U.S. pupil market chaos: take the price of 9.9 yuan? Agents are afraid to sell

"Ask the sisters if they have a reliable beauty recommendation?"

"I have a silicone hydrogel from Korea that is out of print."

On some social platforms, "pure deer", "charming electric pupil"... The beautiful pupils with various gimmicks attract countless beauty lovers.

In recent years, with the rise of the beauty economy, beauty pupils have almost become as common as lipstick. Especially after the outbreak of the epidemic, beauty consumption has been greatly reduced, in this context, the eye makeup category has become the fulcrum to support the beauty of the economy, and the demand for beauty pupils has emerged from time to time. Relevant data show that in the past 5 years, the market size of the United States pupil has risen rapidly, with an annual compound growth rate of 41%, and terminal sales in 2020 will exceed 20 billion yuan.

However, the reporter's recent investigation found that while the U.S. pupil market is booming and developing, problems such as unclear qualifications of U.S. hitomi merchants and inferior products that endanger eye health have gradually emerged.

The threshold of the beauty pupil agent is low

There is no need to review any qualifications

"Will long-term wearing of beautiful pupils have substantial harm to the eyes?" This is the most common problem that almost every beauty lover encounters. On some social platforms, the discussion about the harmfulness of the beautiful pupil has always been high, and a variety of cases are mixed with various shocking pictures, or true or false impact on the psychological endurance of consumers.

Yuanyuan has been a beauty pupil agent for 7 years, in her opinion, for people with myopia in the eyes, "the beautiful pupil can not only replace glasses, but also enlarge the eyes and look better."

It is understood that the beautiful pupil, also known as the corneal contact lens, as a color contact lens, is directly attached to the corneal tear layer to achieve the purpose of correcting vision.

Based on the reason of direct contact with the human eye, the relevant departments will supervise the beauty pupil as a third class of medical devices, and the seller must hold a business license and a medical device business license to operate legally, and if it is sold on the e-commerce platform, it also needs the Internet drug information service qualification certificate.

Yuanyuan Observation found that due to the small number of types of beautiful pupils on the e-commerce platform and the slow update, most consumers are more inclined to buy and sell privately, such as buying agents or beauty pupil agents through social platforms, which leads to a large number of beauty pupil agents.

According to her, her team has manufacturers, franchisees and agents, and the status of franchises is higher than that of agents. As an agent, her boss is a big franchisee with considerable "experience", which pays a higher franchise fee and can get more supplies at a lower price. The sales model of the team is mainly based on "customer order - one-click link filling order - warehouse unified delivery". At the same time, everyone who joins the team can also develop an agent and earn the difference in the price with a custom agent fee.

The simple and fast working mode has attracted many people to step into the industry part-time. However, the influx of a large number of personnel has also brought about problems such as different product standards and doubtful qualifications of merchants.

The reporter compared a number of beauty pupil malls and agents and found that the same series of beauty pupil products under the same brand, the price difference is tens of yuan. Taking a series of products of the Beauty Pupil brand Medusee as an example, in the hands of different agents, the pricing is 158 yuan / 2 pairs and 258 yuan / 2 pairs, respectively. "This is a very common phenomenon, the sales price for customers will be much higher than the price of the goods, the more expensive the U.S. pupil, the greater the price difference, and each agent can set the price at will according to their own purchase price, as long as it can return to the original line." Yuanyuan explained to reporters.

A pair of beautiful pupils sold for 168 yuan in the market, what will be the actual price of the agent? "78 yuan a pair. This is just the agency price, and the price of some large franchisees and the actual cost are much lower than this price. Yuanyuan said.

In the case of ununified standards, how can consumers ensure that the qualifications of the merchants they purchase are credible and reasonable? In order to have a deeper understanding of the beauty pupil agency industry, the reporter joined a certain beauty pupil agent team known as "three certificates complete".

In response to the issue of business qualifications, the reporter raised concerns and doubts to the franchisees. So the franchisee provided the reporter with a picture copy of the medical device business license and business license, and instructed the reporter, but whenever a customer asks a qualification question, the same photo can be used. At the same time, there are also some merchants, when the reporter asked and asked them to provide medical device business licenses, they no longer replied.

In this regard, Yuanyuan told reporters that many consumers want this certificate not to confirm the check, but out of a test - to test whether the store is reliable, as for the source of this paper proof is true or false, some of them do not care.

Xiao Fan has also been a beauty pupil agent for many years, according to her, many agents and consumers around her have not established the cognition of "beauty pupil = medical device", almost from the perspective of cosmetics to look at and buy beauty pupil products. During her time as an agent, the team not only did not provide any medical device business license certificate, but also did not popularize relevant knowledge to her, but also focused on the color palette of the beautiful pupil, the quality of promotion, etc.

There are many ways to promote it

Attract traffic and make a profit

What kind of promotion will be carried out to make the beauty pupil agents pay so much attention?

In the process of the reporter joining the above-mentioned Mei Hitomi team, whenever a new agent joins, the team will carry out some simple "training". After the reporter paid the 88 yuan agency fee, the online sent several documents to the reporter, which listed in detail how to establish a reliable "business image" and provide appropriate marketing solutions. In the training document, the team asked the reporter to change the simple and catchy name nickname, stipulating that about 5 walk charts and buyer show feedback were sent every day, and suggested updating at a fixed time period every day, such as 7:00 to 9:00, 12:00 to 14:00 and 20:00 to 22:00, which is suitable for everyone's life and rest time.

In addition, in the promotion and marketing plan, the team recommends that each agent should interact with people on social platforms to increase familiarity.

Same baby, same style for Yu Shuxin, same for blackpink... The reporter found that a large number of U.S. pupil brands hung the name of "star with the same model" in sales, these hung star photos, with "star with the same style" of the U.S. pupils are often very high sales, a certain e-commerce platform Yu Shuxin on the same U.S. pupil monthly sales of more than 50,000 pieces.

The new Advertising Law, which came into effect on September 1, 2015, clearly stipulates that "the four types of advertisements of medical treatment, medicine, medical devices and health food shall not use advertising spokespersons as recommendations and certificates". A number of experts interviewed by reporters believe that these beautiful pupil products use the "star same style" publicity to stimulate sales, which is playing the "edge ball" of star promotion and endorsement.

The reporter noted that the team also gave 20 Weibo numbers with strong purchasing ability at the end of the document, and made detailed target customer portraits: star chasers, little girls, lack of social experience, and high spending power. Agents can attract the attention of star chasers, interact with them frequently and then exchange fans. Secondly, the team also recommends that agents dress up their various social accounts, including but not limited to setting up beautiful avatars, designing account layouts, recharging platform members, and spending a few yuan on e-commerce platforms to buy thousands of fans to "decorate the façade" to attract attention.

In addition, these teams will also hold various activities from time to time to drain the flow, such as holding a gift to buy a beautiful pupil, and cooperating with nail salons and bakeries to promote activities such as scanning codes to participate in free orders. It even contains "pet drainage" - such as posting that you have a pet that needs to be adopted, and then writing in the copy "sincerely ask for a kind person to adopt", leaving your contact information at the end of the article, and saying that "there will be many people consulting". Of course, if you really mistakenly think that there is a pet that needs to be adopted, it is wrong, because the promotion plan reads: "If there is a beautiful woman who asks you about sending a pet after adding you, you just need to say that your pet has been given to someone else, and it is simply too easy to attract female fans with this trick." ”

The reporter found that the most effective way to promote is to find Internet celebrities and pupil models, shoot and plant grass products, and some good-looking agents will also work part-time pupil models themselves. According to Yuanyuan, when she was looking for Internet celebrities to help advertise, the price ranged from a few hundred yuan to thousands of yuan, mainly according to the size of the blogger's fans.

"Some agents have several contact details to contact different customers, and they even change the customer's nickname to information about the goods they have bought." Yuanyuan recalled, "I once watched my WeChat at home, and all her accounts added up to a few thousand customers. ”

Medical values are vague

It's hard to get both at a good price

In the case of unclear qualifications and excessive publicity, the quality of the beautiful pupil has become a problem that consumers have to carefully identify. In recent years, because of the frequent wearing of beautiful pupils leading to vision loss, causing eye stones and other news is not uncommon, in the market boom, fancy marketing of beautiful pupils, many attracted but the ability to distinguish is not yet mature consumers often become the victims of inferior beauty pupils.

In April 2021, some media reported that Dai Meiyi, a junior high school boy in Beijing, was almost blind. One of the boy's eyes was often red and tearful, and the parents took the child to the hospital ophthalmology department for treatment and found that the boy's left cornea had an ulcer foci, reaching a depth of 1/2 of the cornea, and if he was treated a few days later, the cornea might be ulcerated and perforated.

In January of the same year, a woman who had purchased a beautiful pupil from a micro-business had an uncomfortable eye, and after going to the hospital for examination, she was told that the corneal ulcer caused by the beautiful pupil. After using this beautiful pupil for 2 months, her eye surface tear film appeared to be damaged to a certain extent, and her eyes were easily fatigued, and the doctor did not recommend that she wear any kind of contact lenses.

According to some senior enthusiasts of the beauty pupil, if you want to buy a qualified beauty pupil product, the base arc, oxygen permeability, material and water content are all indicators that need to be understood, especially the oxygen permeability.

According to the public information of the International Contact Lens Educators Association, the oxygen permeability rate, that is, Dk/t, is an indicator that allows the eyeball to breathe freely, which is an important criterion that affects the quality of the beautiful pupils. However, for such an important indicator, many publicity on the market about the beauty of the pupil will often avoid the weight, only talk about the color, water content and diameter of the pupil, not about the oxygen permeability of the pupil.

The reporter contacted a brand of U.S. pupil agent to consult the oxygen permeability value, the other party did not respond directly, but simply replied: "Everyone buys a U.S. pupil is to see the moisture content, no one wants oxygen permeability." ”

Dr. Zhang, an ophthalmologist at a tertiary hospital in Beijing, told reporters that meiyi belongs to the third class of medical devices, which belong to "medical devices that are potentially dangerous to the human body and must be strictly controlled for their safety and effectiveness", and its products of the same level are all important medical supplies such as disposable intravenous infusion needles, bone plates, and vascular stents.

In addition, the reporter noted that due to the large market demand and the high barriers for overseas products to enter the Chinese market, the U.S. pupil agent has become a way for some overseas brands without import batch numbers, especially the Japanese and Korean brands U.S. hitomi, to enter the Chinese market. However, are these "original imports" promoted by the Agent of the Pupil really "pure overseas blood"?

This may not be the case. According to Xiao Fan, almost all the Beautiful Pupils she has handled are shipped from China, and she has also expressed concern about the unknown source of the American Pupils: "At that time, many of the so-called Japanese-Korean American pupils I sold myself, although I marked the Japanese and Korean sources according to the requirements, but in fact, the warehouses for production and delivery were in China, and the manufacturer verbally guaranteed that it was the same as that produced in Japan and South Korea, but I was always worried in my heart." ”

The explanation given by the big franchisees of her team is that the cost of the United States is not high, the replacement speed is fast, and it will cost more time and money to wait for domestic imports, which is not conducive to the team's profits and sales.

"I have also been in contact with the beauty of the pupil with a price of 9.9 yuan, and I dare not guarantee the quality of these products, let alone sell them to consumers." Xiao Fan said.

The reporter noted that in an e-commerce platform, dozens of dollars a pair of beautiful pupils abound. Previously, some media exposed a small factory in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, that sold more than 1.2 million pairs of fake pupil products in more than 4 months without any qualifications. A platform shopkeeper who has been engaged in the beauty pupil industry for many years said that the cost price of domestic labeled imitations ranges from 2 yuan to 8 yuan.

Yuanyuan and Yifan said that the expensive daily throw is indeed not selling well, and most of the people who like to buy beautiful pupils are some students with insufficient social experience and new entrants to the workplace, so they are more inclined to represent beautiful pupils with good color, lower prices and long-term wear.

However, have the quality of these so-called "high-quality and inexpensive" pupil products really passed? This may require many beauty pupil lovers to polish their eyes and be vigilant - the manufacturers behind these beautiful pupils do not care about the good-looking eyes of consumers after using the beautiful pupils, but the wealth that these eyes bring to them. (Reporter Zhao Li) (At the request of the interviewee, Yuanyuan and Xiaofan are pseudonyms)

Source: Legal Daily