The weather may be iffy, but look for the topics to be hot when beauty industry leaders gather for the Personal Care Products Council annual meeting at the Ritz Carlton in Key Biscayne, Miami, next week.
Keynote speakers, who range from Olympian Katie Ledecky to presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, are just the tip of the iceberg.
“We have a new presidential administration coming in, and that helped us to craft an agenda for the meeting,” said Tom Myers, president of PCPC. “The aim is to touch the most critical issues that we face, such as AI, counterfeits, sustainability, and of course, trade and tariffs.”
Goodwin and Ledecky are among the marquee names, in addition to executives including L’Oréal USA chief executive officer David Greenberg and Kenvue’s Andrew Stanleick.
Other speakers include Chanel’s Émilie de Tramasure, BeautyStat’s Ron Robinson, author and journalist A’Lelia Bundles, Sol Rashidi and TikTok’s Ajay Salpekar.
Content-wise, the lineup has been designed to span many of the key issues facing the industry, as opposed to the more specialized events PCPC also hosts.
“We have a few great programs, like our Science Symposium and our Legal Conference, which are going on and very successful. But this event should be the one that brings everybody in,” Myers said.
The meeting is expected to dive right into the issues, starting with a panel on how shifting policy and regulatory frameworks could impact the industry. Among those changes, Myers anticipates, are with sunscreens.
“Manufacturers are doing away with a lot of UV filters, and the filters that are left, the handful in use, if they don’t start providing new safety data and animal data to the FDA, those are going to go away, too,” Myers said. “There would be a dramatic increase in skin cancer around the country, but we’re hoping clear minds will prevail.”
Long-term, the goal is to eliminate animal testing for UV filters and create different pathways to approval. “I would like to think this administration is open to the idea of improving the process by which UV filters get approved, because it seems nonsensical that there are frequently used ones around the world that aren’t here,” Myers said.
Sustainability is also top-of-mind for Myers, who sees it as intertwined with AI. “AI is going to be a huge opportunity for the industry and they’re already taking advantage. We’re seeing it used to optimize supply chains, to examine formulations and see if there are more sustainable ingredients,” he said. “[As an industry,] we’re looking at how we can be more sustainable in our development and our products and packaging.
“The bottom line is with AI, the potential upside for it is massive,” Myers said. “There may be things like ethical concerns, and privacy is a big issue. But I think everyone is going to be utilizing AI in some form or fashion going forward.”
That being said, Myers doesn’t think AI is the be-all, end-all. Pointing to the Estée Lauder Cos.’ partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and funding on research by Dr. Ana Jaklenec, Myers said, “It’s focused on biodegradability,” he continued. “People are starting to think not only about how they can leverage AI, but also be as innovative as possible.”
PCPC now has a separate board-level committee solely focused on sustainability, and the goal is to “share some of the best practices, looking at what companies like Unilever and L’Oréal are doing on the cutting edge, and amplifying their work,” said Myers. Every several years, PCPC puts together a sustainability report aggregating the progress made by members. “It’s not just a good story to tell, but we use it as talking points when we’re doing advocacy on Capitol Hill.”
The impact of tariffs will be felt, Myers said, who posited that beauty is better poised to handle them than other industries. “With regard to exports, we are a net exporter as an industry and we have a net surplus every year,” he said.
“There’s a lot of different factors, but we’ve been in business since 1894 and seen a lot of presidents and worked with a lot of administrations. This is a potential opportunity to engage with the administration and educate them about our industry,” he continued.
With the slurry of executive orders and changes to bureaucracy in the federal government, Myers is still “very committed to ensuring that MoCRA gets implemented. There’s concern about timing and how this is being rolled out, because our industry is very committed to making sure MoCRA gets implemented.”
