The Beautyworld Dubai trade show will take place from October 6-8. Ravi Ramchandani, Beautyworld Dubai Show Director, talks about the state of the Middle East beauty market, the show’s 30-year milestone and how the event is set to evolve
How would you describe the state of the beauty market in the region right now?
The GCC used to import beauty. Now it exports it. Ten years ago, a ‘Made in Dubai’ perfume was a commodity. It sold on price, shipped mainly to Africa, and the distributor did the marketing. Today, the brand markets itself through creators and sells in the West on name recall.
The UAE is now among the world’s top-10 perfume exporters, with exports up nearly sevenfold over the decade, according to UN trade data featured in the GCC in Focus report we commissioned from BeautyMatter. In 2024, brands asked us how to enter the GCC. In 2026 they ask what to do when the GCC enters them.
Is Western interest in the region real or just talk?
Watch what retailers do. Global players did not arrive, test the market and pull back. They arrived and accelerated. Ulta Beauty opened in Kuwait in November 2025, Mall of the Emirates in January and Dubai Mall in March. Three stores in under five months, with Saudi Arabia planned. And they built the launch around regional founders. Nadine Njeim, Balqees Fathi of Bex Beauty and Sara Alrashed of Asteri had in-store moments, alongside the global line-up. That is commitment, not a trial.
It runs the other way too. Moonglaze, a Riyadh-based colour brand founded in 2024, was the number one Saudi beauty brand at Selfridges London within a year, and the number one at Sephora Middle East in February.
Saudi Arabia is in every brand’s plan. What do you tell them?
Stop selling into Saudi and start building inside it. That means a Riyadh-based team, not a regional manager flying in from Dubai. A brand that is flat in Saudi, but growing elsewhere in the region usually has an organizational problem, not a market problem.
The year 2026 has been difficult for the region. What has that meant for the industry?
Demand held, but logistics did not. Every Gulf bottle starts as a European compound. Glass, caps and packaging come mostly from China, and at these volumes freight moves by sea. Air only works for the most viral products. The luxury houses were least affected because small volumes can fly. The high- volume houses took the pressure and re-routed, through the Red Sea, overland across Saudi Arabia, through Fujairah and Oman. Slower and dearer, but moving.
Every client conversation I have had this year ends the same way. The constraint is shipping, not selling. The more Gulf fragrance sells in the West, the more European compound it takes to make it.
Every edition is earned. A 30th edition does not entitle us to an exhibitor’s participation or a visitor’s time, and the moment an organiser assumes either, the show starts to decline. So the milestone is about the quality of what we put on the floor this year, not the number on the banner
Beautyworld Dubai Show Director Ravi Ramchandani
What has changed about who visits the Beautyworld Dubai show?
For most of its life this was a regional show. International brands came to Dubai to sell into the Middle East, and the buyer drove in from Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh or Muscat. That has flipped. The buyer now flies in, and the brands they fly in for are made here. They came because the Gulf brands that went viral at home are made in this region, and the people who make them are on our floor.
How does the show turn that into business for an exhibitor?
We decide who is in the room before the doors open. The hosted buyer programme flies in decision-makers from the markets exhibitors want. For 2026, we added the Premium Club, an invite-only lounge for around 800 pre-qualified buyers from Brazil, Mexico, the US, Poland, the UK and France, with meetings set up in advance. The content programme does the rest. A stylist will leave a salon for Dimitris Giannetos or Mounir. A make-up artist will fly in for Patrick Ta and Mary Phillips. Once they are in the building, they walk the floor.
Can you point to something the show built rather than hosted?
Quintessence. We launched it in 2016 as a niche fragrance area inside the show with 13 brands. It fell to eight during Covid. By 2025 it had over 100, including Xerjoff, and brands like BOHOBOCO found their regional distributor there. In January, it becomes its own event, Notes Dubai.
On the supply side, no other show does this for fragrance. We put close to 100 fragrance and compound houses next to each other in one hall, and the regional manufacturers, with the packaging lines and the filling and machinery companies in the same building. Compound to bottle to finished brand in one morning.
This year marks the 30th edition of the show. What does the milestone mean?
It means a lot, and I try not to let it mean too much. Every edition is earned. A 30th edition does not entitle us to an exhibitor’s participation or a visitor’s time, and the moment an organiser assumes either, the show starts to decline. So the milestone is about the quality of what we put on the floor this year, not the number on the banner.
The history is short. Gulf Beauty in 1996, 63 exhibitors from 17 countries. Beautyworld Middle East from 2004 under Messe Frankfurt. Beautyworld Dubai now, because the visitors decided that before we did. Thirty years at Dubai World Trade Centre built the show. From 2027, it moves to Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo City Dubai in halls that are easier to navigate.
Where will Beautyworld Dubai be in five years?
The place the world goes to read this region. The Western industry wants a serious read on the GCC. Our job is to be where that read comes from.
What is the case for coming to Beautyworld Dubai this October?
The top fragrance houses, the master perfumers, the packaging and contract manufacturers, the Gulf brands and the buyers from the markets they sell into, in one building for three days. The fragrance hall and Za’abeel Hall 7, the new space for finished fragrance.
On the stages, Aurélien Guichard of Takasago and Jacques Cavallier Belletrud of Louis Vuitton, Patrick Ta and Mary Phillips. Then there is the city. Nobody I know flies in for the show alone. They see their distributor and they walk Dubai Mall, Come for the show. Plan the week around it.