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This is the final day of Girls’ Day Out, the annual three-day fashion and beauty show that has been staged at the SECC since 2009. Over the weekend it was expected to attract 18,000 people; at times on Sunday it felt as though they were all here at once, such was the press of people in the aisles. There are more than 200 exhibitors, selling everything from beauty treatments and fragrances to fashions, gin, vodka, candles and body art. Cupcakes, too. Facial glitter is everywhere, on girls and women of all ages; one male stallholder even has a full glittery beard. The cocktail and prosecco bars are busy, as is the section that offers afternoon teas. The place is rammed.

Grant, the 50-year-old managing director of the Glasgow-based organisers, PSP Media Group, had earlier mentioned something about the show “being, dare I say it, very much a man-free zone.” Then again, the clue is in the title. There are a few men here, but not many. The GDO Hunks are probably the most visible; there’s a collective ‘ooh’ from the audience when, during one dance routine, they, as one, whip off their shirts to reveal more chiselled torsos. “They tend to go down rather well,” observed Grant.

There’s a long queue for one particular stand: on it is none other than Calum Best, son of George, who is signing copies of his new book. He came here on his own initiative, and he has been here, on and off, since Friday: on Sunday I lost count of the number of photographs taken of him by fans. In many cases, they handed him their phones and stood close to him for a selfie.

“We looked at the market and saw there was a niche for a show that brought together a great array of exhibitors and retailers and linking into that west of Scotland psyche,” says Grant, when asked how the show began. “What is a girls’ day out? Get the mum, get the daughter, get the grandmother, get them all together; where else can they maybe go and see more than 200 exhibitors in one place? And then we mix that in with a little entertainment, and give it all a variety that you probably can’t see on the High Street.” The bottom line, he says, is that girls just love a good day out.

Back in 2009, PSP Media had already had experience with exhibitions via the Scottish Golf Show, “and at that point we also published No. 1 magazine”, Grant says, “so we had something of an insight into that market.” The very first GDO was held in a small, 5,000 square metre hall at the SECC, and 9,000 people traipsed through the doors; now it occupies 10,000 square metres in Hall 4 (the setting, of course, for so many high-profile concerts in the SECC’s past), and the audience has doubled in size.

“It’s a good date for the diary as we always have it at the tail-end of November, just as we’re moving into December and Christmas-time. It’s also a good time for the girls to let their hair down and for them to have a good day out themselves before they start focusing on the build-up to Christmas,” Grant adds. The customers are mainly from within a 90-minute radius of the venue but it isn’t unknown for people to come from Aberdeen, Inverness or the Borders to make a weekend of it.

The health and beaity market certainly seems to be irrepressibly buoyant. “We’ve always had a wide range of exhibitors right across the women’s market - health, beauty, lifestyle, and those sectors sub-divide down into so many others,” Grant tells me.

The facts back him up. Just a month ago the Talking Retail online news site, quoting research by analytics company GlobalData, said the UK health and beauty market is expected to reach £26.7bn by 2022. Health and beauty will actually be the fastest-growing sector over the next five years, driven by our “looks-obsessed culture.” Skincare was tipped to be the fastest growing subsector between now and 2022, fuelled in part by “product innovation in both the mass and premium markets.” Skin preparation products such as masks, serums and primers are expected to outperform, the report added.

Lest you be in any doubt about the enduring popularity of it all, Kate Ormrod, lead analyst at GlobalData, was quoted as saying: “Consumer appetite for new cult products is expected to grow over the next five years, providing retailers and brands with license to push the boundaries and introduce new innovative items to their ranges to drive impulse purchases and spend per head.”

Fragrances continue to be big sellers, too. It’s estimated that perfume sales are worth £1.5 billion every year to UK retailers - even if, as The Guardian noted in September, growth in recent years “has only been maintained by manufacturers hiking prices and well-heeled shoppers trading up to expensive products ...” Celebrity-endorsed fragrances command a big share of the market. In just one day recently, Kim Kardashian West reportedly sold $10 million worth of her new perfume, Crystal Gardenia - a figure that, according to W, the fashion, film and art online site, surpassed industry records by other global beauty powerhouses.

Walk round a show that specialises in fashion and beauty and there are certain names that leap out at you: Benefit, Fake Bake, Urban Decay - though others are less familiar - to the untutored male visitor, at any rate. At GDO lots of women were having their eyebrows and nails done, or else receiving massages.”Revitalise your eyes with negative ions,” reads one attention-grabbing large sign. A woman in a black T-shirt lay flat on her back on a bed, having what was advertised as an LED face mask.

At the Blue Fusion stand, a handful of young women sat studying their phones, their mouths clamped around the business end of an elegantly curving tube. It was a striking, unexpected sight, like something out of a sci-fi film: closer examination revealed that it was actually a teeth-whitening process.

A short walk away from the teeth-whitening tubes was a stand, curtained off, in which Gypsy Margaret Lee offered her services in “palmistry, clairvoyance, crystal reading”. There you have it: the defiantly traditional cheek by jowl with the cutting-edge new.

In the production office off Hall 4, Vairi Smith, PSP’s Partnerships & Customer Insight Manager, talks about the work that has gone into the show. The planning had gone on all year, and the team was on-site at Hall 4 for almost a week up until close of play last night, Monday; and it was only last Thursday that the exhibitors began arriving, she says.

Smith herself attended GDO for the last three years and only joined PSP in the last six months. “It’s quite different seeing it from behind the scenes rather than as a customer,”she says; her own favourite part was always the fashion show, “as it’s a chance to see the latest trends and get ideas for what your Christmas party outfit is going to be.” The show “has been a bit of a phenomenon since 2009, as it continues to get bigger and bigger”. She cites the exhibitors, the fashion show, the presence of global ambassadors from Benefit doing make-up demonstrations. It is, she adds, a good day out, the chance to do Christmas shopping, without the intrusion of the unpredictable Glasgow winter weather.

By now it’s 3.40pm and Smith is hoping to get a late lunch, I take one last look at Hall 4. There are less than 90 minutes to go before the doors close but the crowds seem disinclined to call it a day.