Are beauty trade shows still worth it for brands in 2026?

Trade shows have long been a pillar of the beauty industry — places to debut new launches and connect with distributors and buyers. But are beauty shows, which are notoriously demanding, competitive and expensive, worth it for brands in 2026?

To find out, Glossy caught up with brands at CosmoProf Miami in January, then again weeks later, to see if they accomplished their show goals. 

“Yes, we partnered with Walmart [in 2022] and launched our partnership with Target in September, but we’re still ‘new’ to the wholesale world. So, for us, it was important to show up and get exposure to that universe,” Sergio Tache, founder and CEO of Dossier Perfumes, told Glossy. 

Dossier, the dupe-focused fragrance brand launched DTC in 2018, exhibited at its first trade show, CosmoProf Miami, in January 2025. It has since attended CosmoProf’s summer Las Vegas 2025 and Miami 2026 shows. 

When it comes to global beauty buyers at CosmoProf’s January Miami show, Tache told Glossy that “everyone’s there.” He also said that beauty influencers are increasingly attending industry trade shows. To wit: Dossier’s 2025 attendance at CosmoProf helped it to secure a “very, very exciting partnership” launching later this year. “[This partnership] would not have happened without us being there and that person seeing the excitement around the brand,” Tache said. 

Beyond exposure to global wholesale buyers and KOLs, Tache’s team also endeavors to “wow” the brand’s current industry relationships at shows. “It makes a lot of sense for existing [and] new buyers to see the animation of the booth, to see that the brand is really resonating with everybody, and to see the excitement around Dossier,” he said. 

To glean attention, Dossier opted for a large, centrally located booth at the January show. It then drove engagement by offering free bottles of perfume with custom engraving for anyone who followed Dossier on social and tagged the brand’s handle in a post about the booth or activation on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok. This offer created a steady queue at the booth, resulting in Dossier giving away more than 500 bottles of perfume each day of the three-day show.

Sampling has also been a powerful tool for smaller, less-known brands like BonPatch, a Sydney-based vitamin patch brand launched in 2025. The brand made its U.S. debut at CosmoProf Miami in January. 

“It’s very helpful if you can afford to give product, even a sample size of something, because people love that touch point,” said BonPatch founder Nicole O’Neil. “It’s very overwhelming at these trade shows; things are constantly being handed out to you, and it’s only now [weeks later] that I’m getting emails from people saying, ‘I’ve tried your products, I absolutely love your sleep patches, and I would love to place an order.’”

O’Neil is a trade show veteran, having demonstrated for many years with her former events company, Prêt-a-Party. To a certain extent, “a trade show is a trade show,” she said. Her tips to boost sales and conversion include basic booth etiquette: Remove chairs from your booth to ensure you always stand, sample everyone, greet everyone, always have the booth staffed with more than one person, and avoid visible computers or phones. 

“There’s nothing worse than coming up to a booth and the owner is quiet, sitting behind a laptop,” she said. 

Depending on the size, location and build-out of the booth, plus staffing, sampling and travel, trade shows can ring in at well over $100,000 for a few days.

“The cost is big,” said Dossier’s Tache. “For me, [it took] a leap of faith [to attend our first one last year]. But, once you’re there, once you see the buzz around the brand and how important that buzz is, you realize that the investment is quite important. But it’s always going to be very difficult to calculate the exact ROI.” 

Because of this, understanding one’s goals is crucial to make the investment worth it. “You can’t go and expect it to pay back in direct sales straight away,” said BonPatch’s O’Neil. “But it’s an opportunity to afford relationships, continue relationships and nurture them.”

For Santu, a just-launched body-care company born from traditional Mexican spa offerings and self-care rituals, properly preparing for its trade show debut meant attending two shows before feeling ready to demonstrate last year. 

Santu is helmed by CEO Sherry Wan, a former executive for Airbnb, Herschel Supply Company and social commerce platform SuperOrdinary. 

“We walked the show the very first time in 2023, but we really walked it intentionally in January 2025 because we were getting ready to show in July that same year,” Wan told Glossy. “So, in January, we were thinking, ‘How are we going to show up in six months? What does the floor look like today? What are the trends that are happening?’”

This also helped Wan to network with CosmoProf executives to secure a space in the highly regarded “Beauty Vanities” section of the show, which highlights emerging brands. Wan took full advantage of exhibitor benefits, like pre-arranged meetings with press and influencers, panels, and networking groups. 

“[Before jumping in] you really need to get a sense of what’s happening outside of your own little world,” Wan said. 

She also learned that show-goers crave authenticity, not sales pitches. As such, Santu’s co-founders, Alicia Nogales and Angelique Van Wyk, were on hand during the show to demonstrate the brand’s massage candles and creams one-on-one with showgoers. “It’s definitely worth the time and the investment,” Wan said. 

However, for some beauty veterans, trade shows aren’t what they once were. 

Tish Bellomo, the co-founder and co-owner of Manic Panic hair color, finds that beauty shows have become less important and more expensive. She told Glossy that they’ve become considerably more complicated to attend, thanks to more rules on everything from the booth to the attendance deadlines. It’s also increasingly difficult to stand out thanks to an influx of well-funded brands that monopolize the larger spaces with captivating build-outs. 

“When I first started doing them, maybe in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s, they were a little less rigid and definitely necessary,” she said. “They’re still necessary, and I think they’re still a great way to be face-to-face with people, because people forget how important that is.” 

Tish Bellomo and her sister, Snooky Bellomo, launched Manic Panic in 1977. The sisters split their time between their singing careers, which included the iconic band Blondie, and the hair-color business. The brand is still privately held by the sisters, and Tish’s son helps to run the business today. 

Their goal for attending CosmoProf in Miami in January was to expand more into Central and South America, parts of Asia, and Eastern Europe. “[We’re looking for distributors in these] different places where we don’t have a huge presence, so it helps for us to come to this show,” Bellomo said. 

For Manic Panic, the investment takes years to materialize. “We’re here meeting the customers we already have, and gathering new ones and new leads for the future,” she said. “It’s also important to see our competition and how they’re marketing [the product categories] I invented.” Bellomo used the opportunity to launch a new range of products, its Inter-Gel-Actic gel haircolor kits, which provided newness for buyers. 

“Things have changed a lot,” Bellomo said. “But I do think [these shows] are still worth it.”