Kitchen Collaborative at Cosmoprof

We spent most of last week in Vegas at the Cosmoprof North America trade show, a premier B2B show for the beauty industry including cosmetics and personal care, packaging, private label, spa and wellness, and professional hair, nails, and tools. Although the show seemed slightly smaller than last year, it still featured 625 companies and had over 22,500 attendees.

In addition to new beauty brands and product innovations, we noticed a shift in trends taking place overall – in particular, green and tech seemed to stand out. Here are some of our favorite finds:

Jute Promotional Bags
Eco-friendly seems to have officially evolved from trend to necessity. We were excited to find some very attractive and well-made promotional bags from both Bagmasters and Earth Axxessoriesthat we will definitely be sourcing for our clients in the future. In addition to silk screening deco onto the bag, custom colors, handles, closes, hangtags and shapes are available.

Poza.com
Poza is a social networking site developed specifically for cosmetology professionals… sort of like a LinkedIn for the beauty industry. Cosmetology professionals can connect and network with one another, share their experiences, and learn about specific areas such as trends and business practices. Basic individual profiles are free, or users can pay for upgrades in the service. Although the site is still in its beta phase, we see a lot of potential here.

Butterfly Packs
Packaging samplers are usually pretty boring, but we liked the functionality of KDC’s Butterfly Technology, an innovative new single dose delivery pack that allows the user to simply “snap” the package in half by squeezing with one hand – a smart alternative to the typical, less user-friendly tear pouch. The butterfly packs can be used for personal care products, consumer household products, pharmaceutical products, and even food products. See a video demo here.

Romyraves.com
We can’t ignore the importance of bloggers these days, especially in helping us to navigate the sea of sameness in the beauty industry. What we particularly liked about Romy was in addition to her entertaining and authentic reviews of beauty products (she truly only blogs about products she loves), her blog also extends to topics such as culture, wine, food, and even discounts.