This year's event featured a number of innovations, including a string of new product launches, marketing trend tours to pick up on some of the exhibitor highlights and a more comprehensive educations program, with two concurrent marketing and trends presentation tracks.
The marketing trends tour featured a customized itinerary for marketing professionals that incorporated a guide around three feature areas to highlight ingredients, textures and trends from industry players including Gattfosse, Mibelle Group and Brazil company Nanovetories.
The winner of the formulation challenge...
The Formulation Lab was also a big attraction for many of the lab-based visitors to the show, and this year there was something new for formulators to get their teeth into.
For the third North America Formulation event challenge the companies were asked to come up with an innovative color cosmetics formulation using only certain ingredients, and six companies took up the challenge.
Judged by The Institute of Personal Care Science and Mintel, the winner was Japanese multinational Shiseido while the runner's-up prize went to Unilever. The other competitors included Estee Lauder, J&J, Colgate Palmolive and Swiss American CDMO.
This year marks the third anniversary of the in-cosmetics North America event, which has grown from relatively humble beginnings in a small venue of the East Side of New York City, to a bigger and sleeker event in the Jacob Javits Center, featuring a total of 60 first time exhibitors.
Sensory remains a crucial trend for formulators to get right, which is why the sensory bar always creates a buzz at the in-cosmetics event. At this year's event, innovations were on display from eight companies, including Adeka, DSM, Jojoba Desert and KCI, as well as two Japanese players, Tayo Kagaku and Sumitomo Seika.
Switzerland-based player DSM was not only showcasing a large number of new technologies and recent product launches, it was also highlighting its services and capabilities that have been adapted to the specific needs of indie beauty players, which often centers around smaller ingredient volumes.
One of the highlights for Germany-based pigments specialist EMD was a technical presentation given as part of the event's educational program. Given by the company's Director of Technical Services, Howard Epstein, the presentation focused on giving an updated perspective on the science behind antioxidants.
Mibelle are renowned in the industry for their advanced natural-based active ingredients and at this year's event the company was highlighting its newly launches moss-based product designed to enhance skin resilience. MossCellTec is produced from moss using biotechnology and is said to have heightened skin protection properties to help fight signs of aging.
France-based Gattefosse was highlighting its latest ingredient technology to fight artificial light pollution, one it claims to be making pioneering moves in. Indeed, its Screen Shield technology is said to be the first to tackle green, blue and red light pollution from computer and mobile device screens.
Mintel analyst Sarah Jindal gave a very insightful presentation on the beauty buying habits of the C-Generation, to a packed out marketing trends theatre. Sarah highlighted how this group of consumers defies many traditional consumer patterns, while also being highly diverse and incorporating almost all age groups.
Brazilian company Nanovetores formed part of the prominent Brazil Pavilion on the show floor and was highlighting a number of innovative concept formulations that incorporated its nano-based encapsulated technologies, including highly innovative sensory and fragrance formulations.
And let's not forget the Cosmetics Design booth. The Cosmetics Design team was out in force on the show floor, while also manning our booth to meet and greet the many visitors that stopped by to see us. We also had the honor to receive many of you for our cocktail hour on the first day. A big thank you to all of you for showing up. It was fun meeting you!
