The two-day Cosmeceuticals Inside and Out 2006 conference and trade show took place November 27-28, and targeted cosmetic, supplement and food company attendees. The conference organizer, the Western Canadian Functional Food & Natural Health Product Network (WCFN), said it is encouraging points of overlap in marketing strategies, ingredients and testing facilities between the industries.
The expansion of the dietary supplements industry into the arena of cosmetics, and vice versa, is opening-up significant market potential to what were formerly separate industries.
A recent study by Kline & Company valued the global market for what it terms 'nutricosmetics' (that is, supplements aimed at outward appearance) at $1bn, a figure the company says is set to double over the next five years. To date, the trend has been more marked in Europe and Japan, with the North American market not catching on at the same pace.
However, with initiatives to add value to current natural products and ingredients - such as the conference in Vancouver - this could be about to change.
In Canada, the government of Alberta has been driving a personal care product initiative as the province has many growers with crops that can be used in both natural and personal care products, WCFN marketing manager Dorota Zawistowska told NutraIngredients-USA.com.
According to Zawistowska, the aim of the Cosmeceuticals Inside & Out conference was to provide a platform for health, beauty and wellness companies to discuss their overlapping regulatory, scientific and marketing infrastructures, similar demographic markets and their potential capacity to share resources.
"The importance of this conference lies in the fact that the market is starting to see the merging of personal care products, nutrients and ingredients that are ingested with those that are topical," said Zawistowska.
Skin care has been the main target of cosmeceutical marketing to date, followed by hair, nail and suncare ranges, according to Kline & Company. In October, the American consultancy told NutraIngredients-USA.com's sister site CosmeticDesign.com that companies should try to position themselves in the North American market early in the game because competition in nutricosmetics is guaranteed to increase.
There were around 100 attendees (50 percent from Canada and 50 percent from the US - at the Vancouver conference. Speaker and panel topics ranged from industry trends, to regulation, to ingredients, to marketing.