Professional Beauty India triumphs at the Exhibition Excellence Awards 2020

Felicitating the hard work put in by the Professional Beauty India team in the past year, the Exhibition Showcase has declared it as the recipient of The Leading Show Wellbeing, Beauty 2019 at the Exhibition Excellence Awards 2020.

Speaking about how he feels on receiving the award, Vikas Vij, Managing Director, IDEX, says, “It is humbling to receive the award for consecutive years. In what has been the toughest year for us, as a business, it means a lot to our team to get this recognition for the work they put in building and growing the show from both an exhibitor and visitor point of view and this will drive us to keep those standards up.” Excerpts from the interview with Vij:

Tell us about Professional Beauty Mumbai, and what makes it different from other shows in this sector?

Thank you to the Exhibition Showcase team for again recognising Professional Beauty as the leading beauty and wellness show in the country. The year 2019 was our best show to date where we also hosted two complimentary shows: CIPI and Aesthetic Medicine India alongside Professional Beauty.

What makes Professional Beauty stand out from other shows in this sector are several factors including the fact that we are a global brand and coordinate extensively with our global offices to keep on top of trends and ideas that we can bring to the India market. But what’s key is that whilst being global, we act local. We have developed strong relationships with both buyers and exhibitors going back to our launch in 2012 and have consistently partnered with the beauty and wellness community to deliver real value and innovation, not just for a small segment but the entire community.

At this time of the pandemic, how did IDEX engage with its community to grow, and conduct business?

One of the realisations we had early in the pandemic was that even if our core business of physical events was not going to return anytime soon, there were other ways of bringing our community together. Our strength has always been around connecting, educating, engaging and we decided that even if we cannot deliver that through events, we still can with the use of virtual platforms and digital technology, and we quickly pivoted our business to deliver our core offerings through social media and digital tools. To date, we have organised over 300 live sessions via Facebook, Instagram and Zoom with an audience size of over 2.5 lakh. During this pandemic, we also launched this digital magazine, Professional Beauty Hairdressers Journal, as part of our commitment to the beauty and wellness community.

When is your next exhibition date and what format will it be?

We are looking to launch physical events in the next financial year post April 2021, but these will not be large scale exhibitions as we don’t think the beauty or events industry is ready for that yet. Exhibitors and visitors have been hit significantly by the pandemic and it is going to take some time for that business cycle to get back on track. In the meantime, we are planning a series of more localised shows.

What is your message to the industry? 

It may not always be possible to see it but even in the darkest moments there are silver linings, and in our industry, we have gone from being the leading exhibition organiser to the leading media, content, and exhibition business. It is something we had been thinking of for a while, but the pandemic forced us to accelerate those plans and we will continue to build on this.

For the industry, I would say this is an opportune time to come together to look at what was not working for us as organisers, venues and service providers and see how we can build a new offering for the MICE industry, which focuses on excellence above all, building an events industry that can be on par with the best in the world.

What are you looking forward to in 2021? 

Getting back to organising large scale exhibitions! The thrill and adrenaline of building a show from scratch and over several days hosting tens of thousands of visitors with the latest product and education innovations is so exhilarating and I am missing that the most.