On 19 November 2025 at the Guangzhou Baiyun International Conference Centre, the Personal Care Technology (PCT) Convention took place under the banner “Technology Empowering Beauty”. Over 10 theme-forums, a 7,000 m² exhibition floor, 260+ exhibitors and 150+ industry leaders gathered to examine advances in R&D, formulation, safety evaluation and export opportunities.

During the forum, TMO Group’s Business Director, Jing Zhou, delivered a presentation titled “eCommerce Data as a Lens on Southeast Asia’s Beauty Export Trends”, aligning TMO’s data-driven perspective with opportunities in the region.

For the last 2 years, TMO Group has been helping brands explore and successfully enter the SEA market with custom data intelligence and market strategy.

Opportunities for Global Brands in SEA's Beauty and Skincare Market

Based on Statista projections, Southeast Asia’s beauty and personal-care market is positioned for sustained expansion from 2024 through 2030. By 2025, the sector is expected to surpass USD 36.14 billion in value. Over the medium term, the region is forecast to maintain steady growth, driven by rising purchasing power, diversified demand patterns and a surge of new-to-category consumers. These dynamics are reshaping the competitive landscape and elevating the importance of data-led market entry strategies for global brands targeting Southeast Asia.

In this context, TMO's keynote speech unpacked growth hotspots across Southeast Asian markets, category-level demand signals, brand-performance trajectories and formulation-driven product opportunities. Content centered on how to leverage transactional data to calibrate market prioritisations, product portfolio design and competitive positioning.

Leveraging eCommerce sales data from TMO Group’s Market Insider platform, which captures SKU-level sales data across Shopee and Lazada in all major Southeast Asian markets, the analysis delivered three core takeaways:

1. Market Attractiveness: Southeast Asia’s skincare and cosmetics landscape continues to expand, with recurring capacity for cross-border brand penetration. Country-level divergence remains material, reinforcing the need for targeted go-to-market models rather than uniform regional rollout.
2. Category & Brand Dynamics: Moisturizers, serums and sunscreens lead skincare growth; foundation and eye makeup dominate color cosmetics. Global players such as La Roche-Posay, Olay and NARS retain category leadership, though regionally emergent and China-exported brands (for example SKINTIFIC and Glad2Glow) are accelerating share gains.
3. Implications for Brand Strategy: Brands evaluating Southeast Asia should anchor their roadmap on data-validated category hotspots, localization levers and structural differences in consumer culture and digital-commerce behavior. Market Insider supports this by delivering granular evidence for market selection, SKU curation, pricing corridors and messaging adaptation.

The 2025 PCT Personal Care Technology Summit and Exhibition convened an exceptionally strong roster of global and regional players. Representatives from LVMH, Eurofins, Intertek, SGS, Phyt’s France, and multiple leading platform ecosystems participated across a range of parallel forums. Subject-matter experts delivered insights on R&D innovation, formulation trends, compliance, digital enablement and the evolving dynamics of cross-border beauty.

TMO offers Marketplace Intelligence Services that help global brands localize and compete smarter in Southeast Asia.

Alongside TMO's contribution, the broader program covered frontier topics such as biotechnology-driven formulation design, advancements in safety evaluation, lipid-based delivery systems, dermocosmetic application scenarios, microbiome-oriented innovation and private-domain engagement models. The sessions collectively enabled attendees to align their strategic priorities with fast-moving shifts in global beauty R&D and commercial operations.

TMO's Strategic Recommendations for Brands Targeting Southeast Asia

Drawing on Market Insider’s cross-border eCommerce data and field observations, TMO Group outlined several operational priorities for beauty and skincare brands evaluating Southeast Asia’s export opportunity:

1. Validate market entry through category-level demand signals: Moisturisers, serums, sunscreens and specialty treatments continue to demonstrate sustained traction across Southeast Asia. Category fragmentation is high. Consumer conversion is shaped by functional claims, ingredients, texture preferences and value-for-money expectations. Brands should deploy data-led screening before scaling.
2. Benchmark the competitive field with a platform-level lens: Shopee and Lazada remain the dominant sales ecosystems and offer visibility into real competitive dynamics. Market Insider indicates that global incumbents such as Olay, La Roche-Posay and NARS still command strong authority, but China-exported and regional new-gen brands are accelerating at disproportionate growth rates, reshaping the hierarchy.
3. Strengthen localisation across product and brand experience: Southeast Asian consumers exhibit distinct climate-driven skincare needs, content-consumption habits and cultural affinities. Brands that localise formulation attributes, benefit claims, messaging and channel operations outperform those relying on a direct transplant of the China or Western playbook.
4. Leverage China’s innovation momentum as an export advantage: Chinese beauty brands entering Southeast Asia (particularly SKINTIFIC and Glad2Glow) benefit from strong value-to-performance ratios, rapid product iteration cycles and competitive positioning in sensitive-skin and barrier-repair segments. Global players can adopt similar innovation cadences to defend share.

Market Insider: Data-Driven Market Potential Assessment for Southeast Asia

Across Southeast Asia, each country presents a distinct category mix and a fast-changing pattern of breakout products. For brands planning to expand into the region or for those already operating locally and evaluating which markets align best with their product portfolio, real-time eCommerce sales intelligence can significantly enhance decision quality.

TMO Group has spent years building deep analytical coverage of Southeast Asia’s digital commerce environment. The insights shared during the PCT presentation were powered by Market Insider, TMO Group’s proprietary data platform that consolidates multi-country sales data from the region’s two dominant marketplaces, Shopee and Lazada.

Market Insider spans Beauty, Skincare, Health & Wellness, Food & Beverage, Home Appliances, Sports & Outdoor, Mother & Baby and Pet Care. The platform provides comprehensive category snapshots, brand-level analytics and SKU-level tracing across the entire competitive field, enabling brands to monitor emerging trends, assess competitive pressure and validate market-entry strategies with precision.

TMO's Market Insider is a paid enterprise-level data platform. Schedule a Market Insider Demo and discover how sales performance insights can guide your next move.