Between 12 and 14 May, the China Beauty Expo (CBE) 2025 took place in Shanghai. It is mostly shown in the form of innovative ingredients and technological advances from domestic brands, as well as the increasingly demanding needs from the ingredient-savvy “skintellectuals”.
For example, consumers now expect sunscreens to be elevated from basic protection to “full-spectrum protection” and high protection that is also considerate of the skin. Sunscreen products for men and for lips is also becoming a trend.
Scalp-care remains on the growth trajectory this year among haircare products, a category projected to be worth 80 billion RMB (11.10 billion USD) by 2029. Concepts like peptide and microbiome are some of the key trends.
For anti-ageing, the trend at the China Beauty Expo Shanghai 2025 is to show more pro- or clinic-level ingredients and technologies in consumer products. PDRN, a DNA-derived compound conventionally used as an injection, has become popular with spread-applied skincare products, such as S-PDRN by CNP from the LG group. Other high-tech ingredients like the “recombinant human-like collagen”, which has been heating up since 2023, remains one of the hottest concepts. Anti-ageing on a cellular level is a key idea this year.
There has been a huge wave of Chinese brands advancing in ingredient innovation. Collaborations between beauty and skincare brands and clinical and research institutions is also increasingly widespread. The baby and child skincare brand Imine (己出, also Jichu) launched its microbiome solution for children’s skin problems, together with dermatologists from the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University.
As this CBE Shanghai showed, beauty and skincare brands in China face challenges such as high expectations from consumers, difficulty in differentiating when viral ingredients are similar and how to communicate the high-tech innovations to their target audiences. While the “involution” might mean consumers win out with more innovative products, whether it’s a sustainable competition for businesses is a different matter.
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