The HBA Global Expo took place this week in New York City, and was co-located with the Spa & Resort Medical Aesthetics Expo.  HBA Global Expo features 600 exhibitors and is shopped by 16,000 product developers from the cosmetics, fragrance, makeup and personal care markets.  This is the show to visit if you need to source containers, lids, labeling options, applicators, spray components or machinery used in the process of manufacturing skincare and cosmetics, and thus most of the buyers are from large companies.  The Spa & Resort Expo took up only 3 aisles of the show, but they were the busiest 3 aisles, with plenty of familiar faces.

The most excellent component of the HBA Expo is the education, especially from the marketers perspective.  There are a number of technical presentations from scientists on product developments and innovation, and from marketing and branding gurus.  Some topics included Maximizing the Spa-Retail Connection, Novel Ingredients for Skin, Launching an Indie Brand, and Creating a Successful Beauty Brand. I attended a session on new trends in color cosmetics, and another on new digital methods to connect with consumers such as message boards and mobile applications.  Ada Polla, CEO of Swiss skincare company Alchimie Forever, moderated an excellent session, The Changing Face of Beauty Distribution, which featured panelists from QVC representing infomercials, Haute Look representing flash sales, and DermStore for an internet retailing perspective.  In examining the impact of these new retailing streams on brick & mortar stores, it was generally felt by the panelists that each silo helps to grow and support the others; brand-operated websites report big traffic spikes when the brand is featured on an infomercial or in a flash sale.  All of the participants agreed that they would continue to explore synergies between the virtual and physical sales outlets, and they also concurred with Kline & Co. analyst Karen Doskow’s prediction that e-commerce and mobile sales would continue to be the fastest growing segments of beauty retailing.

Lots more photos are available on our Facebook page.