China Is Experiencing The Rise of Domestic Cosmetic Brand

With the development of the economy and the improvement of people’s living standards, Chinese people’s consumption mindset has also changed, and the pursuit of beauty has become more and more significant. In the meantime, cosmetics have become a very important part of Chinese people’s daily life, especially women’s. With the advancement of consumption level, China’s cosmetic consumption market has a broad prospect of development.

In China’s cosmetics industry, foreign companies account for 80% of the market, while local companies account for only 20%, with almost all of the top-ranked cosmetic companies being foreign-owned. Therefore, local cosmetic brands have a long way to go in order to achieve their unique competitive advantage in a market environment where foreign cosmetic brands have the lion’s share. However, with the rise of the “national cosmetic tide”, many domestic cosmetic brands have established a good corporate image and are working hard to build their brand value. The development process of domestic cosmetics has both opportunities and challenges.

A Surge of the popularity of Chinese Cosmetic Product

In recent years, some Chinese brands and products have gradually entered the public’s view and started a “national product trend” in the consumer market, which is mainly led by the young people of “Generation Z”. They have started to pay attention to Chinese products related to traditional culture or representing Chinese culture.

Take Chinese domestic cosmetic brands as an example, among which “Huaxizi” has put forward the slogan of “Oriental makeup, with flowers for makeup”. The inner value of its product design is related to its slogan. There is also the “perfect diary” to create affordable makeup and so on, in the “national product tide” has its own exclusive positioning, so that these domestic cosmetics brands time and again set off a wave of purchase.

The cosmetics market in China is growing at an average annual rate of 23.8%, with the highest year reaching 41%, and the cosmetics market in China has a huge development space and potential. In recent years, China’s comprehensive strength has been increasing, and with the rise of the “national product tide”, Chinese cosmetics brands are increasingly sought after by the Chinese people. At the same time, the development of technology and the arrival of the new media era have provided Chinese cosmetic companies with more marketing methods and marketing tools, giving rise to the vigorous vitality of domestic cosmetics.

Multi-channels to increase brands’ pubic recognition

Since 2017, Huaxizi has been gradually building to attract traffic so as to achieve accurate marketing, mainly including WeChat service accounts, WeChat mini-program mall, video account, membership and WeChat enterprise account. Through user co-creation and participatory development, brands can set up official accounts, output customized content, and conducts precise marketing to users of different platforms and circles.

Through the WeChat mini-program “Huaxizi Experience Officer”, Huaxizi selects a number of experience officers to try on the newly developed products and give feedback, so that the subsequent development of the products can be completed and the new products can be promoted in an invisible way. The WeChat official account of Huaxizi aggregates the membership mall and the official flagship store entrance, where users can join the membership to receive points, and receive points through sign-in, lottery, etc., and can exchange the points for prizes in the mall. Through membership activities Huaxizi can further enhance user stickiness. By issuing vouchers and other ways to guide customers into the official mall to purchase, Huaxizi attract a large number of consumers.

Huaxizi sell products through live-streaming in many platforms like Tmall, Taobao, Douyin/TikTok and other platforms. In 2020, Li Jiaqi ( known as the “King of Lipstick” in China, also known as Austin Li, is the best salesman of beauty products in China) broadcast live 71 times for Huaxizi throughout the year. In “618”, “Chinese Valentine’s Day” and “Double Eleven” shopping festivals, Li Jiaqi contributed almost 70% of the sales of Huaxizi, with a turnover of 150 million yuan in 618, ranking first. From March 2020 to the present, Huaxizi also conducts live-streaming itself every day, with a monthly average of more than 50 self broadcast. The main live-streamers create topics, professional reviews, beauty tutorials and other methods to impress users and improve brand awareness and recognition.

Through multi-dimensional content marketing, Huaxizi is able to create a hit through ou Chinese cosmetic circle. The marketing method is mainly through composition testing, lipstick color testing, professional reviews, beauty tutorials and other aspects of publicity, promoting products in Tiktok, Kuaishou, Weibo, Bilibili, Little Red Book and other platforms to achieve the goal of marketing.

Harnessing social media to expand popularity and accumulate power

Perfect Diary chose Little Red Book as its main battlefield for product promotion. At the beginning of 2022, the official website of Perfect Diary had 2.036 million fans, 5.335 million likes and collections, and the official self-produced notes had  exceeded 1,000, which were wildly popular. And its simple and advanced design style were also welcomed by the majority of users. There are 340,000+ other notes. In addition to the official self-produced notes, other sources of notes include celebrity promotion, like Ouyang Nana, Lin Yun and other celebrities’ real-name recommendations. Leveraging KOL promotion, Perfect Diary invites many KOLs to write and publish original notes, conduct product reviews and beauty tutorials to guide consumers to understand and buy its products through hands-on practice. Most of the users on Xiaohongshu share their lives and goodies recommendations, and ordinary people’s popular  recommendations are easy to resonate with consumers and enhance the brand image.

At the beginning of 2022, Perfect Diary’s official Weibo has 588,000 followers, and the content sent by Weibo mainly includes product information, event promotion, lottery interaction, etc. Through topic releases, many celebrities and KOLs participate in the interaction. Perfect Diary look for young and personalized celebrity spokespersons, bringing the fan effect to the extreme and making consumers feel one step closer to their idols. Perfect Diary keeps updating through Weibo, publishing high-quality content and interacting with fans in real time to solidify its fan base.

On the Douyin(Chinese version of TikTok) platform, the official account of Perfect Diary has 5.426 million fans and 34.031 million likes as of January 2022, and has released 9,957 videos since its first entry into Douyin on July 20, 2018. In this platform, it mainly releases some new product previews, makeup teaching videos, product promotion and implantation through plot story mini-videos, etc., and places links to Taobao and Tmall products in the video viewing interface to expand sales channels. Bilibili as the first of the top ten APPs that young users like, more than 80% of the users are young people, they are energetic, easy to accept new things, and have a certain economic base and willing to pay for Chinese cosmetics. The beauty field of Bilibili has been developing, cultivating its own beauty influencers, and is popular among students and newcomers to the workplace by promoting inexpensive products.

Some insights

Consumer experience plays a vital role in the development of products, especially for emerging Chinese cosmetic brands. The advent of the new media era has increased the number of channels for information collection and dissemination. Chinese cosmetic brands will allow users to widely participate in the experience through short videos, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu and other platform activities, and then share their own use experience. In the meantime, they are impressed by other products. In this way, these brands achieve word-of-mouth marketing through consumer-to-consumer communication, allowing consumers to participate in product development and improving consumer product satisfaction.