Exhibition Stand Builder for Making Cosmetics in Milan

Making Cosmetics 2026 runs 25–26 November 2026 at Allianz MiCo, the Milano Convention Centre, entering at Gate 4 and Gate 5 on Viale L. Scarampo in Milan. It is organised annually by Step Exhibitions with Valor Events, and the nutraceutical event in-Vitality runs alongside it under the same roof.

From €4,500 to around €26,000 for the sizes most exhibitors take here. A 9 m² modular sits at €4,100–€8,700 and an 18 m² at €4,800–€10,100. A 24 m² custom stand with a working counter and closed sample store is typically €11,500–€15,000, and a 36 m² with a seated technical area €15,000–€19,000. Larger premium builds start around €34,000.

Three things. The floor space rental, which is between you and the organiser. Venue services — electrical supply, rigging, waste removal — which are ordered from and billed by Allianz MiCo. And extras such as AV beyond the listed package, furniture beyond the standard set, refrigeration, catering, and staffing during the show.

The organiser puts the 2026 edition at 194 exhibitors across 4,345 m² of allocated space. Divided out, that is an average stand of a little over 22 m², which is a useful benchmark when you are deciding how much floor to take.

Most of this floor sits under 30 m². Nine to twelve square metres suits scheduled meetings and sample handover. Eighteen to twenty-four is the workhorse size — a real sampling counter, a sample wall, closed storage and three people without collisions. Go above thirty-six only if you need a genuinely semi-private seated area or you are showing equipment.

There is no customs procedure to handle. Germany and Italy are both inside the EU customs union, so the stand moves as an intra-EU consignment with no clearance and no carnet. The complication on this route is not customs, it is the Alpine pass and Milan's vehicle access rules.

We route over the Brenner by default. It keeps the load inside the EU the whole way through Austria and down past Verona. The Gotthard is shorter but transits Switzerland, which sits outside the EU customs union, so the consignment would move under a transit procedure and pick up the Swiss heavy-vehicle charge and Swiss night and Sunday driving restrictions. A predictable Brenner delay is easier to schedule around.

There can be. Allianz MiCo is in the Portello district, inside Milan's Area B low-emission zone, which restricts older diesel commercial vehicles across most of the city on weekdays. We check the vehicle's emission class against the current rules before the load is booked. It is a straightforward thing to get right in advance and an expensive thing to discover on build-up morning.

Yes, as an addition rather than as standard. Tell us at brief stage what needs to stay cool and in what volume, because a chilled unit needs a dedicated power supply ordered from the venue and a position in the floor build. Retro-fitting it after the design is drawn usually means it ends up somewhere visible.

More than most first-time exhibitors estimate. Give us the number of cartons and the total volume in litres and we will size closed lower storage to it — with a real door, not an open shelf behind a curtain. Two hundred sample jars is a genuinely heavy consignment and it needs somewhere to live for two days.

Both, in the right proportion. The organiser positions this as Italy's reference event for the ingredients and formulation supply chain, and much of the technical audience works in Italian day to day even where the vocabulary is English. You do not need to translate the whole back wall — translate the two or three lines that say what the material is and what it does.

Twenty-eight days is the working minimum from approved design to installed stand. For a late-November show that means starting the design conversation in September at the latest. Earlier is better here than at most shows, because the Italian build-up week runs into a period when Alpine freight capacity is already tight.

For the structure, usually yes. What cannot be compressed is the venue services order — electrical supply has a fixed deadline that no contractor can move — and the freight slot over the Brenner, which is booked rather than improvised. If you are late, tell us which of the two is the binding constraint and we will work backwards from it.

Yes, if it is built on a system frame. We store it in Frankfurt and refresh the graphics for the following November. On an annual ingredients show that is the sensible pattern — the structure holds up fine for years while the product story and the regulatory position move every twelve months.

Yes, and we encourage it. The workshop is about fifteen minutes from Frankfurt airport. You see the stand fully assembled, check the counter height and the sample-wall layout against the jars you will actually bring, and meet the crew who will install it in Milan.

Vector files for logos and certification marks, and high-resolution images at around 150 dpi at final size. For this show, send the INCI names and any regulatory claim text as live text rather than baked into an image — technical copy on an ingredients stand tends to get revised late, and live text is cheap to change.

On 18 m², two or three. On 24 m² with active sampling, three or four — someone has to stay at the counter while another person works the aisle. Technical conversations here run long, so understaffing shows up faster than it would at a consumer show. Remember that a share of your visitors will be in sessions for part of each day.

Mainly it affects logistics rather than design. Two events sharing a roof means build-up and dismantle traffic is shared, so dock slots and lift access are tighter than the exhibitor count alone suggests. It also means some visitors are crossing between the two floors, which is an argument for making your positioning legible at a glance from the aisle.

Yes — Cosmopack in Bologna, in-cosmetics Global, Vitafoods Europe and Luxe Pack among others, alongside a full German and French calendar. Same crew, same Frankfurt workshop. If you exhibit at more than one of these in a year, we plan the builds together and reuse the frame.

Send your stand size, your position if you have it, your sample carton count, and whether anything needs power or refrigeration. You will get a free 3D design and a fully itemised quote, with the Brenner freight leg and the two-day build window costed rather than assumed.