alcohol either) which I loved.

I also like that the wipes are individually wrapped, that way you can just slip a couple of them into your hand luggage rather than having to lug around a big packet. I still have a few wipes left and will keep those for my next long-haul flights.

RUPIKA (Japan)

Japanese oral care beauty brand Rupika gets my personal award for most innovative product because believe me, their Beauty Tooth Gel is truly unusual. It’s a beauty dental essence which utilises the absorption powers of mucosal membranes – active ingredients are absorbed much more quickly into the body when applied on tongue, gums or inner cheek tissue rather than taken orally as a tablet or capsule. Which is why ODFs (oral dissolving films) are such an effective carrier vehicle for medications, supplements and so on.

Anyway, the dental essence is a clear mint-flavoured gel formulated with glutathione, colloidal gold, centella/tiger grass extract as well as various anti-bacterial actives. You put it on the tip of your finger and massage the gel into the gums and on the teeth.

I really like the holistic approach of this product: Not only will the gum massage relieve tension in the mouth, neck and jaw area – which is why buccal massage/acupressure can be very effective in relieving chronic neck/shoulder problems – but the anti-bacterial ingredients help keep the mouth flora and the gums healthy which in turn improves the body’s overall health. Plus, the active ingredients enter the body much quicker than, say, a capsule that is ingested or via topical application.

EMAKED (Japan)

The Emaked expo booth at the trade show was really eyecatching – fluorescent pink and green to match the outer packaging of this new mascara. Manufacturer Mizuhashi Hojudo‘s Emaked eyelash serum has been a best-seller in Japan for a while and the company is now extending the Emaked range with a lash mascara.

The new launch is a prime example of the skinification mega trend in the colour cosmetics category: The mascara is packed with lash-conditioning and repairing ingredients such as peptides, red clover extract, meadowfoam seed oil and two hair growth-boosting complexes, pidioxidil and capyxil.

Emaked is availably in one shade only, black, and although the primary packaging is surprisingly unspectactular – a silver-coloured tube – the product is selling very well in Japan. During my remaining time in Tokyo I saw the Emaked mascara in many drugstores, pharmacies and variety stores – the price is a fairly mass market-compatible 3,000 JPY.

PRETTI5 (Hong Kong)

Hong Kong-based clean beauty brand Pretti5 appealed to me on so many levels – female founder, products manufactured in Japan, formulas based on classic TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) ingredients (with liquorice root and snow fungus are amongst the lead ingredients), fantastic textures.

The line-up comprises 15 products (14 face care products plus a body cream which is the latest launch) with a price tag equivalent to most Japanese anti-ageing brands. Pretti5 was launched in 2020, made it into Hong Kong’s Sephora chain in 2021 and the indie brand’s products are now also sold in-flight on Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong’s national air carrier), in Takashimaya and Isetan department stores in Singapore and soon, in Japan (Matsuya Ginza department store) and the US. Very impressive.

GEEKKO (Korea)

What I particularly liked about this brand is the packaging which is very unlike what recently launched GenZ functional k-beauty looks like – believe me, new actives-led Korean beauty brands, especially those aimed at a GenZ/MZ audience (and especially if they have a vegan/plant-based angle) tend to look similar in terms of packaging. If you attend as many trade shows as I do, they are really easy to spot!

Geekko (Instagram: @geekko.official), on the other hand, looks pretty unusual: Packaged in heavy glass bottles with fabric labels; the secondary (outer) packaging concrete-coloured cardboard boxes – gives the entire brand an industrial and very urban glass-and-concrete vibe.

The products are as you’d expect, highly functional face care (toner, cream and four serums) with a strong barrier/microbiome angle (ceramides, panthenol) – I tried a couple of serums and the toner on my hand, great textures as you’d expect from a K-beauty brand. The fabric labels feature symbols rather actual descriptive copy – a clothes iron symbol stands for anti-wrinkle, the sun symbol as an indication for day-time use – which is kind of fun.

Geekko was launched in late 2023 and is sold primarily online at the moment ,like almost all new indie brands in Korea. Oh yeah, and if you were wondering about the brand name – Geekko (geeky, i.e. nerdy) is a kind of play on words which is supposed to underscore the brand’s scientific credentials. Well, Geekko’s sister brand is Fourskin (of the Monsieur Le Fourskin men’s products – which is still making me laugh even now!) so I guess that makes sense.

JOOCYEE/JUDYDOLL (China)

I rarely see Chinese retail beauty brands at the trade shows that I visit (Chinese exhibitors are almost always from the OEM/ODM or packaging/manufacturing sectors) so it was really interesting chatting to the Japanese distributor of Chinese GenZ makeup brands Joocyee (pronounced “juicy”) and Judydoll.

These two brands are primarily sold in the Loft and Plaza retail chains – Loft was the first Japanese trend retailer to pick up K-beauty on a larger scale and the company was also the first large Japanese retail chain to add C-beauty to the line-up – and indeed, after Cosme Tokyo 2024 finished I noticed Judydoll and Joocyee everywhere I went.

Joocyee (Instagram: @joocyee_official)  was launched in 2020 in China and made the jump into the Japanese market in 2021. I’ve been following Judydoll on Instagram for a while now; I think the brand was launched in 2018? Or 2017 even?

In any case, Judydoll is a great example of the many new Chinese beauty brands that appeared on the Chinese market in the years just prior to the pandemic – proudly made-in-China brands for domestic GenZ consumers embracing a new patriotic/nationalistic fervour about their country and culture (google “guochao” for more info).

So, Judydoll was one of these brands and it has achieved a significant distribution outside of China since then. And is selling particularly well in Japan. The  brand’s newest launch in Japan is the 2-in-1 mascara, a dual-ended tube with three (!) different brush applicators so consumers can achieve the wide-eyed makeup look of the Judydoll model you can see on the poster in the background.

And amongst Joocyee’s new launches are two lip makeup ranges (I really like the packaging of these lipsticks). I was told that apparently the buyers of Loft and Plaza becoming more interested in Chinese beauty brands – Korean cosmetics are now so mainstream in the Japanese market and I guess, C-beauty might be the next big thing? I certainly hope so since I’d love to see more Chinese beauty brands IRL (and I don’t think I’ll be visiting mainland China anytime soon).

VEGETOLOGY (Korea)

At first I thought Vegetology was yet another new plant-based vegan K-beauty brand but no, this Korean indie brand is different. Yes, it’s a newcomer brand (launched in 2022) and yes,  the products are vegan but the really interesting thing about Vegetology: The key plant active – grape flower cell extract, viniferine – is cultivated in a bio reactor. Lab-grown naturals is a massive ingredient trend and rightly so: Lab-harvested plant actives have a much smaller CO2 footprint than wild-harvested extracts. Vegetology’s founder is from the academic/biotech research sector and opened his own production facility. 

Vegetology’s line-up includes six face care products (cleanser, lotion, serum, cream, sun cream and sheet mask), formulations are impressively clean and almost organic, textures are great, packaging is stylish and simple. The price range varies from 25-40 USD and in Korea, the brand is primarily sold online although there are a few offline POS in Seoul as well. Internationally, Vegetology is distributed in 10 countries especiually in South East Asia and Eastern Europe. Soon, the products will also be available in Germany, most likely online. I look forward to seeing them; I really liked this brand.

BORDERFREE (Japan)

Gender-free beauty brand Borderfree was launched in 2021 and it’s much like you’d imagine such a brand: Compact product portfolio (three face care products – cleansing foam, facial lotion (essence) and a multi-purpose cream for face and body), minimalist packaging (love the square bottle design of the lotion!), great textures. Products are almost exclusively sold online although there are a few offline POS (mostly in Tokyo).

I was a bit surprised not to see more gender-free beauty at the fair – I feel like at previous Cosme Tokyos there were more domestic GenZ brand exhibitors at the show but maybe this year, the many Korean exhibitors kind of distorted that impression? I don’t know. But I liked the Borderfree brand vibe.

CAMYU (Japan)

And Cosme Tokyo 2024 was very different from its previous editions in another aspect as well: There was a distinct lack of CBD (cannabidiol) beauty this year – very unlike the 2023 edition of the fair which featured at least a dozen domestic CBD exhibitors. Starting with the 2020 show, CBD has been a constantly growing feature at Cosme Tokyo and to be honest, I expected this trend to continue at this year’s show but no: I only saw two dedicated CBD brands at Cosme Tokyo 2024. Yes, CBD beauty’s been on the decline in the US and internationally but I think in the case of Japan (an Asian country), the example of Thailand has probably also had a deterrent effect.

In summer 2022, the Thai government suddenly and completely relaxed the country’s hitherto REALLY severe restrictions on hemp/CBD and started to push the domestic hemp industry. Which kind of resulted in a free-for-all and when I visited Bangkok in September 2023, I was a bit shocked by how ubiquituous marihuana was – the streets in the more touristy areas of the city practically reeked of weed, with smoke cafés and shops everywhere. In late 2023, the Thai government belatedly tried to regulate the market but without much success. I think quite a few Asian countries took note of how the situation in Thailand played out.

Anyway, Camyu was one of the very few Japanese CBD exhibitors. What I liked about the brand is that the active ingredient in the products is not just CBD – nope, the founder combines CBD with essential oils and medicinal mushrooms! Three of them, to be precise: Reishi, chaga and cordyceps.

Camyu was launched in late 2018 and the brand’s line-up offers two nutritional supplements and 13 face and body care products – multibalm sticks, creams, scented rollers, bath additives and as the latest product: a beautifully packaged serum which will launch this March.

NUMBER003 (Japan)

This exhibitor was in the Hair Expo section of Cosme Week Tokyo and I’m really glad I took the time to do a quick sweep of that hall. Number003 is a Japanese salon hair care brand which was launched in 2019.

The line-up is divided into Hue Care and Hue Colors – Hue Care offers 4 sku right now (shampoo, conditioner, scalp treatment and hair oil, plus a new shampoo and conditioner duo which will launch soon) while Hue Colors is a salon-specific range of permanent and semi-permanent colourants.

I really liked the vibe of the brand but what really caught my eye and made me stop at this expo booth was what looked like a refilling machine. And it was – or a prototype, at least, offering refills of liquid hair care products to salon professionals. The machine is not yet in salons because there are still some hygiene/contamination issues to sort out – and this is indeed one of the biggest potential problems for any personal care refill concept that leaves the refilling to consumers rather than having trained staff do so.

Beauty refill machines always sound so simple (just turn up with an empty container, put it under the spout and press a lever, right?) but they aren’t. They might work for comparatively stable liquid products, like body washes or household cleansers (I saw a body wash/shampoo refill machine in a Hong Kong shopping center last November) but with any product formula that’s more complex, bacterial contamination by consumers using non-sterilised refill containers is a serious problem. As is contamination by exposure to sun/light, heat or cold. Amongst other aspects.

Parent company Orilabo hasn’t figured out their refill machine concept just yet but I bet they will at some point and I’ll be interested to see how they solve the contamination issue. Beauty refill concepts are a fascinating topic. Orilabo has its own production facility near Kobe and their factory is not just vegan certified but also Cosmos Organic/Natural (via BDIH) and halal (Nippon Halal Association).

At the moment, Number003 sells its salon hair care products primarily in Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong) as well as Canada and Australia – and they are looking to expand into Continental Europe as well. A very interesting brand.

SHUPONG (Korea)

This is such a fun GenZ beauty brand! Shupong was launched last year (I think) – it’s definitely a newcomer brand – and offers some really cool products, including the awesome pimple patch dispenser!

I also liked some of the other Shupong products, like the No-Sebum Powder Stick – a great hybrid beauty product which can be used to blot shine from the face but also as a quick fix for a greasy hair line. The line-up also includes a hair cushion compact (a creamy powder formula to cover grey/white roots), a hair spray specifically to fix bangs and fringe, an SPF cream and a hair wax in stick form.

Fun, innovative products, no-frills packaging and a medium/mass market price point – can’t get more MZ (Millennials/GenZ) than that!

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And this was Cosme Tokyo 2024! Thanks for reading. The 2025 edition will take place from 15th to 17th January 2025.