Under the haze of the epidemic, the beauty track did not stop, but accelerated the layout and licensing.
On May 8, L’Oreal Group announced the establishment of Shanghai meizifang Investment Co., Ltd., the first investment company in China, and settled in Dongfang Meigu, Fengxian District, Shanghai. Two days later, Shiseido followed suit and established Xiamen ziyue equity investment partnership.
It is self-evident that beauty giants who have been deeply involved in the Chinese market for many years have entered the field of investment and boosted market confidence. Behind the two major events in succession, it also reflects that China’s beauty industry is moving from individual operation to integration and win-win.
In the early years, in order to open the Chinese market, the localization of international brands was inseparable from heavy money and money burning. For example, Shiseido has created brands such as Za Jirui, Bomei and Youlai for local people, which has become the first lesson of skin care and beauty for many post-80s women; L’Oreal Group pocketed domestic brands such as Yuxi and Meiji to further improve its channel advantages.
Now it seems that these leading brands have almost faded out of the public view. Instead, huaxizi, a domestic brand, has become one of the 1 billion clubs in only two years; Yixian e-commerce, the parent company of perfect diary, developed in a diversified way, with a revenue of 5.84 billion yuan last year, a year-on-year increase of 11.6%; In addition, enterprises such as Yunnan Botanee Bio-Technology Group Co.Ltd(300957) , Bloomage Biotechnology Corporation Limited(688363) were successfully listed, once exceeding the market value of 100 billion.
Compared with more than a decade ago, the current cutting-edge brands have risen one after another and achieved new highlights in consumption. At this time, the Chinese market is becoming more and more mature and optimized in terms of channels and supply chain. At this time, the industry giants prefer to increase investment in a flexible way rather than accepting costs and risks together through acquisition.
“The investment environment of L’Oreal Group is increasing, so its investment in China’s legal market is becoming more and more confident. Now, L’Oreal Group’s investment in China’s legal market is also increasing.” Shao Linggu, chief economist of Dongfang Linggu group, said in an interview.
In fact, the Oriental beauty Valley, built in 2015, is also an important promoter of China’s beauty and health industry. This ecosystem with an industrial scale of nearly 70 billion yuan integrates 82 cosmetics enterprises, accounting for about 35% of the total number of cosmetics enterprises in Shanghai. It is estimated that one of every three facial mask in China comes from Oriental beauty valley.
borrow investment to improve the ecosystem
At the end of March, the third “L’Oreal big bang beauty Technology Creation Camp”, which received the attention of the industry, was officially launched.
As China’s first beauty technology challenge, big bang is also the starting point for the linkage between Oriental beauty Valley and L’Oreal Group. The second competition last year attracted the participation of more than 1000 Chinese start-ups and more than 50 French start-ups, and more than 30 projects were successfully implemented. “These enterprises are located in Dongfang Meigu. We and L’Oreal will give all kinds of support to the award-winning enterprises to help them develop better.” Shao Lingyun said.
“This challenge is like a talent show. It takes out the projects of science and innovation to compete. Some are innovation in consumer experience, some are innovation in supply chain operation, and some are innovative R & D of cosmetics. Such a competition can tap the innovative content in different tracks.” In Shao Lingyun’s view, “Big Bang is an activity carrier to discover; the US power is a means to incubate innovation and become bigger and stronger.”
The entry of investment companies can help beauty giants better reach potential start-ups, promote the commercial implementation of innovative achievements, and further improve their ecosystem. Shiseido also mentioned that “with the help of the advantageous position of Shiseido China’s second headquarters in the world, we will promote Chinese emerging enterprises to enter a larger international stage.”
In order to be closer to the Chinese market, Shiseido China Oriental beauty Valley R & D center was opened last year, which is also the third R & D center set up by Shiseido in China, undertaking the mission of expanding from beauty services to the field of general health.
After 2020, the Chinese market has become a “feng shui treasure land” for cosmetics consumption, with a rising market share and becoming the largest overseas market for many brands. Last year, Shiseido group’s sales in the Chinese market reached 274.7 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 16.5%, and its market share reached 26.6%, approaching 26.7% of Japan’s local market. 34 billion yen, operating profit fell 59.8%.
Also last year, L’Oreal Group upgraded Shanghai to the headquarters of North Asia and one of the three major beauty technology centers in the world. This means that China is not only the business growth engine of L’Oreal Group, but also the pioneer of scientific and technological innovation. In addition, in the second quarter of this year, with a total investment of more than 35 million US dollars, Estee Lauder global R & D center is expected to be put into use. It is located in Caohejing technology oasis in Hongqiao Town, Minhang District.
technology beauty favored
Two beauty giants invest in China at the same time. What kind of enterprises can obtain resource preference?
L’Oreal said that “it is mainly committed to investing in scientific and technological innovation companies with high growth potential in the fields of marketing, digital, R & D, data, supply and packaging”; Shiseido said, “it will focus on the investment opportunities of emerging brands in frontier markets such as beauty and health and related upstream and downstream technical service companies.”
Tianyancha shows that the registered capital of MEICI is 100 million yuan, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of L’Oreal Group; Ziyue fund is jointly funded by Shiseido China, ziyue of Shiseido and Boyu Jinghua, with the first two parties accounting for 98% and 1.8%.
From the hot spots of the industry in the past two years, it can be seen that science and technology beauty is becoming a new battlefield for beauty giants to seize technology and resources. Prior to this, L’Oreal’s Meiji brand virtual spokesperson “sister m” and Yuxi “skin Wizard” skin detector were start-ups that stood out from big bang.
In the increasingly competitive beauty track, these two are not the only ones trying to seize the frontier business opportunities. Last year, bayersdorf, Nivea’s parent company, launched the accelerator program NX China in China to select potential cutting-edge brands in the Chinese market and build an incubation ecological chain. Previously, the plan has selected five beauty brands from 250 emerging brands in South Korea to enter its projects.
On the other hand, Unilever’s high-end beauty department also established a joint venture company gouni (gaoyouyi) with Hangzhou gaolang Holding Co., Ltd. to jointly promote the local cutting-edge high-end beauty brand team. Previously, Unilever exciter, an incubation project of Unilever for the Chinese market, has served 75 cutting-edge consumer goods enterprises and 15 service providers and 15 deep innovation cooperation projects through membership operation and project cooperation.
However, some people in the industry are worried that the giants are looking for “potential stocks” in the end, which will further widen the distance from local brands. Especially in this epidemic situation, small and medium-sized beauty enterprises are difficult to bear pressure, or will cause inevitable trauma to the upstream and downstream of the industry.
“New domestic products should move from online popularity to Changhong and even build a world-famous brand. Innovation and R & D are undoubtedly a threshold that cannot be bypassed.” In March, Hua Xizi announced that he would invest 1 billion yuan to build the R & D system in the next five years. Li Huiliang, his new chief scientist, is a Shanghai Jahwa United Co.Ltd(600315) veteran. He is known as the “father of the six gods” for developing the six gods toilet water.
how does platform grow
On May 26, 618 pre-sale was about to open, and sharp eyed consumers found that the beauty promotion in Li Jiaqi’s live studio was even stronger than before. “Cosmetics that are not just needed this year are not easy to sell”, some people speculate.
After the epidemic, Shao Lingyun often heard all kinds of anxious voices. The sales of enterprises in the park decreased by 30% in March, and they were directly “cut back” in April. However, in his opinion, as long as people’s love of beauty is still there, the life of the cosmetics industry will not be too sad. “The same is true at the beginning of the epidemic in 2020. For example, the sales of Galan group decreased significantly in the first half of the year, but it increased in the last whole year, that is to say, it recovered all the things it had left behind in the second half of the year.”
According to Euromonitor data, the scale of China’s cosmetics market increased from US $33.18 billion in 2011 to US $73.2 billion in 2020, with a compound growth rate of about 9.22%. After ten years of rapid growth, last year, China’s cosmetics market became the second largest consumer of cosmetics in the world with us $81.1 billion, with a market share of 15.5%.
While China’s business environment continues to improve, beauty enterprises settled in Oriental beauty valley have also grabbed the dividends of the times in this wave of beauty wave. It is reported that Mary Daijia, the first domestic beauty brand to settle in Sephora, has increased its sales by 10 times in the past 10 years; Korea’s well-known cosmetics OEM company cosmesch’s growth rate exceeded 100 times.
As an important brand in the industry, Dongfang Meigu is also expanding its “circle of friends”. It is a cross-border music festival that introduces young people who dare to play and love to Fengxian new town; Show up at the Expo and consumer Expo, launch the “Meigu meigou” consumer brand, and open physical stores to Nanjing East Road, Hongqiao Airport and even the Yangtze River Delta.
“Recently, we have also carried out cross-border cooperation with leiyunshang to develop high-end domestic cosmetics, and used nano import technology in facial mask. It usually takes 20 minutes to apply facial mask, but now it only takes 20 seconds. While the time is shortened, the absorption rate of active ingredients is greatly improved.” He introduced.
In order to promote domestic cosmetics to a larger global market, Oriental beauty Valley has set up overseas experience centers in Japan, South Korea and Italy to promote the “made in Shanghai” cosmetics brand to go to sea. Driven by the Internet wave, the expensive marketing and promotion expenses have become unbearable pain for many brands. Dongfang Meigu wants to solve this part of the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises and help them build a sea platform with the brand advantage of “Meigu meigou”.
How to improve productivity and brand power? How to use digital tools to accelerate the transformation of “cloud”? In this unprepared examination of the epidemic situation, the whole industry is actually observing and reflecting. “Recently, we have made a series of actions, including cloud investment promotion, cloud construction, cloud approval, cloud signing, including cloud shopping. Therefore, the epidemic will certainly bring people a lot of thinking, and some new practices have emerged to adapt to the post epidemic era.” Shao Lingyun said.
