More than 900 companies (approximately 100 packaging exhibitors) participated in the 12th edition of Cosmoprof North America (CPNA), held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, from July 13–15. The event covers all sectors of the beauty industry, including nail, beauty, skincare, hair, spa and packaging, with a wide array of importers, distributors, manufacturers and global beauty leaders all under one roof. A strong, filled-to-capacity conference program and a headliner keynote address by entrepreneur, “Shark Tank” star and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban served as valuable extensions to the energized exhibition area.
 

A sold-out show floor (221,532 sq ft) with 992 exhibiting companies and nearly 27,000 attendees represented a 4% increase over last year, according to the organizers.  There was also a strong international presence, with exhibitors from 40 countries, 10 Country Pavilions and a contingency of foreign buyers from 25 various countries.

At the close of the event, Duccio Campagnoli, president of BolognaFiere Group and SoGeCos, the event organizers, said: “Cosmoprof North America marks a new success and shows another encouraging sign of the growth of the U.S. market.  CPNA asserts itself as the leading beauty event in the North American market thanks to the effective partnership that we have cultivated with the Professional Beauty Association, the authority for the professional beauty world in the U.S.”

Known for being an especially vital venue for West Coast buyers, the appeal has spread across the country and the show has also become an important destination for East Coast beauty industry professionals.

Daniela Ciocan, director of marketing for Sogecos Americas, told Beauty Packaging: “The event is evolving and attracting so many buyers. It’s nice to see that it’s so well received. There’s more recognition by East Coast buyers that it’s necessary to come here.”

Special Features

Ciocan said part of the show’s draw is its educational sessions and special features. “The conferences are all sold out,” she said. “No one else is doing an interactive area like we are doing with Glossybox, with direct to consumer activities.” (For the second consecutive year, Cosmoprof created a “sampling wall,” called Boutique, where attendees could choose a number of deluxe size sample products, with small charitable donations benefiting the City of Hope; this year, CPNA’s partner on this initiative was Glossybox USA.) Brands included Be a Bombshell, Color Club Nail Polish, Dr. Lili Fan Probiotics, J’Andre Sponges, Johnny B. Hair Care, Karora Cosmetics, Kocostar, Mastey, Mizon, Neuma, Obliphica Hair Care, OPI Products, Royal Apothic, Rozge, Skin Nutrition, Skin&Co Roma, Tangle Angel, Teadora and Sexy Hair.  

Once again, CPNA also hosted its popular live TV shopping audition. Key merchants from QVC, HSN and Shop HQ along with their teams, hosted a live Open-See to meet with exhibiting companies. The live presentations were open to all pre-registered CPNA exhibitors. Beauty executives from these shopping networks looked for innovative and authentic products that would connect with their millions of viewers.

The International Buyer Program linked international buyers and exhibiting companies. Buyers from countries including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico and Panama got to meet one-on-one with exhibitors whose products they were interested in introducing into their respective markets. Almost 300 meetings were booked with 165 exhibiting companies during the three-day event.

Discover Beauty, another exclusive initiative of CPNA, assists emerging brands in finding the appropriate retail market, while highlighting new trends. Brands in this curated section met one on one with prominent retailers such as Amazon, Beauty Bar, Beauty Habit, C.O. Bigelow, Dermstore, Hautelook, HSN, Nordstrom Rack, The Beauty Box, Urban Outfitters and Walgreens/Look Boutique, and others. All 20 brands enrolled in this program were competing for the prestigious Discover Beauty Award, which went to Karora Cosmetics from Ireland, for its innovative range of customized self-tanning products.

On Trend Beauty at CPNA

Cosmoprof NA, like its sister in Bologna, always presents a fascinating and exciting overview of the latest trends in the industry in four main pavilions: Cosmetics & Personal Care; Packaging, Contract Manufacturing, & Private Label; Wellness & Spa; and Professional Hair, Nails & Tools.

Wandering through the Hair, Nails & Tools area left no doubt that hair extensions are a huge craze, with natural and synthetic tresses covering every shade and style imaginable. Marc Cuban’s Hot Tot Hair Care line is an investment he made on Season 4’s “Shark Tank.” With a scent inspired by Cabbage Patch Kids, the products are geared to boys and girls to 10 years old.

Sophisticated styling tools, in sleek attractive finishes and cases, convey a sense of artistry to both salon professionals and DIYers. Even hairbrushes, such as those from Tangle Angel, turn a simple gesture into a multitasking event. Nails are still undeniably hot with not only new colors and finishes and wipe-off gels, but an ever-evolving array of graphic designs to spark consumers’ interest and creativity.

With consumers’ growing concern as to what products they put on their skin as well as what food they put inside their bodies, visitors couldn’t help but notice the breadth of ‘natural’ and organic products on the show floor. Consumers want organics, they want prestige and they want them to be effective. Oils for the skin, face and hair remained hugely popular as well. Matte lipsticks stood out in abundance, as did multi-tasking mascaras, such as Dr. Lili Fan Probiotics Mascara, which promotes lash growth.

Discover Beauty

Discover Beauty featured a number of eye-catching brands.

In the promising men’s category, there was a noticeable uptick in participating brands, with standouts including men’s hair care brands El Patron and Ace Hair Care, which comes packaged in glossy cartons that look like decks of cards, flaunting the four suits—perfect for Vegas.

Swiss made products from a French company defined Qiriness, which specializes in spa care at home, especially for the face. Enjoying a facial spa treatment in the privacy of your own home can be as easy as 1-2-3 with a buffing mask, steamer tablet, and a massage to detoxify. The cocktail ingredients of natural plants and algae are available in six different masks and also in body products.

Ayres danced into the beauty world with a Latin touch—an aromatherapy body care line all made in the USA but inspired by tango bars in Argentina. There are three color-coded collections, with five products each. Two candles are also available. Bottles are UV protected. The pattern on the bar soap packages was inspired by fishnet stockings worn by tango dancers. The name Ayres is a play on spelling derived from the Buenos Aires capital of Argentina.

In the Emerging Beauty section, which housed brands never before seen at Cosmoprof NA, Terranova’s packaging and formulations proved popular. The Rain fragrance, with green clover, spring lilies and sheer musk was refreshingly light, and available in perfume, cologne, lotion, body butters and oils. Packaging is recyclable.

Cartons for one of the brand’s new fragrances, Aire, were embellished with an airy flower motif created by a Swedish designer.

Trends in Packaging

In the packaging area, visitors were able to visit a wide variety of suppliers whose specialties ran the gamut from bottles to tubes, glass to plastic, formulations for full-service projects, airless, sample sizes and more.

With seeing a multitude of startup and mid-size brands at Cosmoprof, it wasn’t too surprising to learn that a number of packaging companies offered lower quantities, which might not have been available in the past. It’s all about accommodating the customers—from large to small.

Start Small, Think Big was the motto at Instyle Distributors, a division of New High Glass that specializes in small quantities, offering decorative services on fragrance bottles, such as digital printing and hot stamping on glass with decorative foil. Alonso Herrera, president, told Beauty Packaging they’re trying to reach small customers in the U.S., with a 5,000 piece maximum. He said they decorate even small quantities of components including bottles, pumps, caps, brushes, droppers and pharma bottles. Currently, Instyle offers digital printing on bottles’ flat sides; rounds will be next. Herrera said they can also print on indents and even on “weird” shapes.

McKernan Packaging Clearing House, Advantage Line Global and Clearbags also touted a small quantity available option.

In addition to its large inventory of ready-to-ship surplus items, McKernan also offers a wide range of wholesale items to accommodate customer requests.

Advantage Line Global, specialists in sampling solutions, offered a packet that can be snapped in half and squeezed to release product with one hand. Bend-snap-squeeze is the key to these Made in USA sachets, which eliminate the tear away on small sampling packages.

Clearbags is a 22-year-old company, specializing in a wide variety of bags and boxes, including beautiful custom bags and printing for beauty items. With offices on the East and West Coasts, the company touts low minimums. From an environmentally responsible point of view, many packages ship and store flat.

3D Effects

With stiff competition for sales and brands’ desire to make consumers connect by reaching out and touching products, multidimensional techniques continue to captivate in both packaging and formulations.

HCP entered a new beauty dimension working with the Canadian based group, Think 4D, to create mockups of compact covers with a unique and heavily embossed effect. The inserts are offset printed then thermoformed, and won’t crush. Customers can choose any artwork, any colors, any size. HCP can emboss to 1-5/8 inches, so the deco can be very deep—and very dramatic.

At HCT Group, Erma Estrella, product development coordinator, demonstrated a whole collection of new innovative products and formulations aimed at full service manufacturing, including 3D pressing technology that prevents fallout of powder. HCT Group can even press several different formulations together—such as bronzer, highlighter, blush—and all can be used wet or dry for different effects. In addition, Estrella said, “Women want light weight,” so not only do the formulations fit this criteria, they’re also long wearing and have unique textures.

In fact, Estrella predicted: “The next big thing in eye shadow will be innovative textures.” Take HCT’s stretch metal eye finish, for instance. The shadow had a bouncy feel, and can be used alone or layered. A liquid eyeshadow left a shiny, varnished look.

When it came to lips, a lipstick/balm/stain/gloss all-in-one formula was also lightweight and  super long lasting. Estrella was wearing a matte lipstick that doesn’t dry out and, in fact, moisturizes.

Nice Packaging offers a variety of services including in-house design, mold creation and 2D and 3D dimensional design drawings. New at Cosmoprof NA was a new plastic blow-molded spray bottle that had just been added to their line. Nice owns lots of molds so products are ready for production at any time. Activity at Nice’s booth was also focused on customers looking for sample sizes, such as for mascara and lipgloss. Solid perfumes, small compacts and sprayers were all of interest.

Sampling was of course the focus at Identipak, which specializes in this category—and focuses on U.S. manufacturing. With its specialized filling expertise, the supplier says it is the ‘go-to’ company for hard-to-fill unit dose sachets. One of the company’s latest sampling developments involves the filling of essential oils. In addition to identifying the precise film structure to contain the essential oils, the additional challenge was to accurately fill less than 0.5g of oil into a die-cut shaped foil sachet in an efficient and consistent manner. Identipak’s engineering team worked it out, creating a die-cut mask inside a die-cut sachet.

Tubes and Jars Made in the USA

CTL Packaging, known for its range of tube options—including luxe decorating options for prestige brands—featured its EasySupplyTube, an injection molded plastic tube, with an in-mold label, made in the USA. Anna Soden, director sales and business development, said the technology combines superior deco, and is able to deliver improved supply chain performance with reduced lead times.

Olcott Plastics presented a number of packaging options, including its plastic jars with user-friendly features and striking design elements. Olcott offers a broad range of stock and custom plastic jars and closures—all Made in the USA. (See more in the Made in the USA article in this issue.)

Bamboo, Brushes and More

Compax prides itself on its full-service packaging capabilities. The company, which manufactures in South Korea and globally, says it has more than 100 years of combined expertise in the packaging industry. The company’s full-service packaging capabilities include design, engineering, decoration, and manufacturing. Compax also offers a number of sustainable packaging options including biodegradable and recyclable plastics, post-consumer resin, recycled paper, bamboo—and a number of light weighting techniques to reduce waste.

Manufacturer and distributor Global Source Group displayed airless and bamboo collections; the lipsticks and fragrances both had clear windows.

FM Brush Company, a fourth generation brush company located in Queens, featured an entertaining video showing all the various steps of how a brush is manufactured. Brushes from grooming to perfecting, natural to synthetic were all on display; packaging services are offered as well.

It’s been a transition from the record industry to the world of cosmetics for G2 Graphic Service, known primarily for its custom premium luxury cartons, though it serves all levels of the industry, with design, printing, packaging, digital, mailing and promotion. A special box for MGM was wrapped in carbon fiber.

See You Next Year

Cosmoprof North America 2015 will take place July 12-14 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.



























































Beauty Brands Reign

As in past years, CPNA attracted many new and innovative brands in addition to industry leaders such as Conair, CND, Essie, Helen of Troy, L’Oreal Technique, OPI Nail, Orly, NYX, Rusk and Schwarzkopf—and retailers such as Sephora, Nordstrom and Ulta. Most brands we spoke to had received great feedback and interest from attendees from around the country—and around the world. Buyers were actively looking to boost their retail lines, and had a lot to choose from when planning how to hedge their competition from various channels.

Looking to stand out at the show and on counter, a number of brands had repackaged their lines in advance of the show, including OmegaLabs USA Nail Lacquer line and Bodyography.

OmegaLabs USA announced major changes to its nail lacquer line, including new packaging and new shades. Lacquer bottles changed from round to a sleek square look, with a new prominent logo. The new square bottle was chosen to put a bigger impact on the new ‘Omega’ symbol, showing off the new artwork on a full, flat panel. The brand also introduced new compact counter displays and new colors within each collection.

Aside from its signature body and hair care collections in scintillating, refreshing formulas such as Grapefruit and Green Tea, Theorie drew acclaim for its world-class professional salon tools, such as its brand new SAGA 2 Flat Iron. Inspired by stylists, this streamlined adaptable tool, which comes in a pretty case for travel, is meticulously constructed with 100% solid titanium floating plates that heat quickly, allowing the DIYer to create a more intricate style in less time. It even displays the tool’s temperature.

Kits, stamps, pens, sparkle, shine and matte: It all adds up to fun and a quick change in skin deco from LA-based Tattoo Junkie. Products can be problem solving, too. Take Tattoo Junkee’s Lip Color Corrector, for instance. It’s the perfect solution when color outsteps its bounds due to shaky hands or bumpy cab rides. And the Corrector can also be used on eyes for a perfect line  every time.




Beauty Packaging Presents Session on Sample Sizes

At Cosmoprof North America, Beauty Packaging presented a session on sample sizes.

Experts discussed how these small packages have become a mega-route to exposure and sales in the last couple of years, with everything from gifts with purchase, to trial offers to subscription boxes that regularly arrive at your home or office. But sample products also serve a variety of purposes in addition to sales conversions.

Panelists are pictured.