April saw Siam Botanicals exhibiting at another show, this time in London. The event, which is called Natural & Organic Products (it also takes place in Hong Kong in August and in Sweden in November), not only showcases a host of big brands and start-up beauty companies but also Fairtrade/sustainable/organic food and drink products, and natural healthcare and household products. There were about 600 exhibitors and thousands of trade-only visitors.
Tamar, the owner of Siam Botanicals, flew over from Thailand and I joined her to man (or should I say woman?) the stand. I think you’ll agree that it looked rather lovely. People were definitely drawn to the lush Thai backdrop – a moment of escapism!
Lots of lovely stock, now available in the UK!
It was interesting to see what appealed to European buyers – they were particularly attracted to the more unusual or typically Asian ingredients such as rice bran oil, guava oil and moringa oil, and those scents that are commonly associated with Thailand – lemongrass, ginger and plai (all of which feature in our signature Siam Roots range of products). Visitors liked to be able to smell the pure oils – especially our guava oil, which was new to everyone we spoke to and was universally liked for its wonderful fruity smell.
It smells soooo good!
It wasn’t just this lady who loved the scent of our cooling rice bran oil with a hint of peppermint
Of course, people were very interested in the fact that our products have now received the COSMOS-standard stamp of approval from BDIH and are now proudly wearing their COSMOS Natural and COSMOS Organic badges! More on this in a separate post…
We enjoyed introducing our products to the UK market and made some interesting contacts, which we will be growing and nurturing over the coming months! The event also allowed us to meet in person several people we’ve been following on Facebook and Twitter for some time, including natural beauty and eczema/allergy blogger Sugarpuffish, Alex from Skins Matter (a great resource for resource for natural beauty and ‘free from’ skincare), and Lynda, otherwise known as Wonderlusting, who writes a great blog about ‘products and places that inspire wonder and lust’ – well worth a read!
We were also pleased to catch a seminar about the latest trends in innovative beauty ingredients by Rebecca Goodyear, another Twitter friend. And we were very encouraged to see that a talk on ‘How Asian skincare trends are taking off in Europe’ gathered a good crowd. As far as we could see, we were the only Asian skincare company at the show (correct me if I’m wrong), so we feel confident that there’s still a gap in the UK market for our 100% natural Thai brand.
Were you at the show? Did you visit our stand? Let us know your thoughts!
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