Image source @ vision china

Text | The forefront of entrepreneurship, author | Li Xiaofan, editor | Feng Yu

The beauty circle has changed.

A few years ago, China brand was hard to find in the world’s high-end makeup market, and most of China’s beauty market was occupied by brands such as the United States, Japan and South Korea. However, with the emergence and growth of domestic beauty players, this phenomenon has been reversed.

From large advertisements in elevators to celebrity endorsements and bloggers bringing goods, domestic beauty seems to have been riding the dust. More importantly, beauty has become a benchmark industry in the trend of new domestic products.

However, behind the heat wave, some industrial problems have gradually been exposed. On platforms such as Xiaohongshu and bilibili, many bloggers have given a "lightning protection guide" in the evaluation of domestic beauty products; There are even bloggers who point out that some domestic brands have plagiarism and imitation in design.

At the time when domestic beauty cosmetics were in full swing, a pot of cold water was pouring down.

About five years ago, when Guo Xianger just became a beauty blogger, he found that few beauty bloggers used domestic beauty products.

Now, only a few years have passed, and she has seen that most beauty bloggers have several domestic products. In her own videos, domestic brands appear in almost every issue.

Especially with the rise of a "new domestic product" trend in China, beauty cosmetics, as a representative industry, has been in the limelight for a while.Among the rising brands, the most dazzling ones are Perfect Diary and Huaxizi.

In 2017, the perfect diary was born. It took only two years, and the sales of its parent company reached 3.5 billion yuan. In the same year that Perfect Diary was established, Hua Xizi was born. In the same two years, its annual sales of Tmall also reached nearly 2 billion yuan.

In this year’s Tmall 618 makeup brand TOP10, Hua Xizi and Perfect Diary were ranked first and third respectively.

New domestic brands are emerging one after another. For example, in March 2020, a domestic skin care brand named PMPM was launched. According to public data, the GMV of the brand was 150,000 yuan in the month when it was launched, and after six months, the GMV increased by 100 times.

The amazing rise speed of domestic beauty cosmetics can’t help but make people stunned. "It is rare to see any international beauty brand that can achieve such a volume in a few years." Diu Diu, founder of Xinran Advertising and beauty blogger, told "the forefront of entrepreneurship".

Cutting-edge beauty cosmetics became popular overnight and quickly opened the market, which became the target that many domestic brands looked forward to. However, this speed of development has also led to the market gradually becoming impetuous.

On platforms such as Little Red Book and Tik Tok, some beauty bloggers pointed out that some products were not easy to use in makeup evaluation.

"To be honest, there is no makeup to satisfy me in the domestic products now." Senior beauty blogger "Luo Wangyu" is outspoken in the video.

The performance of some make-up products is not satisfactory. In Hua Xizi’s product evaluation, Luo Wangyu once fired at Hua Xizi’s "Loose Smoke Eyeliner" and "Loose Smoke Butterfly Feather Mascara (Slim Edition)". "The eyeliner is like a primary school student’s mark, and the eyelashes are caked and not long." He said in the video.

In addition to the product quality being spit out, there is still a more serious problem in the domestic beauty industry-brands may imitate or even copy each other.

Diu Diu revealed that some domestic brands of cosmetics or skin care products will find some mature foreign brands for 1:1 re-engraving. "At most, they change their LOGO and set up their own concepts."

On bilibili, the UP owner "Open-shelf King Boy" once released a video, taking stock of "copying" domestic brands of other beauty brands.

She mentioned in the video, for example, the outer packaging of a lipstick of NOVO is similar to YSL except for the LOGO, but the color number is quite different.

Figure/"Open King Boy" video screenshot

Some domestic beauty players not only copy foreign brands, but also have serious involution between domestic brands.

"susisu (domestic make-up brand) has launched a quicksand eye shadow tray, which is beautifully packaged and priced at 148 yuan in Taobao flagship store. A few days after the launch of this product, a number of products with almost the same appearance appeared on the market. " Diu diu means.

According to the rough statistics of "the forefront of entrepreneurship", in addition to susisu, there are at least six similar eye shadows on Taobao, and one of them is a Thai brand. Among these seven products, the cheapest one only costs 11.5 yuan. In addition, there are two products, but the eye shadow tray is changed from square to round, and the design has not changed much.

Figure/Taobao screenshot

Imitation, plagiarism, involution … It seems that the domestic beauty products that are running for their lives also need a pot of cold water to cool down.

Not only is the product extremely involuted, but the strong marketing attributes of the beauty industry also make traffic the lifeline of the product.

"If you have been exposed to cosmetics for a long time, you will see many helpless phenomena. It is the grandfather who has money to promote, standing at the top of the food chain, and all those who have no money to promote are buried under the iceberg." Little Red Book beauty blogger "Ollie Oris" said in his video.

At the moment when new brands are emerging one after another, in order to get out of the circle, brand owners have to spend some time on marketing. And some domestic beauty brands are well known to the public, and they really rely on high-frequency marketing.

"The frequency of domestic beauty advertisements is very high. There are several brands that have fixed cooperation with me. When new products are launched, they will be promoted. When they are frequent, there will be two or three advertisements a month." Guo Xianger said.

In marketing tactics, domestic beauty brands also show differences from international brands.

"International brands are well known to consumers. The main purpose of their marketing is to promote brand influence, so they will cooperate with celebrities, heads and other heavyweights to promote them." Diu diu said.

Domestic beauty brands are better at using "human sea tactics". "For example, some brands will even cooperate with more than 1,000 bloggers in a single month to promote their star products." Diu Diu introduced. "Many domestic brands don’t have too many requirements on the magnitude of KOL in the early stage of promotion. One is to save costs, and the other is that their popularity is not big enough, and they may not be able to cooperate with head bloggers and stars in the growth period."

The parent company of Perfect Diary, Yixian E-commerce, once stated in the prospectus that the company has cooperated with nearly 15,000 KOL with different popularity, including Li Jiaqi and Viya, among which more than 800 have more than 1 million followers.

However, domestic beauty cosmetics are gradually approaching international brands, and one obvious performance is to find celebrity endorsements.

In October 2020, Zhou Xun officially announced that it would become the global spokesperson of the perfect diary brand; In May of this year, Dilraba officially announced that it would become the global spokesperson of colorkey Ke Laqi brand …

There are also differences between domestic brands and international brands in the evaluation criteria of marketing effect. Different from international brands, which emphasize the subtle influence of marketing on consumers, domestic brands pay more attention to the immediate conversion rate, that is, the effect of bringing goods.

The most intuitive performance is that many bloggers have added shopping links or soft implants in their videos. When choosing KOL, the brand will also measure the data of its historical goods, and cooperate with bloggers with higher selective prices.

"Users have the habit of buying international brands and may consume them at any time, but for domestic products, if consumers don’t buy them today, they may not take the initiative to buy them in the future." Diu diu said.

In addition, the pricing of domestic brands is low, and the cost of trial and error for consumers is low, which also provides the possibility for brands to assess the instant conversion rate.

Overwhelming marketing seems to be the key password for the new brand to break the circle.Naturally, they also invest a lot in marketing. "As far as I know, there are no fewer than five domestic beauty brands with a marketing budget of over 100 million this year." Diu diu said.

Too frequent marketing may attract users’ disgust. "When bloggers on all platforms are pushing the same product, consumers will inevitably have rebellious psychology."

If the marketing investment is too much, the expenses for product research and development will naturally decrease. This has also led to some domestic beauty brands being called "marketing with heart and making products with feet" by the outside world.

Beauty brands are crazy about marketing, but do they make money?

It doesn’t seem to be.

Diu Diu said that the marketing expenses of most products often account for 50%-60%, including anchor commission, pure grass type marketing, etc., plus operation and maintenance, manpower, warehousing and other costs, so that the brand hardly makes any money.

But in order to gain a foothold in the market, marketing is both helpless and inevitable for the brand.

"I sometimes feel that some brands pay too much attention to marketing, but this is something that can’t be helped. As a person in the beauty industry, I know about new products through marketing, not to mention consumers. " Guo Xianger said.

"There are some very old cosmetics brands with good research and development capabilities and product quality, but the products are not hot." Diu Diu also noticed the influence of marketing on products.

There may be two reasons behind this, one is that the brand’s marketing ideas can’t keep up, and the second may be that there is no money to do marketing.

"Some brand new products are put on the shelves, and 500 to 1,000 talents are found for promotion at one time, while some traditional domestic brands hope for’ tap water’. However, the volume and volume of’ tap water’ obviously cannot compete with the pyramid promotion of new brands. There are still some old players who know to do marketing, but their ideas and styles are not fast enough, so they have been eliminated by the market in the wave of Internet e-commerce. " Diu diu said.

This makes it difficult for domestic brands to reach consumers without marketing. Insufficient marketing can’t stimulate the splash, and too much marketing will lead to consumer disgust. This is a difficult battle to control.

Another problem in front of domestic beauty cosmetics comes from consumers’ stereotyped cognition.

In the minds of many consumers, domestic brands are equated with "cheap prices", and few consumers are willing to look at the design and product development behind the products. This also leads to the brand’s lack of motivation to increase R&D costs in the short term.

Fortunately, in the domestic beauty industry full of thorns, there are also some products with both reputation and quality.

Guo Xianger once bought an eyebrow pencil with "khaki color" and one from 9.9 yuan. "The color and durability are good, and it will not agglomerate. The eyebrows drawn are well-rooted." She said.

She once compared the eyebrow pencil of "khaki color" with the eyebrow pencil of "Bei Lingfei", an American make-up brand, which cost more than 160 yuan. "I can’t see any difference by using these two eyebrows to brush the eyebrows on the left and right sides, and I even think the’ khaki color’ looks better."

Although some products have been vomited, domestic beauty may still be worthy of consumers’ patience."Even if it is an international brand, no product is perfect. For example, a lip glaze, if it is bright, it must be sticky; If it is matte, then I will accept it to a certain extent. " Guo Xiang said.

Surprisingly, the growth space of domestic beauty cosmetics is not limited to the domestic market, and brands such as Huaxizi, Perfect Diary, Zhiyouquan and Tangduo are all seeking to go to sea.

"In 2020, we began to make efforts to go to sea. By the end of May 2021, Perfect Diary had become the top cosmetics seller in Vietnam on the Shopee platform, the top cosmetics seller in Singapore and Malaysia, and the Top 1 in loose powder sales in the Philippine market." The person in charge of the perfect diary said.

Most domestic beauty brands set their first stop at sea in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries, and these products with the imprint of China are also very popular overseas.

"The concentric lock lipstick with China elements sold out quickly on the first day of its launch, and once entered the top three of the Japanese Amazon lipstick sales list." The relevant person in charge of Hua Xizi said.

There are also Japanese netizens who marvel at the West Lake Imprint Gift Box of Hua Xizi, inheriting the craft design of oriental aesthetics, and its related Twitter content was once on the Japanese Twitter hot search. "According to feedback from many users, our Miao Impression Gift Box has also triggered reverse purchasing by Japanese users, and the price has even been fired from 900 yuan to 2,000 yuan." The person in charge added.

Figure/Hua Xizi official (Hua Xizi concentric lock lipstick)

There is no denying that domestic beauty cosmetics are indeed immature, but users should also treat their achievements in a short time dialectically. There is no perfect person, and there is no perfect brand.

In the domestic beauty industry, giants and upstarts have emerged. But if you want to further expand your territory, players need to put out more chips.