Chinese market key to continued growth of Spanish beauty firms, manager says

BARCELONA, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Asia and the Chinese market in particular are key to the continued expansion and growth of Spanish beauty firms marketing their cosmetic products and treatments abroad, a Spanish company's manager told Xinhua at the COSMOBEAUTY Barcelona international expo.

"In China, we work with a distributor who knows the company well and works in the entire Asian market, but among those countries, China is the place where things are going best for us," Marta Marti, global brand manager at the Indiba company, told Xinhua at the March 25-27 expo, which presented latest innovations in the beauty industry to some 50,000 attendees from around the world.

The retail sales value of cosmetics in China rose to 52.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, making it the world's second-largest beauty and personal care product market after the United States, according to online market data company Statista, while sales of cosmetic products in China grew 14 percent in 2021, reported China's National Bureau of Statistics.

"We're lucky to already be established in the Asian market but much of the company's future growth will depend on continuing to expand and grow in this area, because it's a market that is quickly awakening with extremely high economic growth forecasts, rising standards of living and a growing middle class, all of which is in our favor," added Marti.

According to the National Association of Perfumery and Cosmetics, Spain is among the top 10 world exporters of beauty products and is the world's second-largest exporter of perfume, placing it above such internationally famous Spanish industries as wine and olive oil.