General Overview of the Cosmetic Distribution in China
With the openness and revolution of new China, more and more foreign cosmetic brands are introduced into Chinese market. Thanks to the special operating strategy, these companies gain more competition advantages than the other domestic cosmetic companies. The foreign companies include Procter & Gamble, Avon, Amway, Johnson &Johnson from the USA, Christian Dior from France, L’Oreal from France, Shiseido from Japan, Koss and so on. These joint-capital companies have very good brand reputation and develop rapidly recently. The total output value of these companies have reached 10 bilion Yuan.
Traditional retail: Sephora(France), SASA (Hong Kong)
The top two cosmetic giants in China now are Sephora from France and SASA from Hong Kong. Sephora is a chain of cosmetics stores founded in Paris in 1973 and acquired by French conglomerate LVMH in 1997. It offers beauty products including makeup, skincare, fragrance, haircare, bath and body products. SASA is a Hong Kong beauty shop founded in 1978 and listing on the capital market in 1997. There are more than 600 brands including skin care products perfume, makeup products, hair care products and so on.
Online retail: JUMEI.com, Lefaso.com, Sasa.com
Recently, many online cosmetic retailers are developing quickly such as JUMEI.com, Lefaso.com, Sasa.com and so on. Jumei was called MEITUAN in the past. It is the largest online cosmetic store in China now, founded by CHEN Ou, LIU Hui, DAI Yusen in 2010. The world famous brands sold in China include Lancome, Versace, Clinique, Mary Kay, Estee Lauder and so on. They provide customers qualified goods with a relatively lower price compared with goods sold in physical stores. Like JUMEI.com, Lefaso is another popular cosmetic online retailer in China. It provides not only all kinds of cosmetic products but also some online forums and interesting information on cosmetics to customers of different types.
Amy Wang about Retail in China
