With TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and digital marketing now playing such a huge role in the beauty industry, do we still need trade shows?
After spending much of my career working with beauty and personal care brands and developing international markets, my answer is simple:
Yes. Absolutely.
In fact, for brands looking to expand internationally, I think trade shows remain one of the most valuable tools available.
But perhaps not for the reasons they were 20 years ago.
Social media has changed how brands are discovered
There is no question that social media has transformed the beauty industry.
A brand can now build an audience in a market thousands of miles away without having a distributor, sales team or physical presence there.
TikTok can create enormous product awareness.
Instagram can build a global community.
LinkedIn can help you identify potential distributors, retailers and commercial partners.
Digital marketing can put your brand in front of millions of people.
But there is one thing that all of these channels struggle to replicate:
a face-to-face commercial relationship.
And international beauty remains a relationship-driven business.
I have seen the value of this throughout my career
I've spent much of my career working with consumer beauty and personal care brands across international markets.
At Wella, I worked across three countries and almost 11 years, exclusively with consumer retail brands.
Later, at Glanbia Performance Nutrition, I was responsible for commercial activity across EMEA.
At Church & Dwight, I worked on international markets and brands including Batiste, Nair and Femfresh.
A common thread throughout those roles was that international growth wasn't simply about having a good product.
It was about finding the right route to market, understanding the local customer and building the right commercial relationships.
And that is where trade shows can be incredibly powerful.
A trade show puts the industry in one room
Think about what happens at a major international beauty exhibition.
You can potentially meet:
Distributors.
Retailers.
Wholesalers.
Importers.
Agents.
Professional beauty businesses.
Potential service providers.
And, importantly, people who understand individual markets.
Instead of spending months sending emails trying to establish whether someone is interested in your brand, you can sit down with them for 30 minutes and ask:
"How does this category work in your market?"
"Which retailers should we be talking to?"
"What price point would work?"
"What regulatory issues should we be aware of?"
"How do you normally launch a new brand?"
"Where do you think this product would fit?"
That conversation can be worth more than months of digital prospecting.
Retail beauty and professional beauty are slightly different
For retail brands, trade shows can be an excellent way of finding distributors, wholesalers and retail contacts.
The buyer may have seen your brand online.
They may have heard of you from a colleague.
They may even have discovered you through social media.
But the trade show gives you the opportunity to move from awareness to a commercial conversation.
For professional beauty, the argument can be even stronger.
Hairdressers, stylists, therapists and other professionals often want to see products demonstrated.
They want to touch them.
They want to understand how they perform.
They want to ask questions.
And they want to meet the people behind the brand.
That human interaction still matters.
But I think brands make a mistake with trade shows
The mistake is thinking that exhibiting at a trade show is a strategy.
It isn't.
The stand is only the starting point.
If you are exhibiting at an international beauty show, you should already know:
Which countries you want to develop
Which types of distributors you are looking for
Which retailers you want to meet
Which existing relationships you want to strengthen
What your commercial proposition is
What your route-to-market model looks like
What you can offer a potential partner
What you want to achieve from the show
And ideally, the meetings should already be in the diary.
I would much rather see a brand have 20 carefully selected commercial meetings than 200 people walking past a stand and taking a brochure.
The real value often comes afterwards
This is another area where brands sometimes get it wrong.
The exhibition finishes.
Everyone goes home.
And then the leads sit in someone's inbox.
That is when the real work begins.
Which contacts are genuine opportunities?
Which are simply interested?
Which distributors have the capability to build the brand?
Which have the right retail relationships?
Which countries should you prioritise?
And perhaps most importantly:
Which opportunities should you say no to?
Not every distributor who wants your brand is necessarily the right distributor for your brand.
That is something I have learned repeatedly throughout my career.
Social media and trade shows aren't competitors
I don't see this as a choice between digital marketing and trade shows.
They do different jobs.
Social media creates awareness.
Digital marketing creates engagement.
LinkedIn creates access.
Trade shows create conversations.
And relationships turn conversations into business.
The strongest international brands understand how these channels work together.
A potential distributor might discover you on Instagram.
They might research you on LinkedIn.
They might visit your website.
And then they meet you at Beautyworld or another industry exhibition.
Suddenly, the digital relationship becomes a real-world relationship.
That's why I'm still a big believer in trade shows
For me, the biggest value of a trade show isn't the stand.
It's the concentration of opportunity.
You can spend weeks trying to identify the right person in a particular country.
At a major beauty exhibition, that person might be standing three metres away.
The question is whether you know who they are, whether you have a reason to speak to them and whether you are prepared for the conversation.
That is where preparation makes all the difference.
And this is one of the areas where I now help brands
Through Xenos Business Development, I work with beauty and personal care brands looking to develop international markets.
That can mean helping brands assess their current distributor network, identify new partners, develop routes to market or decide when a different approach is needed.
And trade shows can be an important part of that process.
But I don't believe in exhibiting simply because "everyone goes to the show."
I believe you should know why you're going, who you want to meet and what you want to achieve.
Because the most successful trade show isn't necessarily the one where you collect the most business cards.
It is the one where you leave with the right conversations already underway.
Social media may have changed the way we discover beauty brands.
It hasn't eliminated the value of doing business face-to-face.
And I don't think it will anytime soon.
