Category Archives: Retail

Cosmoprof Bologna 2023: [Show Report]

This year’s Cosmoprof Bologna took place from 16th to 20th March 2023 and it was a blast! The energy of this fair almost felt like the pre-pandemic Bologna shows and looking at the official trade show stats, Cosmoprof Bologna 2023 was indeed almost back to its 2019 strength [2019 was the last year that the fair took place before the pandemic; the first post-pandemic show happened in May 2022].

According to organisers BolognaFiere, a total of 2,964 exhibitors from 64 countries participated in the show while visitor numbers reached 250,000 attendees from 153 countries. This is still a bit less than the 2019 numbers (3,033 exhibitors, 265,000+ visitors) but it’s majorly impressive nonetheless, considering the current economic and geopolitical situation in Europe.

Halls (15)

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Retail notes from Singapore: [Show Report] Cosmoprof Asia 2022

Singapore! This is where Cosmoprof Asia 2022 took place this year. Hong Kong still has a lot of pandemic restrictions (presumably thanks to its mainland China overlords and that government‘s spectacularly restrictive and ineffectual zero covid policy) so the organisers decided to relocate Asia-Pacific’s most important trade show rather than cancel it outright. And I’m very happy they did. Relocate the fair, that is. This was first in-person Cosmoprof Asia since 2019 (and my first Asian trade show since Cosme Tokyo in January 2020) and it was marvellous to be finally back in Asia.

Halls (4)

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Vivaness 2022: [Show Report]

Organic trade show Vivaness usually takes place in February which means that I’ve only ever experienced Nuremberg in winter, at icy temperatures, in pouring rain and occasionally even in hail and snow.

This year, however, Vivaness and its partner show Biofach took place from 26th to 29th July – organisers Messe Nürnberg had postponed the trade fair duo for pandemic reasons. Nuremberg during a heatwave – also exhausting, but altogether so much more attractive than Nuremberg in late winter : )

2022 was my eight Vivaness visit altogether. If you’re interested check out my trade show reviews of Vivaness 2014, Vivaness 2015, Vivaness 2016, Vivaness 2017, Vivaness 2018, Vivaness 2019, Vivaness 2020 and Vivaness 2021 (which took place digitally).

Intro (1)

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Cosme Tokyo 2022: [Show Report]

The 10th edition of Japan’s largest beauty retail show Cosme Tokyo took place from 12th to 14th January 2022 at Tokyo’s Big Sight Expo Centre.

Unlike last year’s event, Cosme Tokyo 2022 was not a hybrid show; it was held completely offline but luckily organizers RX Japan (formerly Reed Exhibitions Japan) had provided a detailed exhibitor database and digital product showcase. There were even two live-stream segments from the show (which were so much fun to watch!) so I attended from a distance, as per usual these days.

If you’re interested in checking out my previous trade show coverage, here are the links: Cosme Tokyo 2021, Cosme Tokyo 2020, Cosme Tokyo 2019, Cosme Tokyo 2018 and Cosme Tokyo 2014.

Cosme Tokyo LEAD

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Vivaness 2021: [Show Report]

This year’s edition of Europe’s most important organic beauty trade show Vivaness was a fully digital event. The Biofach/Vivaness eSpecial – or rather, the live webinars and presentations – took place from 17th to 19th February 2021. The digital fair, however, was launched a few days before the official start of the show and the entire virtual structure is remaining accessible to all participants for the next six months.

Organisers Messe Nürnberg wanted to create a kind of online knowledge ressource which is a really cool idea. All webinars, presentations, panels and so on – 775 sessions (!) in total – are available to view as often as you like, as are the exhibitor profiles, file uploads, videos and images. The live messaging function was discontinued a few days after the show ended but all the rest of it is still up and running until August 2021.

Biofach is always the much bigger event of the two fairs and this year was no exception. There were 1,443 exhibitors in total: 102 companies exhibited at Vivaness, the rest were at Biofach. According to the post-show report of the organisers, over 13,800 visitors from 136 countries registered for the trade fair (I should mention that this virtual edition of Vivaness and Biofach was also open to non-trade visitors – usually it’s strictly trade only) and the digital figures were also pretty impressive: over 10,000 video meetings took place at the Biofach/Vivaness eSpecial and over 400,000 chat messages were dispatched.

This was my eighth Vivaness –  my goodness! My first visit to the show was in 2014; in 2015 I published my first trade show report on this blog and here are the links to the subsequent articles if you want to check them out: Vivaness 2016, Vivaness 2017, Vivaness 2018, Vivaness 2019 and Vivaness 2020.

cover shot

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Cosme Tokyo 2021: [Show Report]

The 2021 edition of Japan’s largest cosmetics trade fair Cosme Tokyo took place as a hybrid event, with the offline show held in Tokyo’s Big Sight exhibition centre from 13th to 15th January.

The online version of Cosme Week Tokyo 2021 (which comprises Cosme Tokyo, Cosme Tech, Inner Beauty and Esthec Japan) opened a few days earlier and the digital exhibition booths stayed up for another week or so after the offline fair had closed. Since the pandemic is still raging over here in Europe I visited the digital edition of Cosme Tokyo 2021.

There were some 200-odd companies at Cosme Tokyo, Inner Beauty and Esthec Japan and around 150+ exhibitors at Cosme Tech. Smaller than the usual Cosme Week Tokyo shows but still impressive. According to organisers Reed Business Japan, 10,468 visitors attended the offline edition of the fair.

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Vivaness 2020: [Show Report]

I began writing this trade show review just after Vivaness 2020, the world’s biggest organic beauty trade show, had ended. That was in late February and just a few weeks before Corona arrived in Europe.

Then came the lockdown and cancelled travel plans and all the rest of it, and other things in my life took priority – like tidying up my collection of cooking spices, cleaning out various cupboards and watching a lot of 1980s and 1990s TV series on DVD.

However, now that things in Germany have started to inch towards a precarious kind of (new) normality I decided that it was high time to finish this article. Which I did. Yay me. So if you detect a certain patchiness to this text that’s why: parts of it were written pre-Corona, the rest post-Corona. Or PreC and PostC. February and Vivaness seem like a very long time ago. Anyway.

This year’s Vivaness took place from 12th to 15th February in Nuremberg, a pretty medium-sized historic city in the Frankonia region of Germany. Vivaness and its sister trade fair Biofach (the biggest organic food products expo in the world) are an annual fixture on the European organic industry trade fair circuit.

The first Biofach show took place back in 1990 so this expo’s been around for 30 years. In 1999 the trade fair moved to Nuremberg and in 2007 Biofach’s organic beauty section was spun off into a separate trade show, Vivaness. The two trade fairs always take place in February and, incidentally, pretty much always in rain and snow. February in Nuremberg can be cold!

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Retail notes from Tokyo: [Show Report] Cosme Tokyo 2020

I was in Tokyo recently for the 8th edition of Japan’s largest retail cosmetics trade show: Cosme Tokyo 2020 took place from 20th-22nd January at Makuhari Messe. The trade fair had relocated from Tokyo Big Sight exhibition centre to Makuhari in Chiba prefectures a few years ago – in 2021, however, Cosme Tokyo will return to Tokyo Big Sight.

Anyway, Makuhari Messe is around 40 minutes by local train from Tokyo Station – i.e. good transport connections if you’re staying in the Chiyoda area. I had booked my hotel in Kanda (one stop away from Tokyo Station) so my daily commute to the trade show was very manageable.

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Retail notes from Hong Kong: [Show Report] Cosmoprof Asia 2019

As you can imagine, this year’s Cosmoprof Asia was massively overshadowed by the political situation in Hong Kong (#StandWithHongKong).

Many international exhibitors had cancelled their appearance at short notice, the majority of attendees from mainland China (one of the biggest visitor demographics for Cosmoprof Asia) also decided to skip the show this year; and so did quite a few international visitors.

I had booked my usual Wan Chai hotel in walking distance of HKCEC and my part of the neighbourhood remained fairly quiet this week so I felt pretty safe throughout my entire stay in Hong Kong. And I did enjoy Cosmoprof Asia 2019 despite everything!

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Retail notes from Bangkok: [Show Report] Beyond Beauty ASEAN 2019

It was my first visit to Beyond Beauty ASEAN Bangkok (or BBAB for short) and – spoiler alert – it’ll also be my last BBAB. The reason: from 2020 onwards Beyond Beauty ASEAN will be combined with another key Thai beauty show (ASEAN Beauty) to form the latest addition to the Cosmoprof world of cosmetics trade fairs: Cosmoprof CBE ASEAN Bangkok (organised by BolognaFiere, Informa Markets and China Beauty Expo). These are the three of the biggest cosmetics trade show organisers in the world (and definitely the leaders in the Asian markets) so the new show is bound to be interesting, to say the least!

The reason why Cosmoprof CBE will continue to take place in Bangkok is simple: Thailand is the biggest beauty retail market in the ASEAN region and (excepting Singapore) it’s also the most highly developed ASEAN country. In fact, according to official figures by the Federation of Thai Industries, the Thai beauty and personal care market is growing strongly. In 2018, the market reached a total value of 6.2 billion USD, says Federation chairman Suphan Mongkolsuthree. And the industry grew 7% annually over the past six years making it the #1 export country amongst the largest export income earners in the ASEAN region.

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