BeautyEurasia Offers Export Opportunities to Participants with Virtual Meetings Series

Turkey and Eurasia's leading sectoral and collaboration platform, BeautyEurasia, which brings together personal care and cosmetics brands, continues to offer export opportunities to domestic participants ahead of the fair to be held at Istanbul Fair Centre (İFM) on 16-18 June 2021. The BeautyEurasia Webinar Series, held on 23-25 February through virtual trade platforms Hyve Connect and Big Marker, hosted 28 buyers from 23 different countries. Buyers from numerous countries including Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Colombia, France, Netherlands, Malaysia, Lithuania, Spain, Tunisia and Ukraine conducted more than 40 meetings with 140 fair participants. Kemal Ülgen, Regional Director of Hyve Group, noting that the webinar, attended online by a total of 192 participants, was highly successful and that fair participants and buyers left satisfied from productive meetings, stated: "Physical access is indispensable for the exhibition industry. However, we will continue to contribute to the commercial activities of buyers and participants through hybrid applications that include digital solutions outside fair dates and taking into account pandemic conditions. In the event we organized for the first time within the scope of the BeautyEurasia Fair, we determined the satisfaction level of both fair participants and buyers at 93 percent. We will continue to multiply our event where we bring buyers from all over the world together with our fair participants, and provide support to regional and global economies, particularly Turkey."

Watsons Turkey Category Group Manager: "An Important Event to Understand Changing Needs"

Saliha Gül, Category Group Manager at Watsons Turkey, who participated in the webinar as a VIP buyer and evaluated the benefits of the event from the perspective of changing consumer demands, drew attention to the event's importance in terms of consumer dynamics. Gül, noting that they view sectoral fairs as an experience sharing centre both for buyers to communicate end-customer demands to manufacturers and for manufacturing companies to express themselves, stated: "This meeting we organized before the fair was a sharing where we discussed changing consumer habits, opportunities in new product development, changing needs in the cosmetics and personal care sector, and issues that manufacturers should pay attention to. I believe this sharing will create a foundation for the products and innovations to be offered during the fair period. Since these fairs will be the channels through which we can find products and manufacturers most suitable to changing consumer demands, I think these virtual meetings contribute to communicating expectations from the buyer side beforehand." Maksat Kozhayev, Contract Manager representing Kazakh company Ak Niet LLP/Europharma, another buyer who participated, stated that the collaboration platform organized before the fair and presented in a new format was a very important experience. Kozhayev continued: "Thank you for giving us the opportunity to participate in this virtual event. Meeting with manufacturers was a great opportunity and communicating in a new format was an invaluable experience for us. The BeautyEurasia Virtual Meetings Series is a good practice in terms of safe trading strategy due to restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and a brilliant example of a different business approach. I contacted the suppliers I met via email the next day and received price quotations from them. Collaboration and business decisions will be made following the evaluation of offers."

Vaccine Development Work Decisive in Cosmetics Sector's 12 Percent Growth Target

Beyond bringing together participants and buyers, in the webinar where VIP purchasing committees made presentations, economist and strategist Dr. Can Fuat Gürlesel conducted an analysis of the cosmetics sector and economy for 2021, evaluating opportunities from export and foreign market perspectives and presented a roadmap. Despite pandemic conditions, Dr. Gürlesel stated that the cosmetics sector increased exports by 9.4 percent in 2020, raising the total to USD 2.03 billion. Dr. Gürlesel shared that the most significant increase in cosmetics product exports was 34.1 percent in cleaning and hygiene products. Dr. Gürlesel added that exports declined in many other sub-product groups. Imports last year increased by 1.7 percent to USD 956 million. Emphasizing that in 2021 cosmetics product trade and consumption will be determined by developments in conditions created with the Covid-19 outbreak, Dr. Gürlesel underlined that consumption and trade of other products are expected to remain weak against growing demand for cleaning-hygiene and protection products. Dr. Gürlesel said there is limited growth expectation in total cosmetics spending in 2021, with 3 to 4 percent growth expected in the domestic market.