What Are The Selling Points Of Chinese Cosmetics? Entrepreneurship Experience Behind Nine Local Brands

"Fall in love with big eyes, fall in love with Kazilan." In this advertisement at the end of the millennium sweeping the Chinese mainland, the Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai, who was still somewhat green at that time, told you directly how to make up is really fashionable. The "Up2U" (the makeup brand created by Avon for the local market in China), sung by both Chinese singing divas Stefanie Sun and Yaxuan Xiao, faded just after they were lit up.

In 2000, beauty brands may only have more money than others to invite stars to speak for them. But now, the UGC content generated through social media such as Little Red Book has another way to get ahead, and the "# Light of Chinese Goods" label is becoming more and more common.

"I think at this stage, this is more of a 'counter trend' attitude," said OIB.CHINA, a creative service and incubator for the beauty industry According to Wu Zhigang, the founder, "This generation (beauty brand) is not just domestic products. It can be called the 'light of domestic products' because it reflects the characteristics of many new generation consumers and makes people look bright. In fact, this is to meet the core of Generation Z consumers. In addition, e-commerce and the full supply chain connection provide a good possibility for brand innovation."

The local beauty makeup, which was born in the daily chemical industry in the 1970s, gradually took shape in the 1980s. Originating in the millennium, the first wave of local cosmetics brands such as Lanser, Dark Blue and Kazilan rose with their own special distribution channels. The second wave of local cosmetics brands, such as Mary Daijia, are focusing on word-of-mouth products and beginning to explore communication and content. Since the beginning of the 2010's, the composition of players entering the game has become more abundant. Not only group enterprises such as Shanghai Jiahua, Baiqiling, Shangmei, and Jialan have made more and more detailed cosmetics from skin care, but also celebrities such as Zhang Dayi, who rose from e-commerce in the early years, have begun to study how to "turn into reality" with cosmetics, and achieve sales breakthrough with Internet original brands such as Perfect Diary relying on social e-commerce traffic, All kinds of household life brands facing the mass market, such as Mingchuangyou or Alibaba Taobao Xinxuan, have also come to grab a share of the beauty market.

According to the data of China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) cited in the 2018 report of Hong Kong Trade and Development Council, as of the end of June 2018, there were about 3880 registered cosmetics companies with legal production qualifications in China. Most local cosmetics brands are concentrated in the middle and low end, and foreign or joint venture brands still occupy half of China's cosmetics market. However, in recent years, the rising trend of cosmetics category is obvious, and the online growth is faster than the physical growth. According to the sales ranking of all e-commerce channels of Tmall during the "Double 11" holiday in 2018 provided by the e-commerce research institute Star Map data, the beauty and personal care category achieved a sales growth of 117%, ranking the third in all category sales, of which the cosmetics category increased by 21.5%.

"The proportion of consumers who most often buy skin care cosmetics online will continue to grow from 7% in 2016 to 16% in 2017," explained Ni Xiang, vice president of Nielsen China, BoF Fashion Business Review

However, there is still a great disparity between Chinese and foreign brands in the value chain of the cosmetics industry. The production of cosmetics not only has a threshold (such as the R&D and quality control of the multi-color number of lipstick and base makeup), but also has another particularity - a little like fashion: it is not achieved by high repurchase rate, but also depends on whether it is accurate in fashion and attracts attention. However, the formulation research and development of creativity, trend and product efficacy are still firmly in the hands of foreign companies. Wu Zhigang believes that "the values and aesthetic values in the whole beauty field are created by foreign capital (brands)."

Many well-known foreign beauty brands always flash the name of the founder of the soul behind them, whether it is Frank Toskan, a makeup artist and photographer, or Frank Angelo (M · A · C), who runs a chain of hair salons, and Terry de Gunzburg (By Terry), a makeup expert who has gained fame in the industry and started his own business with the "YSL bright color pen", or Charlotte Tilbury, who is loved by fashion people. Like the fashion industry, the brand's strong personal characteristics and continuous output style expression stand at the top of the value industry chain.

China's local cosmetics brands, which are still in the development stage, except for a few star makeup artists who "realize" their personal aura into products and brands, most cosmetics companies started with strong technical strength, factory facilities, sales channels Terminal stores and traditional marketing to highlight the tight encirclement - rather than original and fresh personality expression and brand construction. "Local skin care and cosmetics have played a significant role in educating consumers, making more people use them, and thus benefiting local brands," Ni Yi continued, "but research shows that when shoppers make a purchase decision for cosmetics, brand is the first attribute to be considered, and most people prefer foreign brands, with relatively low preference for local brands."

The manufacturing strength and experience of the Chinese who have been in the processing and manufacturing industry for many years have reached the top, and they are naturally unwilling to stay at the lowest end of the industrial value chain. "The first generation brand is to master the channels and channels. The second generation brand has strong technical advantages in manufacturing specific products. The third generation brand relies on traffic, and content side operation has advantages to effectively communicate with consumers. In general, it is an evolution to move from the manufacturing side to the consumer (end), and closer to the user." Wu Zhigang explained.

"Chinese people still know more about what they want," he said. For example, attracting users and doing marketing in the Chinese market cannot be separated from China's unique Internet environment. Whether started online or offline, brands are now not only playing well in local omni channels, but more and more brands are talking about consumer behavior after 95 and 00, and benchmarking has created the incubator model of seed beauty, the company behind Kylie Cosmetics and KWW Beauty, the myth of global online celebrity beauty. According to Nielsen's Ni Yi, the common marketing methods of local cosmetics brands include social marketing, that is, star recommendation and topic marketing on social media platforms; Cross border marketing, such as IP cooperation, brand cross-border, etc; And offline physical stores combined with technology, entertainment and other elements.

"It's good that the last era can be used. It's good that consumers can become more beautiful in this era. The next era, I think, may be 10 years later, China will also make a global beauty brand that makes Chinese people proud." Wu Zhigang said, "Every era will have products of every era. In this era, you can promote Chinese people to use makeup, appreciate beauty and understand beauty, which is the core of this era. "

Here, BoF lists 9 local cosmetics brands and the companies behind them, which are titled "Light of Chinese Products".

carslan

Year of establishment: 2001

Tang Xilong, the founder and president, is the first local cosmetics entrepreneur to adopt star advertising campaign. From Cecilia Cheung, Jolin Tsai to Xiao Yaxuan, his influence on the industry is far-reaching. At the same time, in the view of the industry, the continuous success of the local cosmetics brand with the first distribution network and the first market share of CS channel is achieved through a wide range of distribution channels. Although faced with the problem of product iteration and slightly outdated image, from 2011 to 2015, Kazilan has been firmly seated at the top of local cosmetics.

Marie Dalgar

Year of establishment: 2006

As the first local cosmetics brand to enter Sephora in China, Mary Dega started her career as a contract manufacturer of mascara in her early years. Cui Xiaohong, the founder and art director, left the blue collar technical position in a lighting factory in Foshan to start a business together with her brother in the cosmetics product factory. Starting from a single star mascara, she built the brand into a domestic product cosmetics with the highest sales volume in Tmall from 2015 to 2017, which exists in entities such as "lipstick machine", flash stores and unmanned retail, Millennial beauty consumers connecting first tier and second tier cities. The parent company Chuangyuan Group launched the sister brand Yes! IC ， The minimalist packaging design, aesthetic style and advocacy value are close to the young consumers after the 1995's, and there are more possibilities for the unbounded makeup.

Mao Geping

Year of establishment: 2000

The representative works of this first generation star makeup artist in China, including the 1995 version of the TV drama Empress Wu Zetian, have created a film and television story for the cross age makeup completed by actor Liu Xiaoqing. The Wenzhou businessman's brand of the same name MGPIN (now renamed as Maogeping) includes two makeup lines: high-end positioning+direct marketing, mass positioning+distribution. Image design and makeup training school is also an important part of the business. Maogeping Cosmetics Co., Ltd. tried to rush to "IPO" in 2017 with the high gross margin of star makeup products such as star gloss powder, which sold for 690 yuan, but failed.

Perfect diary

Year of establishment: 2016

The brand entered the "100 million yuan club" on Tmall's "Double 11" Shopping Festival in 2018, and its business performance is impressive. By virtue of e-commerce channels and flow thinking, Huang Jinfeng, an MBA graduate of Harvard Business School who once served as a senior manager of the first generation "Taobao Brand" Royal Square, founded Guangzhou Yixian E-commerce Co., Ltd. in 2015, led a team skilled in marketing to achieve sales of 200 million within two years of the brand's establishment, becoming the brand ranking second in the sales volume of Tmall Beauty. The perfect diary of product innovation is always tailored according to the needs of fans. Recently, the first offline store was opened in Guangzhou to test new categories such as water masks and fragrances.

REC

Year of establishment: 2014

As far as the fashion attributes of cosmetics are concerned, it seems reasonable that REC brand incubated from the national chain cosmetics giant Guerlain Jaren Group should be transferred to the local fashion giant EPO Group, which owns MO&Co. and Edition10 (and Cai Ruqing, the chairman of Guerlain Jaren Group, is also Mr. Jin Ni, the founder of EPO Group). REC brand is currently operated by Shanghai Like Cosmetics Co., Ltd. In 2017, the first independent store opened in Shanghai. When interviewed by the industry media Cosmetics Daily, Cai Ruqing said at that time, "to prove that Guerlain beauty can not only do retail, but also do brand."

　　Hedone

Year of establishment: 2016

The company behind Hedone, the first famous nail sticker, is Shanghai Henai Industry. The first makeup series 1986 launched in 2018 was inspired by the 86 version of the domestic TV series Journey to the West, which was seen every day in the summer vacation. Qu Xinzhe, the founder of the brand, graduated from King's College of London and worked in L'Oreal, London. The team focused on the first small red book UGC word-of-mouth promotion and opinion leader marketing, to brand construction, visual image and content output (it is worth mentioning that the team also produced visual content for well-known brands such as YSL, By Terry, etc.). In 2017, Pengpai Capital and Sequoia Capital China Fund invested 3 million yuan in Shanghai Henai Industrial Co., Ltd. and launched the Pre-A round of financing.

Dark blue makeup

Year of establishment: 1999

Shanghai Shencai Cosmetics Co., Ltd.'s Dark Blue Cosmetics is a cosmetics brand for professional makeup artists, combining the artistic inspiration of the show and the middle and high-end price. Jin Yongzhe, the founder and makeup artist, first rose through portrait photography, wedding photo studios and other channels, and is a well-known name for professional makeup artist communities in the wedding industry, media and film industry. Later, the first department store was opened in 2002. Since then, the channel development has also focused on department stores and shopping malls. Since 2013, the CS channel represented by Tang Sancai has been deepened.

Lanser makeup

Year of establishment: 2006

When it comes to the traceability of the development of China's cosmetics industry, the Chaoshan region of Guangdong Province may not be able to get around. However, Zhou Zhaoyang, the founder of Lanser, created the first Chinese lipstick, called Yabang, among the "Chaoshan" cosmetics enterprises that are famous for washing products. Shantou Wanbang Group, founded by Zhou Zhaoyang in 1992, started from serving international brand OEM/ODM business (OEM/OEM), and is one of the largest cosmetics production and processing bases in the world in China. After entering the 2010s, Mr. Zhou, who has worked in the cosmetics industry for 27 years, gradually entrusted the group to his children, Zhou Yunjin and Zhou Yingchun. Lanser launched the "Light Makeup" series into the department store channel at the end of 2012, and recently it has mainly cooperated with Watsons through e-commerce channels.

　　Lina Choo

Year of establishment: 2018

Zhou Yi, a makeup artist and creative director who has studied Chinese fine brushwork for 15 years, hopes to use this to establish his own brand and let Chinese consumers "look up at the Chinese moon", so he sold his house in Beijing after years of hard work. As the first start-up fund of the new brand. Lina Choo is special in that the brand has chosen Beautyish, the overseas shopping platform of the North American cosmetics e-commerce. At present, it sells lipstick series with six colors, priced at $26, with an implicit "Chinese" design style.