Introduction

The market for cosmetics and skin-care products in Germany is where Tradition meets Progress. For over a century and a half, skin-care preparations – such as creams, masks, lotions and specialty treatments – have positioned their value around use of plants, roots and blossoms.

For decades, cosmetics makers from Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Saarland and elsewhere have been accumulating a knowledge base, which relies on wielding the toning power of ingredients available at nature, and implementing them in consumer products aimed for topical skin care.

It is now becoming more and more globally recognized that the most convincing products are the ones that are able to link between those natural ingredients, to empiric scientific research, which demonstrates the mechanism of action behind nature.

The German cosmetics industry has positioned itself as third largest in the world, in terms of market size and export output. It has done so also by laying down an infrastructure of scientific substantiation, for efficacy claims made about consumer products. Clear guidelines measure the efficacy of an ingredient.