Antique beauty cosmetics are neither ancient nor beautiful.
Once Guofeng Beauty is solidified into a revised copy, a concept and a face value of "changing the soup without changing the medicine", how long can consumers buy it?
Even if you haven’t bought Guofeng beauty cosmetics, you must have heard of Forbidden City makeup, Huaxizi carved lipstick, Mao Geping Guofeng series …
Following the "national tide" fever, domestic beauty brands have been rising in recent years.
According to the report of CBNData, in 2020, the growth rate of domestic brands in the beauty care industry is much higher than that of foreign brands. At the same time, during Tmall’s "Double Eleven" in 2020, domestic beauty products went to sea and increased by more than 10 times.
Many domestic beauty brands make good use of China elements to create product differences. Among them, the makeup of the Forbidden City made the "national beauty" fire out of the circle.
Even international brands are jealous to join in the fun. L ‘Oré al, Chanel, Estee Lauder, Givenchy, YSL, etc. are all playing the national beauty in the China market.
In April 2020, Wang Yifan, who "restored" China’s ancient cosmetics, was in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. /vision china
However, if you play too many routines, aesthetic fatigue is inevitable. After the makeup of the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, netizens ridiculed that "Tiantan lipstick is ready to go", "Great Wall eye shadow is gearing up" and "Xiangshan socks are stepping up production".
Once Guofeng Beauty is solidified into a revised copy, a concept and a face value, how long can consumers buy it?
Beauty cosmetics are rubbing against the national style.
The Forbidden City Wenchuang, which was raging around, set off a wave of national marketing as soon as it entered the beauty industry.
Take the Forbidden City Taobao as an example. In 2018, it launched "Floating Sky, Canghai, Forbidden City Crane Series" and "Dark Night Streamer, Forbidden City Mother-of-pearl Series" (hereinafter referred to as "Crane Series" and "Mother-of-pearl Series" respectively).
In terms of design elements, these two series of items include their designs, which are from different collections of cultural relics in the Forbidden City. For example, the design inspiration of the mother-of-pearl series comes from the "Mother-of-pearl Hua Niaowen Bed with Black Paint" in the Palace Museum.
In terms of name, the mouth red number of the crane series is added with three major colors: "Palace Wall Red", "Lang Yaohong" and "carmine". According to the sales data of Taobao in 2018, this new gameplay made the Xianhe series lipstick sell 80,000 pieces on the day of "Double Twelve".
On September 6, 2020, Beijing, the cultural service area of the 2020 Service Trade Fair, the Forbidden City lipstick was launched by the Forbidden City. /people’s vision
Such a marketable idea soon attracted a group of followers.
M.A.C, who is good at "copying homework", immediately launched the "New Year Limited Series" jointly with the Forbidden City. Not only international brands, but also Xie Fuchun, one of the founders of Guofeng beauty brand, refused to accept the old age and jointly launched the "ancient perfume" with the Forbidden City.
Other "students" can’t sit still, so they join hands with other cultural and creative IPS. The most representative is the joint make-up of Kating and the Summer Palace, which is called "A Hundred Birds Face the Phoenix". The Summer Palace co-branded makeup was once a hot spot in the Forbidden City makeup: who is the official lipstick?
Kazilan asked Dunhuang Museum for a co-branded makeup, and L ‘Oré al asked China National Museum for a co-branded lipstick. Finding a joint name of the museum has become the standard of the hot spot of the national wind for a time.
We don’t engage in co-branded Huaxizi, but take the opportunity to bring out "carved lipstick", that is, we present ancient elements on lipstick with the ancient embossed process of re-engraving.
Other brands that don’t engage in co-branding have also racked their brains to find China elements to launch their own national beauty series. When the brand Hua, a new domestic product, knew about it, she gave the six blush colors of the new series names such as "slow voice", "qingpingle", "fairy", "recalling the youth", "Sauvignon Blanc" and "seeing each other".
European and American brands are also in line with the Chinese style: Armani produced a simple and rude limited high-gloss powder for the Year of the Dog, Givenchy produced a limited edition cosmetics for the Year of the Monkey, and Chanel once again launched an oriental screen series of cosmetics.
In fact, it is not new to play with national beauty. The master is here to play Guofeng Beauty Makeup-Dai Chunlin, who has been in existence since the Ming Dynasty, and Xie Fuchun, who inherited the tradition of Yangzhou powder in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, are the two founders of Guofeng Beauty Makeup.
On August 22, 2017, in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, citizens passed the Chinese time-honored brand Xie Fuchun Cosmetics Commercial Retail Store. /vision china
Duck egg powder, which ancient celebrities competed for, has always been the top product of Dai Chunlin and Xie Fuchun. Rouge, as the overlord of ancient makeup, and the thrush tool "snail Dai" favored by ancient nobles are also the star products of these two companies.
The classic four-piece set of Xie Fuchun Town Store is rouge, powder, hair oil and fragrant parts. The royal makeup series of Dai Chunlin Palace, which became famous in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, continues to this day; Dai Chunlin also launched a Dream of Red Mansions, a series of twelve women in Jinling.
Things will develop in the opposite direction when they become extreme.
It didn’t take long for Guofeng beauty cosmetics to be lively, and the problem came.
The landmark event is that the Forbidden City makeup is in a crisis of production suspension. In January 2019, the Forbidden City Taobao issued an official statement: the original series of makeup of the Forbidden City Taobao still has a lot of room for improvement from appearance to quality, and decided to stop production across the board.
At this time, it was less than a month before Taobao, the Forbidden City, launched makeup.
The rush to stop production is directly related to insufficient production capacity. According to national business daily, a few days after Taobao put on make-up in the Forbidden City, some consumers reported that the products that had been purchased before were refunded. The customer service responded that the pre-sale quantity of makeup has reached the production capacity saturation, so the pre-sale is suspended.
However, the most fundamental reason is the poor quality of the products. Weibo, the official Taobao official of the Forbidden City, responded to the shutdown event, saying that "the lipstick appearance feedback is not high enough, and there is room for improvement in the smoothness and color of the paste. Eye shadow pearlescent particles are not fine enough, and some colors have flying powder phenomenon. Blush, pink, and orange are acceptable. The practicality of the emerald blue is not good. "
To put it bluntly, the creativity of Guofeng beauty cosmetics is good, but it is not easy to cooperate with the production end.
The "2020 Domestic Makeup Market Research Report" released by Yiou think tank and Tmall Beauty (hereinafter referred to as "Yiou 2020 Domestic Makeup Report") points out that low-price competition and high marketing expenses restrict the investment in product research and development. In order to enter the market quickly, most domestic make-up brands rely on OEM production. This has led to a situation that a foundry works for multiple brands at the same time and the products of different brands converge.
The report also pointed out that due to the low barriers to entry in the beauty industry, brands without independent product design and innovation capabilities are keen to copy or imitate popular categories and styles, and then sell them at lower prices, further intensifying competition in the same category and depressing overall industry profits.
National business daily once reported that Hua Xizi officially released the recruitment information of "high-paid anti-counterfeiting officials" to the outside world in March 2020. After only one month (June), the anti-counterfeiting officer complained about nearly 2,000 fake information on various e-commerce platforms and prosecuted more than 300 cases.
From the perspective of consumption, many European and American brands’ "Chinese style restrictions" have been repeatedly ridiculed. Armani’s limited high-gloss powder in the Year of the Dog was ridiculed as "the biggest killer in the beauty industry". Givenchy’s limited make-up in the Year of the Monkey also caused netizens to ask: "Do European and American big names have any misunderstandings about Chinese style?"
Moreover, the common routines such as changing the copy, putting together the concept, and spelling the face value are much more played, which is also easy to cause aesthetic fatigue. If there is no more core product innovation, the enthusiasm of consumers will be difficult to sustain.
In contrast, the century-old brand of neighboring Japan, excellent product strength is fundamental.
Shiseido in Japan, the brand name comes from the Book of Changes. Shiseido’s brand symbol "Toona sinensis", that is, a gorgeous and elegant camellia, symbolizes the Japanese cultural tradition of appreciating nature. The treasure of its town store is a product with real vitality for a hundred years, such as EUDERMINE red honey dew lotion developed on the basis of western pharmaceutical prescriptions in 1890.
Difficult to be high-end
"Big-name flat replacement", that is, a cheap substitute for big names, is the key for some domestic beauty brands to rely on the national wind elements.
Imagine, if the price of the Forbidden City Xianhe series lipstick is not within 150 yuan, but 300-500 yuan, will it still sell so well? In the long run, if you want to be stable and strong in the whole market, it is almost a consensus of domestic beauty brands to hit the high end.
Forbidden City lipstick. /vision china
This is because there is a "1 billion curse" in new consumer brands, that is, when the brand grows to an annual sales of 1 billion yuan, it will encounter growth bottlenecks. If we don’t transform at this time, once the traffic dividend fails, the profit model of the whole enterprise will collapse. It is at this stage that the perfect diary vigorously promotes the transformation of the brand to "high-end".
On the one hand, Perfect Diary invited Zhou Xun and Poke Ye (Troye Sivan) as brand spokespersons; On the other hand, the perfect diary quickly laid offline stores. By September 2020, Perfect Diary had opened 200 stores in just 20 months.
Yiou 2020 Domestic Makeup Report also pointed out: Some insiders believe that domestic make-up is not high-end because "I dare not try, I dare not invest, I am afraid of failure, and I am afraid that the loss will outweigh the gain". On the one hand, domestic cosmetics that lack brand accumulation have to maintain sales at low prices; On the other hand, weak profits and lack of talents make it impossible for domestic cosmetics to further develop and innovate and differentiate products and brands.
However, even if the intensity of burning money is well-known in the industry, what kind of answer sheet can the perfect diary hand over in the high-end impact? Perhaps, everything has just begun.
On April 18th, 2021, Beijing Guangqu Road Business Circle, Heshenghui Shopping Center, Zhou Xun endorsed the PERFECT DIARY perfect diary beauty cosmetics chain store. /vision china
Mao Geping, another representative of the impact on high-end domestic products, has been positioned in high-end domestic cosmetics from the beginning. In addition to the big IP of founder Mao Geping, it also cooperated with the Forbidden City to produce a three-season makeup series. Even if it is praised by netizens as "the subversion of the value of Guofeng beauty", from the sales data, the joint makeup of the Forbidden City is far less than before.
After all, the price of the third season’s "rockhopper gold-plated stunning lipstick" jointly issued by the Forbidden City in Mao Geping reached 560 yuan. To fight the big names in Europe and America in this price range, it seems that the joint name of the Forbidden City in Mao Geping is not enough to rely on the IP of the Forbidden City and the beautiful face value.
In the high-end development of the brand, Shiseido in Japan provides another example.
According to the research report of Guojin Securities, Shiseido adheres to the strategy of "high-end priority" and gathers resources to high-end brands at the brand end; At the research and development end, many research results of "whitening", "sun protection" and "anti-wrinkle" have been created; On the channel side, let its high-end brands seize the most luxurious location; On the marketing side, Shiseido has always led the Japanese advertising design community; On the supply chain side, Shiseido’s global layout has achieved efficient production.
To this day, Shiseido is constantly updating its market strategy to keep up with the changes in the consumer market.
For the growing domestic beauty brands, there is still a long way to go to high-end and even globalization.
Author | Shu Shaohuan
Typesetting | Zhen mi Li
Original title | Antique cosmetics: After the "national wind fever" is on fire, what should beauty do next?
First published in issue 589 of New Weekly.
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