"It's not that big brands can't afford to consume, but domestic products have a better quality-price ratio."
2023 is a year for consumer domestic brands to make their presence felt.
One of the phenomenal events is that this year's "Double 11" Proya surpassed L'Oreal's powerful foreign brands for the first time and appeared on the top list of major platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin. After a lapse of 5 years, in the "Double 11", the "core battlefield" of beauty, Proya won a big victory in the head-to-head confrontation with international brands, and won the first seat of domestic beauty products in the increasingly rational environment of consumers, which is of far-reaching significance in the industry and the market.
South+ reporter Yang Jia mapping
To this end, Fang Yuyou, co-founder and CEO of Proya, said excitedly: It cannot be ignored that compared with the technical accumulation and research barriers of international brands, catching up will still be the common theme of domestic beauty brands for a long time. Even so, Proya, which stands in the first camp of Chinese cosmetics, is already confident in the broader international stage. "In the next 20 years, Proya will adhere to itself, no longer set restrictions for domestic brands, and continue to create a new future. ”
Self-reliance, self-confidence and self-sufficiency will be reflected in more and more Chinese brands.
Self-reliance
The strong wind of domestic products blew to Japan and South Korea
Tmall data shows that during the "Double 11" period, there were 243 domestic brands with a turnover of more than 100 million yuan, among which domestic brands in the beauty industry rose in an all-round way. According to data from the China International Electronic Commerce Center Research Institute, during the "Double 11" period, domestic brands accounted for 11 of the top 20 brands in online retail sales according to the statistics of all categories.
Sequoia Capital's research this year shows that the favorability of domestic products in the entire large consumption field continues to rise. Other data also show that consumers have reduced their purchases of imported beauty products in the last two months, but have remained up or flat in domestic beauty products.
The "strong wind" of domestic products not only blows all over the north and south of the river, but also blows across the ocean to Japan, South Korea, and even the other side of the ocean.
In the past two years, a new hot word "Chiborg" has appeared on Japanese social media, which is a synthesized word by China and Cyborg, literally interpreted as "Chinese cyborg beauty makeup", which means almost robot-like exquisite and perfect makeup. Bright red lips and black eyeliner accentuate the eyes, making it a makeup effect that young Japanese women yearn for. For Korean beauty bloggers, mastering the information of Chinese makeup products and sharing the sense of experience have become the key to seizing the traffic at present, because Korean girls are setting off a Chinese beauty craze, and the full set of lip clay products of Chinese cosmetics INTO YOU frequently appear in Korean celebrity makeup studios.
In the first eight months of this year, China's cosmetics exports to South Korea rose by about 190 percent year-on-year, according to CCTV Finance. The advantages of Chinese cosmetics and the recent popularity of Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms in South Korea have created favorable conditions for Chinese cosmetics to enter the Korean market.
Guo Qingquan, president of the cosmetics branch of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Medicines and Health Products and a professor at Guangdong University of Technology, believes that from the perspective of hardware conditions, China's beauty products have reached the international level in terms of production and manufacturing. After entering the Japanese and South Korean markets, domestic beauty brands have rapidly expanded their market space through diversified marketing methods, attracting the attention of local consumers. In addition, backed by China's strong production capacity, domestic beauty brands can also give full play to the advantages of China's advanced supply chain.
assertive
Break into the "core battlefield" of consumption
This Christmas, New York girls experienced the advantages of supply chains from China. Since the official opening of MINISO's first global flagship store in Times Square, New York, USA, on May 20, categories such as blind boxes have continued to sell well, and Christmas has ushered in a wave of shopping climax. According to the financial report of MINISO, the United States has become the largest overseas market in terms of revenue contribution for two consecutive quarters, of which blind boxes are one of the most popular products.
Europe and the United States, as the core battlefield of the global consumer market, is the "touchstone" to test the brand's strength to go overseas. With the product power and brand power of domestic brands "standing up", since the beginning of this year, leading enterprises have marched to the other side of the ocean.
In July this year, Pop Mart participated in the San Diego International Comic-Con in the United States, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, for the first time, and continued to spread the trendy toy culture to the world, and during the same period, Pop Mart also opened offline stores in Thailand, the United States and Australia; from August to October, Heytea announced the opening of its first store in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada and other overseas countries and regions, and in December, Heytea's first store in the United States was officially put into operation on Broadway in New York, further accelerating the globalization process.
Chinese brands ushered in the "Age of Discovery". Liu Xiaobin, vice president and chief marketing officer of MINISO Group, positioned MINISO's overseas model as the 3.0 stage for Chinese consumer brands to go overseas. In his view, at the current stage, Chinese brands should truly achieve brand localization and establish brand influence in various overseas markets.
In the New York Times Square store, with Disney, Sanrio, Barbie and other super IPs familiar to young people all over the world as intermediaries, MINISO quickly narrowed the distance with American users and established a sense of closeness. At the same time, MINISO also extracts representative elements from the broad and profound Chinese culture, combines traditional Chinese cultural elements with modern design, empowers product innovation with Chinese culture, and helps the rise of national tide consumption.
Self-sufficient
The transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure has achieved remarkable results
New consumer brands set sail and make a name for themselves. It is not only the export products that stand up, but also the results of the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure under the pressure of the new trend of the consumer market.
According to the "2023 "Double 11" Consumer Rights Protection Public Opinion Analysis Report released by the China Consumers Association a few days ago, competition for "price power" is the main means of marketing for merchants, and the pursuit of "quality-price ratio" has become a new trend in residents' consumption.
"China's consumption thinking has entered an era where quality-price ratio and cost-effectiveness coexist. Zhu Danpeng, an analyst of China's food industry, believes that from a certain point of view, Chinese's consumption thinking and consumption behavior are forcing the entire industry to innovate, upgrade, and iterate the profit model. Taking the catering industry as an example, the integrity of the industrial chain of the catering industry is constantly improving, including scene innovation, quality improvement, and service system upgrading. "Consumers' demand for quality-price ratio and cost-effective ratio will make the industrial structure of China's catering industry continue to optimize and improve. ”
Zhang Hongsheng, executive dean of the School of Cultural Industry Management of Communication University of China, said that the "involution" of intensified domestic competition is precisely the process of reshuffling the industry. In this process, it is not only the process of eliminating backward production capacity, but also the process of eliminating some enterprises that cannot keep up. At the same time, a number of outstanding enterprises or excellent brands will stand out and form a real local Chinese force, which is an inevitable development process.
On the one hand, on the supply side, it is necessary to increase innovation and provide better and newer services and products; on the other hand, consumers' consumption concepts are gradually becoming rational, which are forcing enterprises to transform and upgrade and provide better services. "Involution" is not the goal, outward development, "going out" is the ultimate goal. It is necessary to encourage domestic listed companies to become global brands and develop globally.
"The changes in new consumer groups have generated new demand, which will push more Chinese domestic products to a bigger stage. Wang Anning, founder and CEO of Guangzhou Guyu Biotechnology Co., Ltd., said.
The Central Economic Work Conference held in early December pointed out that it is necessary to promote consumption from post-epidemic recovery to continuous expansion, cultivate and expand new types of consumption, and actively cultivate new consumption growth points, including domestic "trendy products". We have reason to believe that in 2024, domestic brands will usher in a new golden period of development.
[Writing] Southern + reporter Li Jie Huang Xiaoyun
【Authors】 Li Jie, Zhou Renguo, Huang Xiaoyun
Southern Industry Think Tank