AN INDUSTRIALIST LOOKS AT THE COSMETIC INDUSTRY 657 with a higher grade civil servant, but we seem to have lost the right that we so successfully fought for, to direct ministerial contact, which enables you to deal with what a government is thinking when it is thinking it, instead of having the frustration of trying to alter it after it has done it. One good thing has happened: your Society has been formed and you work in close co-operation with the trade association. It is not like the days in the 40's when the industry was fighting like hell to maintain individuality of product and, at the same time, through the back door, a group of chemists were recommending to the government of the day that there should be pool cosmetics controlled by a scientific board made up of their members. It was a pity in a way that the trade and the Board of Trade discontinued the use of the Board of Trade Advisory Council. Maybe one day it will come back. It would not be amiss here to mention some of your troubles during this period. You were not only plagued by shortages of good raw materiMs, but there was also a tremendous decline in the standards of packaging materials. We had the scarcity of good perfumery materiMs, the phony Otto of Rose, the grey talc, the shortage of oils and waxes, the cardboard or wooden or Cellophane lipstick containers and the bottles - yes, I must mention them. The standard of glass containers was already low before the war, but it dropped even further when amber glass replaced opal. You must remember the jam-jar quality glass, greenish or strawish in colour, full of air bubbles, with uneven thickness distribution, the alkalinity of which produced precipitation in most clear lotions. I would think it is true to say that a non-returnable mineral water bottle today is far superior in every respect to the bottles being used for expensive lotions in the $0's and 40's. Let me here again pay credit, mainly to America, for the insistence on quality control, which sometimes seemed to suppliers unnecessarily harsh, but which was forced upon them. On reflection, we had to agree that such quality control was overdue and vitally necessary, and resulted in improved standards of packaging materials. No longer do people have to take what the suppliers in the 30's called "a good commercial match". But still the industry progressed and it was now on the threshold of what I call the Inflationary, or should I say Complacency Period, the 50's. There was, as you can see, a terrific stride forward in this decade. Full employment, expanding markets, higher standards of living, all meant increasing volume for the trade. Technological advances opened new aven- ueq• the television medium gave greater impact to advertising, and the male

658 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS population had now been softened up to receive willingly the many pro- ducts prepared especially for it. I suppose eventually that the male deodorants and pre- and after-shave lotions will be considered a necessity and will figure, therefore, in the cost of living index. Eye cosmetics took off, crude soap bases were dropped and Factor's Eyelash make-up was no longer known as Factor's Rimmell. The aerosol age had also dawned and rapid strides were made because of this new method of dispensing the industry's products. There was the complete elimination of machine permanent waving, the rise and fall of packeted home permanent waving, and the advent of many and vast ranges of hair preparations and lacquers. The industry had now passed out of the "natural look" phase and had become part of the fashion indus- try. It was no longer a question of facial colour harmony, but rather of spring and autumn fashion shade promotion. Fashion houses were getting on the cosmetic band-wagon. Direct selling to the consumer, poo pooed by the pundits in the 40's, was about to become a very big part of the business and cosmetics were now being made for the whole body and not just for the pretty face. The sad thing about this era was that the entrepreneurs were on their way out. The original personalities were decreasing in number nepotism perpetrated by the original pioneers began to take its toll. There had been little or no thought given to the general training of dedicated "follow-up" management and, as a consequence, we see in the 50's and 60's a gradual elimination of the entrepreneurial personalities and the creation of the professional management cult, reaching the stage when that new Merlin of modern business, the marketing man, comes completely into his devious own. In the 30's, it was Radio Luxembourg in the 60's, which I call the Conglomerate era, it is television, with fantastic amounts spent on location with glorious "birds". But the industry still progressed, this time with the personalities for the most part gone, and the results of their nepotism and neglect of follow-through management laying it wide open to the avaricious eyes of the pharmaceutical industry, or the financial wizards of Wall Street. This is why I call the 60's the Conglomerate period. The industry is now a marketing man's dream. It is glamorous, its products a necessity as well as a luxury, its growth potentially still great and its profitability rewarding. But the number of concerns in it is decreas- ing. Go-ahead cosmetic empires are creating new competitive ranges under different names, and even different factories, to embrace the whole "wealth