Beauty Industry

What Products ‘Wow’ Today’s Beauty Executives?

Keynote panelists discuss innovation in packaging.

July 2, 2012

Editor-in-Chief

The opening keynote session of the 2012 HBA Global Expo featured—as Jill Burkett put it—“a billion dollars worth of brands,” as executives from some of the beauty industry’s most powerful players took to the stage in the Special Events Hall of the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Jane Larkworthy, beauty director of W magazine, interviewed a panel of leading beauty industry executives on “The Future of Beauty.”

The panel featured Sonia Kashuk, make-up artist and entrepreneur; Jim Markham, founder and CEO, ColorProof Evolved Color Care; Catherine Walsh, SVP of Coty Prestige; and Deanna Kangas, CEO, Stila Cosmetics.

Larkworthy asked the panel about what beauty products that have “wowed” them recently. The panelists talked up formulations that they have developed, but were also at the ready to discuss other brands that have impressed them in the competitive HBA sector.

For example, Kashuk cited hair care brand Oribe, saying it was the first hair care brand that took a different approach with its packaging than had been seen in the hair care sector. “They made it cosmetically beautiful.They took the unexpected route,” she said.

In addition to discussing Jennifer Lopez’s Glowing perfume bottle, which lights up when users spray it, Walsh of Coty cited Sally Hansen’s Salon Effects nail polish strips as a product that has impressed her in the beauty category.

“That, for me, was a phenomenal product,” she said, citing the innovative application and the creativity of the product in general. “Self expression is what it is all about.”