Image source @ Visual China
Text | IQ Tax Research Center
The once dead-and-die hair removal device market is quietly happening a big thing.
In the big promotion of the March 8th Festival, the two major Internet celebrity brands of Ulike and Mujin competed on the same stage in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room.
As a product hotly sought after by girls on the internet, Ulike and Mujin, the two major hair removal device brands, once surrendered to The command of Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi respectively, competed with each other in different live broadcast rooms, and staged a two-year-long brand marketing war.
However, with the fall of Via, these two brands are now on the same path.
All this can't help but make consumers ask such a question: Without the anchor, can't these hair removal devices be sold? Maybe in the middle, there are secrets that you don't know.
Two big hair removal instruments, integrated
As the two giants of the hair removal device industry, Ulike from South Korea and Mu Jin from the United Kingdom, have been fighting each other.
In the technical route, Ulike looks first, known as "the freezing point does not hurt the skin, the strong effect is not painful"; while Mu Jin claims that he is "smaller, faster and smarter" and can achieve "10 minutes to escape".
One advertises a higher appearance, one focuses on a smaller size; one claims to be stronger, and the other claims to be faster.
Therefore, countless girls patiently compared the advantages and disadvantages of these two hair removal device products; at the same time, they shouted "bored, bored to death".
The competition between the two occurs not only in the live broadcast room, but also in the public opinion war in the streets and alleys.
In March 2021, some media exposed to the outside world: the Ulike hair removal device sold in Weiya's live broadcast room was unqualified for quality testing; at the same time, a "test report" with an official seal was also issued.
However, just when the consumers were excited and planned to ask about Ulike, things reversed again, and the evidence showed that the so-called "test report" and the official seal above were forged.
As a result, the originally angry consumers stopped their raised fists in mid-air, reflecting on their irrationality while asking: Which competitor did the slander against Ulike come from?
According to the information of the enterprise investigation, in 2021, the Zhejiang Youlai E-commerce Company behind Ulike once filed a lawsuit against the agent behind Mujin, Nanjing Little Whale Shark Information Technology Co., Ltd., on the grounds of "fabricating false information and producing infringing videos and articles involved in the case".
After Rai won the case, the baby whale shark appealed to the court on the grounds that the court of first instance did not have jurisdiction, but it was rejected.
It can be seen that as the two major hair removal device manufacturers backed by Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi, Ulike and Mu Jin are like the Allies and Allies in world war I, and like NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, tit-for-tat and do not give in to each other.
In addition, the two hair removal device manufacturers, in the small red book and Weibo and other public opinion positions, are also competing, there has been a variety of large and small frictions, smear incidents occur frequently.
However, with the ban of Wei Ya, the previous pattern of the live broadcast industry has been broken, and Li Jiaqi has become the man who laughed to the end in the live broadcast industry in 2021. In this context, Ulike and Mu Jin, who were originally in the same situation, are now all in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, and in the cheer of "321, on the link", the same competition has begun.
After entering the same live broadcast room, the struggle between Ulike and Mu Jin will certainly not stop there; the competition of hard power has begun.
Jaw-dropping slogan
In the competition of hard power, Ulike and Mu Jin have each done their best.
The first trick is to give gifts.
Take Ulike as an example, in order to sell hair removal devices, they can send anything, dare to send anything; only you can't think of it, there is nothing they can't send.
On the Little Red Book, you can often see Ulike buyers, after receiving Versailles. After the user bought Ulike, some received the Xiaoice box sent, some received the electric toothbrush sent, and some even received the electric toothbrush plus the beauty refrigerator plus the beauty mirror plus body lotion...
All products related to "beauty" can be packaged and sent quickly after you buy the hair removal device. You thought you were buying just a hair removal device; what you didn't expect was almost half a beauty shop.
Compared with Ulike, Mujin seems to have gone above and beyond in terms of discounted gifts. In the previous activities, Mu Jin had played an advertisement to buy one and get one free, and he did not know why he had to form pairs and team up together in pairs.
In addition to gift-giving, price reduction is the second trick used by the hair removal device brand.
In the Tmall 3.8 festival event, the original price of 2169 yuan Ulike sapphire freezing point hair removal device, the price after the coupon is only 1449 yuan. In Mujin's Tmall flagship store, the original price of 2459 yuan Of The Bare FIT hair removal device was only 1599 yuan in the live broadcast room.
The two brands of hair removal instruments can reduce the price so sharply, I don't know whether the merchant is spitting blood to make a profit, or the cost of the product itself, it is not very high.
In addition to gifts and price reductions, the third trick of hair removal device manufacturers is to "talk about things that are not surprising" in advertising.
Previously, Ulike had played a "premium, advanced, advanced" magic advertisement, repeatedly brainwashing you in the elevator room. Now, they have found the star Jeon Ji Hyun, in the advertisement, to give you a secret hint: "No sapphire, I don't take off."
However, such an explicit advertisement eventually made Ulike suffer a backlash. Not long ago, the relevant advertisement of Ulike hair removal device was ordered to be removed from the shelves for rectification because of the suspected use of vulgar advertising slogans. The chattering Jeon Ji-hyun finally closed his mouth this time.
The hair is not enough to take off
The reason why these hair removal device manufacturers dare to play like this is purely because the profits in this industry are too high.
As a veteran in the industry, Li Cong (pseudonym) told the IQ Tax Research Center that the gross profit margin of the hair removal device industry is generally between 50% and 60%.
A survey by the IQ Tax Research Center found that a freezing point depilator with a retail price of more than 1,000 yuan, its core components filter and quartz lamp, the cost is about 50 yuan. The huge profits of the hair removal device industry can be seen from this.
However, Li Cong also said that some brands with relatively small sales cannot share the cost due to the lack of large-scale production. Therefore, in the context of high gross profit, many hair removal device brands are still losing money.
On the one hand, small factories are always unable to reduce costs in the face of high profits; on the other hand, many large factories are developing faster and faster because of good sales.
In this way, it is not difficult for us to understand why, in the case of a good prospect, hair removal device head manufacturers like Ulike and Mujin are still sparing no effort in marketing. The reason why they do this is to expand sales, reduce costs, and establish their own kingship.
At present, the mainland hair removal device market is still booming. According to the "Online Home Beauty Instrument Consumption Insight Report", the market size of the mainland hair removal instrument will be close to 10 billion yuan. During the "618 E-commerce Festival" in 2021, among the Tmall and Jingdong dual-platform beauty instrument products, the hair removal instrument became the first in the retail list.
Seeing the good prospects of the market, more and more challengers began to enter the epilatator market. In addition to Ulike and Mujin, brands such as AMIRO, Philips, Annie the Kitten, Panasonic, and Yameng have also begun to join the great cause of hair removal. Let the tax collectors have to marvel: there are too many hair removal instruments, and the hair is not enough to take off.
Among these brands, some products rely on lower retail prices, and they are also favored by some girls who eat soil. However, Li Cong did not comment on this, he said: "Different prices of hair removal instruments, in terms of functionality is very different. Because of the different IPL modules, the cost varies greatly; and the output power of the IPL module is also an important factor affecting the cost. ”
Therefore, for consumers, although more and more entrants are making the price of hair removal devices lower, in the long run, this may not necessarily be a good thing.
After all, blindly pursuing low prices cannot attract thousands of women who love beauty. The safety of the product and the improvement of the function are the real needs of every beauty lover in the market of hair removal devices.
Big anchors become small platforms
In the foreseeable future, the great war of hair removal instruments will continue to continue; and the pattern of the market will also change greatly.
In the process of this change, the anchors in the live broadcast room are likely to play an important role.
Just as Wei Ya's fall, let the Ulike in the original Wei Ya live broadcast room be merged into the Li Jiaqi live broadcast room, and Mu Jin competed on the same stage. In today's e-commerce field, anchors are playing an increasingly important role. Many products that were originally unknown have become well-known precisely because they have appeared on the live broadcast room of a big anchor.
At the end of 2021, in the live broadcast room of anchor Liu Meixi, thousands of kilograms of coffee beans promoted by the Rwandan ambassador and Ceylon black tea endorsed by the Sri Lankan ambassador were "seconds empty" on the shelves. These foreign friends, while admiring the huge consumption power of the Chinese market, are also surprised by the strong ability of e-commerce anchors to carry goods.
After years of experience, some anchors with goods, in the continuous development, gradually full of wings, faintly have become a "small platform" posture.
It can be said that Kuaishou's Simba, Taobao's Li Jiaqi, and Douyin's Luo Yonghao all belong to small platforms in large platforms, and even many e-commerce companies in vertical fields are not as good as the sales ability of these anchors.
After the big anchor becomes a "small platform", its own positioning will also change. The real value of the products sold in their live broadcast rooms will gradually become the direction of their consideration, which has two cores, one is the selection, and the other is the price.
First of all, the first value of the anchors is the selection of products, that is, to help consumers make strict selection.
Past history has told us that blindly pursuing profits and not being responsible for consumers is not sustainable, such as Simba once overturned the car because of the bird's nest incident.
Consumers choose to shop in the live broadcast room, which is the trust of the anchor, and if the anchor turns the trust into a deception, it will be a great harm to the consumer.
Secondly, it is to help consumers to beat down the price of some profitable products.
In essence, why is the current home beauty instrument market, as well as products such as hair removal instruments, sold in live broadcast rooms all year round? It is because there are very terrible profits, if the anchor does not choose to negotiate the price, but bundles the merchant to continue to maintain huge profits, this choice is not right.
In this context, whether it is Ulike, Mujin, these two hair removal devices, or other categories of goods in the major live broadcast rooms, if you want to compete in the same field, it must not be the flower fist embroidery legs in marketing, but the hard power of its own products.
Perhaps, soon, there will be a player who will completely subvert this profiteering industry with a good and inexpensive product.