The 74th Bronner Bros. Challenging the Virtual Reality Beauty Show
Virtual beauty show main page
The Bronner Bros. International Beauty Show (BB Show), which offers the most diverse and fastest view of recent trends, is held every February and August in Atlanta, Georgia. The exhibition hall event, scheduled to be held in August this year, was canceled for the first time in BB show history since 1974, and the annual event was held on September 27-28 in a completely new format of virtual reality beauty show.
The show featured more than 60 training sessions, including natural hair care, trendy hair styles, extension and weaving, cuts, colors, skin care, makeup methods and small businesses. Competitions such as barbering, makeup and salon were held also. The number of exhibition booths was significantly reduced from the 300 booths in February this year, but despite being the first online beauty show they ever tried, communication between exhibitors and participants was done without any technical problems, becoming a leading example of the possibility of online shows.
How did the online show go?
Perhaps the one thing everyone is curious about is, ‘how did the virtual reality show actually go?’ Except for non-face-to-face events, the contents of the event itself were carried out in the same format as the existing program. The main homepage was decorated as similar as possible to the Georgia World Congress Exhibition Hall, where the event was held every year, and a networking lounge was created where the exhibition hall, a training center for beauty, contests, and exhibitors and participants can chat freely, making it easy to follow right away by clicking on it.
Info Desk
Networking Lounge
The Showroom as Digital Market Place
The list of participating companies could be viewed by clicking on the exhibition hall on the main website, and by clicking on the interested company, you can see the company’s products, descriptions, promotions, and homepage along with the image in the form of a booth. In addition, you can order them through chatting with the company officials. The price of the booth at the exhibition hall was originally between $2,000 and $4,000 depending on size, but the online exhibition sharply lowered the price to $999 and $1,800 depending on the number of images in the booth.
A virtual booth on 4th Ave, one of the show’s sponsors
Chat room where you can easily chat with exhibitors in the networking lounge
More than 60 Master Classes and Main Stage
Like the existing education event, the company provided the latest technical education such as haircutting, extension, coloring, wig, and natural hair care for barbers, beauty and stylists, and also prepared essential education on salon safety and disinfection to prevent corona. After the classes, there is a ‘review’ function that enables people to listen to all the classes again, which is an advantage only online classes have. On the main stage, demonstrations of products from major companies such as ‘BB Retail’, ‘BOLD HOLD’ and ‘NAIROBI’ could be seen as well.
Main screen of the education page
Muffen Moses’ Glueless ponytail education
Various Contests
The competition of the best talent in the industry competing for the prize money was conducted via live streaming. Barber, salon, mystery back styling, and makeup competitions were held. Each participant was judged by using a large viewing function. The show’s new contest, “Mystery Grab Bag Competition,” added to the fun with a 60-minute styling contest that required the participant to style hair by using only the products in the “mystery bags” provided by the organizers.
‘Mystery grab bag competition’ live streaming
‘Barbering competition’ participant Calvin Lowe
Business Trends and Meaning of Virtual Beauty Shows
This year, Korean and Chinese companies showed less participation, which means that there were more chemical product companies or natural hair care product companies owned by blacks. Perhaps it was because of the increase in online sellers, but one of the prominent companies had UPS as sponsors, and consulted on small business delivery solutions through online chat and video calls, and provided promotional codes to participants in all BB shows to provide discounts on overseas and domestic delivery.
BB Show, which generated more than $30 million in revenue each time, seems to have focused on supporting and supporting beauty industry workers and black owners rather than commercial purposes. A portion of the profits from the virtual beauty show will go to the “Black Beauty and Barber Relief Fund” established by Bronner Bros to help small business owners affected by the corona crisis.
UPS booth
