A Beauty Show Gets Its Groove Back

LAS VEGAS—After five years of fighting negativity, Cosmoprof North America organizers are finally getting an ovation.

Not only are the beauty industry show's numbers up across the board, but co-managers SoGeCos Americas and the Professional Beauty Assn. hit a home run in the form of a new section for high-end exhibitors.

Held July 14-17 (with show hours starting Sunday, July 15), Cosmoprof featured 699 exhibitors spanning 173,514 net square feet of Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino's convention center.

At No. 190 on the most recent Tradeshow Week 200, last year's show included 594 exhibitors filling 141,530 net sq. ft. It drew 20,111 professional attendees.

Although final attendance numbers were not available at press time, Show Director Eric Horn said registration was up 25 to 30 percent compared with last year.

Why?

“There's a lot going on in the beauty industry,” Horn said, “a lot of buyouts, a lot of majors buying other majors, instead of small guys. The whole industry kind of came together to see what's going on.”

Industry consolidation was all the buzz, with big publicly held companies like equipment and liquid product makers Helen of Troy, Jarden, L'Oreal and Proctor & Gamble all spread, in their various forms and subsidiaries, across the showfloor.

“Everybody came back,” Horn said.

He explained that the PBA, formerly the Beauty and Barber Supply Institute, had been doing things more or less the same way since it started its show in 1904. When PBA teamed up with SoGeCos, producers of the global Cosmoprof-branded events, things changed - dramatically.

“The old-timers weren't happy,” Horn said. “They said they wouldn't come back. They said we'd fail. After five years, we thought, 'Maybe they're right.' But we kept going, and this year they decided, 'You didn't fail. We're coming back.'”

Horn said walking this year's showfloor gave him the same sense of excitement he had when he began working in the beauty industry 12 years ago.

Exhibitors weren't quite that enthusiastic, but there was a general sense of optimism. Some complained about light traffic and a lack of coherent exhibit organization, but most said they were pleased with the meetings they had and the contacts they made.

“In all the incarnations (of this show), nothing has really changed except the location,” said Stacey Kilfoy, who was introducing a line of all-natural, hand-made cosmetics called Doll Face. “It's always been a great show.”

First-timers agreed. Duane Crenshaw, president of interchangeable hairbrush company Altimus, said he had gotten many valuable leads. Comparing it to other beauty-industry events, Crenshaw said, “This one's better for me, because it's more for distributors and importers than salon owners.”

Daniela Ciocan, U.S. marketing and sales director for SoGeCos Americas, attributed the show's strong performance to the organizers' new approach to sales and marketing.

SoGeCos is based in Italy and does nine beauty events around the world. Until this year, sales and marketing for the North American show had been handled through the Italy office.

Ciocan, a former cosmetics company executive, had been living and working in New York. By coincidence, she moved to Las Vegas around the time SoGeCos was hiring someone to oversee Cosmoprof North America's sales and marketing on the ground. (The PBA handles operations and domestic sales.)

One new initiative she led was Discover Beauty, a pavilion for first-time international exhibitors of high-end products. For a flat fee ($6,000, according to one exhibitor), companies were given everything they needed: booth, carpet, furniture, fixtures and all services. They simply had to show up with their products.

These were no cheap pop-up displays, either. The pavilion featured thick white carpet, suede sofas and laminated shelves for merchandise and other luxury decor.

“Look at this stuff,” said Bettina Garber, president of Just Good For You, a line of cosmetics made with pulverized pearls, rubies and other gems. “I would have paid thousands of dollars just for this couch at another show.”

Even more important, however, was the face time Discover Beauty exhibitors got with top executives from high-end retailers. As part of the package, Cosmoprof set up 15-minute meetings for the newbies with representatives from big-name companies like Bergdorf Goodman, Sephora and Nordstrom.

“I never could have gotten a meeting with them on my own,” Garber said. “One person actually said, 'Send me some samples on Wednesday.' That made it worth every dollar.”

Others in the pavilion echoed that assessment.

While recovering from breast cancer, Christine Gimmelsberger invented aloCell gel to alleviate skin irritations associated with radiation therapy. Despite the product's merits, she said, on her own she never could have gotten the attention of the buyers she met at the show.

“It was a very, very good response,” she said. “It was well organized, and the people were nice.”

Horn said the section would be larger next year, possibly encompassing as many as 24 companies, compared with this year's 12.

The organizers are toying with adding similar sections for other market segments.

The show is next scheduled July 13-15. It is booked at Mandalay Bay through 2009, and Horn said it would stay in Las Vegas “indefinitely.”