C-beauty brands’ secrets to success report

Download our report on C-beauty brands’ market strategies

The beauty sector in China developed steadily in recent years, but most notably, has been the rise of C-beauty brands. China had become the world’s second largest beauty market in 2019. The sales of skincare products accounted for more than half of the beauty market in China. The total retail sales of the beauty sector in China reached 299 billion RMB in 2019.

This China beauty market report was created in partnership with Double V. Consulting.

The beauty market was hit hard by COVID-19, but quickly recovered, annual beauty sales only slightly decreased. Cosmetics’ sales volume in China declined by 29.9% in February 2020 compared with the same period in 2019. However it had recovered by April. During the outbreak, people consumed and talked more about skincare products than cosmetics.

As domestic Chinese beauty brands are now in the spotlight of China’s resilient beauty market, this report details the market strategies of four top C-beauty brands.

These four top C-beauty brands include

• Perfect Diary
• Florasis
• HomeFacial Pro
• Winona

Marketing strategies employed by these C-beauty brands include

• Private traffic, which is funneling consumer traffic to platforms where brands have more control over the messages and data, such as WeChat groups managed by virtual KOCs.
• Live-streaming, including collaborations with KOLs but also featuring more authoritative figures such as dermatologists.
• KOL and KOC marketing, through live-streaming and social media posts
• Targeting “skintellectuals” through ingredient-based marketing and scientific messaging.
• Co-branding with IP from a variety of industries, such as national monuments and KOLs pets.
• Leveraging traditional Chinese elements, colors, and other aspects of Guochao marketing in product packaging.

Important stats for rising C-beauty brands

• While C-beauty brands have gained more recent momentum, foreign cosmetics brands have historically taken a larger market share; in 2018 they took 70% of the cosmetics market.
• As of 2020, seven of the ten top beauty brands in China are domestic.
• 54% of beauty sales in China were in the skincare category in 2020
• The compound annual growth rate of the beauty sector in China from 2015 to 2019 was 10%.

In addition to the Chinese market, many Chinese beauty brands are now going global

Read about the sudden success of Florasis abroad, and Perfect Diary’s market strategy in the west.

See the full report on market strategies of rising C-beauty brands

Learn even more about the C-beauty market from our Daxue Talks interviews with Miro Li

Subscribe to Daxue Talks

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