Premium Beauty News - Schwan Cosmetics is a key player in the global make-up market. What is your analysis of current trends?
Tomas Espinosa - The global beauty market is facing challenging changes and shows big contrasts depending on the region. While Asia is growing across all categories, we see mixed signals in Europe and the USA, partly struggling with a shift into skin care and closely related make-up categories. Eventually, despite a tense economic situation in many countries, big brands are still emerging in South America.
Besides, manufacturers must adapt to the new rules of the market: Since significant changes to the barrier of entry occurred, new brands, with different business models, are able to gain a significant share of the market. Brands can now emerge from a strong Instagram presence, for instance. Some of them spike and disappear as fast as they appeared, whereas others have become key-players in the industry.
Despite the challenges of this ever-changing market, there are still many new opportunities for growth and success. Consequently, we need to be more flexible and agile to meet consumer demands and customer needs.
Premium Beauty News - Is your industrial tool able to address these new challenges?
Tomas Espinosa – We are confident it is. Current market trends are more oriented towards regionalisation than globalisation. Our global footprint permits us to respond to the rising needs for short, local and flexible supply chains. Today, most of our technologies are expanded on a global scale. We are investing heavily in digital technology and process manufacturing in order to deliver the best performing formulas and product quality, regardless of the location.
In addition, we are consistently expanding our machinery to offer a broad variety of packaging designs.
Premium Beauty News - The other big trend is sustainability?
Tomas Espinosa - Sustainability is the biggest challenge of our time, raising a lot of questions. One of the key questions is how to communicate on green features? How consumers can have a broad picture of the entire impact of a product, and how to measure it? How to provide accurate information? Transparency is therefore a key topic and a key request.
Younger generations have become more concerned about environmental challenges and especially about the negative impact of plastic. From this point of view, our expertise in wood processing is a big asset. In 2018, for instance, we launched a wood technology that is able to compete with plastic pencils for long lasting formulas.
As far as sustainability is concerned, we believe short supply chains and plastic reduction are key answers. But we are also working on cleaner formulations and the end life of the components, with biodegradability and recyclability being big challenges. For instance, we are developing single material designs as well as a refillable product range.
At this year’s Cosmopack Bologna, we will be introducing new products and solutions focusing on the three pillars sustainability, transparency and well-being. Our objective is to provide brands with a comprehensive sustainable concept in order to discuss the best options for their needs together.
