"Everyone has a love for beauty".
Women are the main force of "beauty". In recent years, the "she economy" is profoundly affecting the transformation and development trend of the consumer market structure. With the progress of science and technology and society, hot topics such as how quality consumption drives brand growth, women's consumption and the development of new quality productivity under the wave of "her era" are often seen in the newspapers, and it is foreseeable that the women's fashion consumption industry will usher in a broader space for development.
On April 14, the 2024 Women's Fashion Consumption Annual Conference, a key forum of the 4th China International Consumer Products Expo (hereinafter referred to as the Expo), was held at the Haikou State Guesthouse. Guided by the Hainan Provincial People's Government and hosted by the Southern Finance and Economics Omnimedia Group, the forum gathered with authoritative experts and scholars, representatives of well-known brands, and cross-border women entrepreneurs with the theme of "Quality Consumption and Brand Growth in Her Era" to discuss the latest trends of women's fashion consumption under the new situation, in-depth research on the intergenerational changes of women's consumption, and promote the innovation and development of the fashion consumption industry.
At the meeting, Sun Jing, general manager of Kuaishou e-commerce beauty industry & cross-border industry, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Each Makeup, Each Beauty, National Kuaishou, New Opportunities for Beauty Brands", she pointed out that beauty is a very important part of her economy and her consumption.
Thrive and grow
China's beauty market has strong consumer demand.
According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the total retail sales of cosmetics in 2023 will be 414.2 billion yuan, an increase of 5.1% over last year. According to the "2023 China Cosmetics Market Industry Development and Consumption Insights" report released by the China Fragrance, Flavor and Cosmetics Industry Association, the market size of China's cosmetics industry in 2023 will be about 516.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%, and is expected to increase to 579.1 billion yuan in 2025.
At the Hainan Consumer Expo, whether it is the domestic beauty Bloomage Biotech or the international brand Estee Lauder, the exhibition hall is crowded with people, including consumers and content creators. The prosperity of the industry has also led to the prosperity of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. On the short video platform, the beauty content ecology is very popular.
Sun Jing revealed that in Kuaishou, the number of beauty creators will increase by 134,000 year-on-year in 2023, the number of fans of beauty creators will reach 490 million, the average daily views of beauty content will exceed 1.4 billion, and the annual number of likes of beauty content will reach 6.3 billion. Among these active users who watched and liked, not only women, but also men also accounted for 34%, "so the content of beauty is a content that all ages and genders like, and everyone loves beauty." ”
In 2023, driven by the two-way supply of brands and user demand, the cross-border beauty industry of Kuaishou e-commerce will develop steadily. According to the data, the number of brands settled in the Kuaishou e-commerce beauty cross-border industry exceeded 30,000, the number of brands with transactions exceeded 100 million, and the number of buyers exceeded 100 million. This is a positive cycle that complements each other, and it also helps Kuaishou e-commerce deliver a beautiful report card in 2023. According to the financial report data, Kuaishou's total revenue in 2023 will reach 113.47 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.5%, which is also the first time that Kuaishou's annual total revenue has exceeded the threshold of 100 billion yuan. The adjusted net profit exceeded 10 billion yuan for the first time, reaching 10.27 billion yuan.
It is worth mentioning that in the fourth quarter of 2023, the GMV of Kuaishou's e-commerce business maintained a year-on-year rapid growth of 29.3%, reaching 403.9 billion yuan, driving the GMV scale of the whole year of 2023 to exceed 1.18 trillion yuan and entering the "trillion club". Kuaishou said that thanks to the continuous enrichment of pan-shelf shopping scenarios such as malls, as well as the upgrading of e-commerce products and gameplay, the average number of monthly paying e-commerce users in Kuaishou in the fourth quarter of 2023 reached a new high, exceeding 130 million.
Because there is content, it gathers users, and because there are more users, it attracts more businesses, and this complementary relationship also invisibly contributes to a sense of tacit understanding and trust. As Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, once said, let credit equal wealth. This sentence later became Alipay's slogan, and also became the motto of many Internet e-commerce.
"Kuaishou is trusting e-commerce and trusting the economy, what is the meaning of this trust?" Sun Jing said, for C-end consumers, it can be disassembled into high-quality content + quality products + intimate service, "Use high-quality content and information to reach front-end consumers, improve the cost performance and richness of goods, and optimize consumers' shopping experience." In terms of commodity power + store experience + word-of-mouth power, we want to give a full range of solutions to B-end merchants. ”
New line increment
While it's true that the beauty market is huge, it's hard to ignore the fact that the competition in this market has become fierce. During the Consumer Expo, a cosmetics industry practitioner from Guangzhou told reporters that there are new brands on the market every day, the price may be lower, and the packaging may be more exquisite, but there are also brands that are being forgotten and slowly disappearing every day. And how easy is it to get new users and let them stay for an extra second?"
"The biggest difference between Kuaishou and other platforms is that the new line crowd, that is, the crowd in third-tier cities and below, is a unique wave of users. Sun Jing pointed out that these users are not only large-scale, fast-growing, and very sticky. And it's more immersive, more active, and has more spending power.
On the Kuaishou platform, more than 100 million people are interested in beauty and skin care content, with a growth rate of nearly 40%, mainly concentrated in the age group of 18-40 years old. Nearly 50% of users swipe videos for more than 1 hour a day, and more than 60% of users will search after watching relevant content, which is a very certain consumption scenario.
According to QuestMobile's data, in September 2023, nearly 40% of Kuaishou's users were in first-tier, new first-tier and second-tier cities, and 60% were in third- to fifth-tier cities and below, with the latter having higher disposable income and stronger willingness to spend.
Whether it is for international brands or domestic fashion brands, these users and scenarios are a very attractive bonanza. Interestingly, in the past two years, international brands, which have always been "arrogant", are also competing for "small-town youth" in new-tier cities. Brands such as L'Oreal, Lancôme, L'Occitane and Shiseido have accelerated their layout in China's new line market and expanded their market channels. In addition, the coveting of traffic also makes it necessary for foreign big names to place bets. For example, L'Occitane has invested heavily in China's short video channels in the first half of fiscal year 2024.
In March this year, the 38th festival report of Kuaishou Mall also reflected the consumption power of the new line crowd from the side. The data shows that the cross-border beauty industry of Kuaishou e-commerce has grown significantly, and the transaction scale of the cross-border beauty industry has reached a record high. Among them, the GMV of well-known brands in the beauty industry increased by 36% year-on-year, and the GMV of cross-border industries increased by 129% year-on-year. From the perspective of brands, there are 38 brands with GMV exceeding 10 million, and more than 300 brands with GMV exceeding 1 million. In the cross-border beauty industry, Maxine, Skin Future, and Estee Lauder are among the top 3 brands in the beauty & cross-border industry.
(Sun Jing, General Manager of Kuaishou E-commerce Beauty Industry & Cross-border Industry, shared the theme at the 2024 Women's Fashion Consumption Annual Conference)
"Kuaishou Beauty has nine sub-groups, no matter which sub-group, the year-on-year growth rate in consumption frequency and order volume is increasing, which also reflects people's yearning for a better life. Seeing such a trend, Sun Jing told reporters that now the conditions are relatively mature, and the infrastructure of the platform is getting better and better, so this year, Kuaishou Beauty will definitely make a breakthrough in the introduction and sales of various types of beauty merchants.
Source: 21st Century Business Herald (reporter Lin Xi, Yi Jiaying, Haikou report)