The second edition of Africa’s biggest beauty exhibition, Beauty West Africa (BWA) is set to take place in November 20th with over 200 international exhibitors taking part from across the world, including local exhibitors from across Nigeria.
The success of the first edition of the exhibition (held last year) in promoting Nigeria’s beauty market, connecting stakeholders, and bringing manufacturers to buyers as well as investors was a motivation for this year’s edition.
BWA 2019 which will run from November 20th to 22nd is expected to be bigger covering over two exhibitions at the Landmark Centre in Lagos, with over 3,500 attendees from the West African Beauty Industry.
The organisers said the three-day event will also feature a full conference programme featuring talks from industry players, with the aim of addressing key challenges in the industry, pushing indigenous African brands, education of human capital, and new technologies in the sector.
BWA is organised BtoB Events. Jamie Hill, MD, BtoB Event Limited, said the conference was a platform for the West African Beauty sector to come together under one roof to discourse best practices, network, share knowledge, and do new businesses in the hope that we will continue to drive the beauty business here in Nigeria.
“Our ultimate goal is to promote, empower and connect businesses here to try and drive their business forward and make lots of new exports from Nigerian to the ECOWAS and also for international brands looking to gain entry into the Nigerian markets, we like to introduce our international partners to local representative and distributors here, in the hope that they would continue to excel in their businesses in Nigeria and begin to locally set up business with the hope of manufacturing in the future.
Speaking at a press conference in Lagos, Hill said emphasised that the conference (mentioned earlier) has been designed to empower Nigerian SMEs and Nigerian businesses within the beauty sector.
According to him, it will cover the whole business arena and will be to promote and support Nigerian businesses to reach their full potential and take Nigerian brands and Nigerian beauty to the rest of the world.
“We have some special initiatives that will go on at the exhibition where we work with SMEs businesses in Nigeria, to try to present them alongside some of the larger local companies here in Nigeria and international companies from across the world,” said Hill.
Addressing the significance of the event to the Nigerian market, and the reason the country is playing host, Tokunbo Chiedu, CEO, Compass Global said the population of Nigeria, and the beauty sector’s contribution towards Nigeria’s GDP, pegged at about a billion dollars annually, and its vast natural resources suited for the manufacturing of beauty products, positions Nigeria to lead Africa and the conversation on beauty to the world.
“A lot of dynamism in terms of innovation, and new development in the indigenous sector of the beauty industry actually can be attributed to Nigeria. We have a very vibrant agro-processing sector due to the vast numbers of natural resources that we have that can be used in the manufacturing of beauty products. So I think that it is only right that Nigeria plays host to the world due to the size of our market, and we can lead the conversation for Africa,” she said.
She added that the event deserves the support of the government. “I think government should support our effort, the players who are all creating jobs and driving this economy,” she said.
Also partnering with BtoB events, and present at the press conference, Femi Niyi, Director, Design Essentials, said his organisation intends to bring the competitive edge of the average Nigerian ton bear, hence, there will a competition for hairstylist at this year’s exhibition.
“In joining up with B2B for this conference, we have taken a prominent position to organise training for hairstylists during the conference. But this year we have taken it up a notch to say that we’re going to offer gifts to those stylists that have had experiences with us or those who think they have enough skillsets to show what they can do with hair. So there is a competition for the hairstylists and there are gifts worth Naira 2million,” he said.
31 countries across continents –Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and the Middle East are expected to participate.
