On March 7, CCTV News Douyin released the 38 tribute short film "Auntie" starring actress Ren Suxi, the video tells the story of how an ordinary woman insists on herself and works hard in multiple lives in society and family with delicate emotions and real life scenes, which has aroused wide resonance among netizens.
In addition to Ren Suxi, there is also a "heavyweight role" in "Auntie": a local skin care brand, the first share of "medical dressings". In the film, when Ren Suxi returned to his hometown to visit relatives, he prepared a Fuerjia stay up late repair patch for his sister and an anti-wrinkle mask for his mother.
Although the above scene is the brand's product placement, it accurately expresses Ren Suxi's love and carefulness for his family, and some netizens commented: "If the advertisements are all filmed like this, I can not watch the TV series." ”
Judging from the comments of a large number of netizens, the short film co-created by Fuerjia is just like the position of its products in the mask market, which can accurately reach people's hearts and resonate with consumers. This inevitably reminds people of lululemon in the sports equipment track, which can always accurately grasp the psychology of the target audience and achieve a deep connection with consumers.
In fact, the underlying logic of the growth of the two is also very similar, and it can even be said that in the more than 6 years since its establishment, Fuerjia has deduced a lululemon-style rise in the mask industry.
lululemon成功三要素
On March 23, lululemon released its 2023 full-year financial report, with annual revenue of US$9.6 billion (about 69.263 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 19%, and net revenue in the Chinese mainland market increased by 78% year-on-year, showing very strong resilience against the trend in the context of global growth slowdown and even economic downturn.
lululemon的成功有三个特征:
1. It takes into account the sports function and street fashion, and caters to the consumption and economic trends.
lululemon started with the yoga pants for fitness women, which not only ensures the user's athletic function and comfort, but also pays attention to the shape of the user's body and better sculpts the user's body curve. Now, lululemon has stepped on two outlets:
First, young consumer groups, especially female consumers, emphasize self-pleasing, comfort and personality emancipation, so that more yoga pants can be brought to the street daily. The second is the lipstick effect during the economic downturn, people are more willing to buy small luxury goods that are affordable and can meet a variety of needs, including psychological needs, which is why lululemon labels itself as the Hermès of yoga pants.
2. Create a super and strong product matrix to ensure the expansion and consistency of the brand
Although yoga pants are lululemon's star products, today lululemon's products have covered running, travel, training, tennis, swimming, golf and other categories, becoming a well-known sports brand for the public. However, it should be noted that lululemon does not advocate disorderly expansion, but pays attention to the research and development and innovation of fabrics, maintains the inheritance of design language, and does not easily reduce prices and promotions, so as to ensure that the brand still has a strong recognition when expanding its products.
3. Be the social currency of quality women
lululemon's initial target customers were unmarried, highly educated, 32-year-old "super girls" earning $100,000 to $150,000 a year, many of whom were triathlon enthusiasts, often leaders in the community and athletic trends, and connoisseurs referred to in "Tipping Point," a book that explains how to make a trend. lululemon has built a marketing system and community culture around them, and they have spread lululemon's brand spirit and product characteristics to a wider range of consumers, until today, step by step from subdividing functional brands to fashion and trendy clothing.
From the perspective of business logic, the process of the birth of Fuerjia is similar to that of lululemon:
After independent operation in 2017, Fuerjia has developed the subdivision of "mechanical brand dressing" (that is, medical dressings, mostly used for skin repair after medical beauty), and gradually became the head brand of functional skin care products, with rapid revenue growth from 2018 to 2022, from 373 million yuan to 1.769 billion yuan, and will be listed on August 1, 2023.
Today, when the skin care industry bids farewell to high growth and the decline of the makeup market, Fuerjia has successfully opened up the second growth curve of makeup brand skin care products, and completed the deep channel connection and emotional connection with the majority of consumers, showing a strong contrarian growth momentum.
The logic of mask consumption in the new generation: from medical repair to daily maintenance
Facial mask is the cornerstone product in the cosmetics market, which is characterized by large scale, high consumption frequency and strong penetration. According to the "2024 Mask Trend Insight Report" released by Fuerjia and Qingyan, the leading media in the beauty industry, the compound growth rate of China's mask market from 2018 to 2023 is 6.7%, and the mask market size is expected to exceed 75 billion yuan by 2025.
Facial masks are classified according to the way of use, which can be divided into patch masks and smear-type masks. The former occupies a dominant position in the market, and the "2024 Mask Trend Insight Report" shows that taking the sales from January to September 2023 as an example, the market share of patch masks is 72.8%. In the first three quarters of the Tmall platform, the number of SKUs of patch masks was 2.46 times that of applied masks, and the number of brands was 1.84 times that of applied masks.
Like the process of lululemon starting with yoga pants and then breaking through the circle to the mass track, Fuerjia chose a subdivision track in a large category (patch mask): medical dressings. Generally speaking, facial masks are divided according to their functions, which can be divided into hydrating, whitening, anti-aging, cleansing and other products. However, Fuerjia has accurately found the consumption pain point of a subdivided group of people - the medical beauty group urgently needs a skin care product that is safe, non-irritating, has strong hydrating effect, repairs and soothes the skin, clears acne and removes bacteria after surgery, and skin care products in the traditional sense cannot meet these needs one by one.
In fact, Huaxin Pharmaceutical, the predecessor of Fuerjia, completed the research and development of "medical sodium hyaluronate repair patch" as early as 2014. Sodium hyaluronate is highly hydrophilic, which can well carry out water retention and delivery, and optimize the barrier function of the skin, while not irritating the skin.
Since its inception, medical sodium hyaluronate repair patch (white film) and medical sodium hyaluronate repair patch (black film, which has been upgraded in formula and more expensive than white film) are not only the leaders in the field of medical aesthetic restoration, but also the core products of Fuerjia, and public data shows that the sales revenue of white film in 2022 will be 624 million yuan and 221 million yuan, accounting for 97.53% of the company's medical device product sales revenue and 47.74% of the total revenue.
The success of the black and white film has made consumers' perception and use of Fuerjia across two major scenarios: medical repair and daily maintenance. A distributor of Fuerjia said: In addition to the medical beauty group, many consumer groups will buy black and white masks as daily skin care products, for them, "medical dressings" means safer, more secure and no irritation.
For example, there is a user on Xiaohongshu who said that he has a sensitive acne skin and hormone face, and he needs one piece a day during the rotten face period; The black film is used for first aid during the inflammatory phase of acne.
Advance into the "Ingredient Era": A matrix of many superpowers
Although Fuerjia has the title of the first share of "medical dressing", from the perspective of development history and financial data, Fuerjia's successful listing is still due to the growth and development space of the company. At present, there are a total of 51 SKUs, mainly including medical dressing patches, facial masks, sprays, water emulsion essences, freeze-dried powders, etc.
The relevant report of GF Securities pointed out that Fuerjia "has excellent performance of large single products, and the product matrix is becoming increasingly rich":
Sullivan's relevant data show that in 17-21 years, the CAGR of domestic functional skin care products and medical device dressing products was 31.8% and 86.3% respectively, and the market size is expected to reach 62.3 billion and 25.4 billion yuan respectively in 26 years, at the same time, the overall pattern of the medical dressing market is relatively scattered, with a CR5 of 26.5% in 21 years, and Fuerjia ranks first with a market share of 10.1%.
Some industry insiders pointed out that in the competition of medical device dressings, there will be a strong and strong trend. Because people with problem skin generally do not dare to try new products easily, and medical aesthetic institutions will not easily replace new products - in this field, product stability and efficacy and innovation are equally important indicators. Therefore, users in this field have a strong mind, a high product repurchase rate, and it is difficult for new products or small brands to shake the status of old products with large single products.
Among the mechanical products, in addition to the black and white film, it also includes medical sodium hyaluronate repair solution (spray), and in Q2 2022, a new dressing product will be launched, and the medical recombinant type III humanized collagen patch will be launched, which is still in the market cultivation period.
Fuerjia is also constantly launching a series of makeup-based skin care products, such as Centella Asiatica Soothing Repair Patch, Astaxanthin Tranexamic Acid Repair Patch, Collagen Water Light Repair Patch, Niacinamide Whitening and Spot Repair Mask and Acne Cleansing Repair Patch, with revenue reaching 1.8/1.1/1.2/1.1/100 million yuan respectively in 22 years, and the proportion of makeup skin care product revenue has increased from 10.1% in 2018 to 51.1% in 2022, successfully becoming the second growth curve of Fuerjia.
From the overall point of view of the product matrix, Fuerjia still maintains the true nature of technical genes when doing category expansion, that is, to avoid the blind fast development of the category, or to use the brand influence of Fuerjia to engage in the number of OEM products in order to make quick money, but to take the functionality of the product as the starting point, and strive to solve the pain points of consumers with effective ingredients for each product launched. Then give full play to the brand and channel advantages of Fuerjia, even in the market segment monopolized by foreign big brands, it can gain a firm foothold and achieve growth.
On the whole, although there are strong competitors or head brands in their respective tracks, the overall development momentum is good thanks to the brand influence, product strength and channel advantages of Fuerjia's "medical grade". The niacinamide series have performed well in their respective functional areas, such as the effect of centella asiatica for sensitive skin, which has already gained a good reputation on social media.
In the future, with the expansion of the medical cosmetology group, especially the light medical cosmetology has begun to become the "daily life" of young consumers, the basic plate of medical device dressings will continue to expand. In the white paper on China's ingredient trends released at the end of 2022, [Tmall Beauty x CBE] said: With the continuous expansion of China's beauty and skin care market, industry progress, knowledge popularization, and awareness awakening, the new generation of consumer groups pay more attention to ingredient content, which marks that the beauty and skin care track has entered the era of ingredients, and the product matrix of "one super and many strong" will also be promising.
The key to winning the future: making face masks a social currency
Before and after the listing of Fuerjia, some voices circulated on the Internet, believing that Fuerjia is an over-marketing company, putting aside some malicious rhythmic voices, some public opinion equated Fuerjia's powerful channel sales system with public relations and marketing, which is a misreading.
In fact, unlike lululemon, which aimed at those "super girls" to build word-of-mouth and detonate the trend at the beginning of its establishment, Fuerjia, who was born in a pharmaceutical company, did not understand marketing in the early days of its establishment, and even had some technical nerds. Since then, Fuerjia's popularity on social media has benefited from the medical dressing track chosen by the company, which has attracted many celebrities and Internet celebrities to share on Xiaohongshu, and then gradually spread into a large number of tap water notes, making the brand out of the circle.
It must be admitted that the popularity of Fuerjia in the early years has certain passive factors: First, social media, especially Xiaohongshu's note sharing, has risen rapidly, and a large number of prescient KOLs have begun to seize the control of topics in various subdivisions; Functionalization, pay more attention to safety, know how to choose the right skin care products according to their own characteristics and needs;Third, the rapid development of medical beauty, the increase of target customer groups, in these discussions, the black and white mask of Fuerjia with strong recognition and product power, has become an unavoidable topic, which naturally promotes the increase of "tap water" notes, amplifies the brand influence of Fuerjia, and makes Fuerjia become the social currency of facial mask group communication.
Of course, when the company went public and its revenue approached 2 billion, Fuerjia gradually began to strengthen social media marketing, consciously amplify the brand influence, and carried out a series of marketing actions, such as inviting Douyin KOLs to explore the factory, creating a public welfare short film "Auntie" and so on.
In this process, Fuerjia still maintains the true character of technical genes, attaches importance to quality over quantity in marketing investment, and pursues the consistency of marketing efficiency and brand tonality. For example, the public welfare short film "Auntie" chose the powerful Ren Suxi, and Ren Suxi is also the brand ambassador of Fuerjia. There are many similarities between her fame experience and Fu Erjia: Ren Suxi was mostly active on the drama stage when she debuted, with solid acting skills and singing talents, and after many years of accumulation, she went out of the circle through "Donkey Gets Water", and gave a very wonderful performance in the movie "The Nameless", and also showed a "god cameo" in the TV drama "The Long Season", and last year's Spring Festival Gala brought a very infectious singing to the national audience.
At the same time, we can also see in "Auntie" that the implantation of Fuerjia is restrained and effective, and the temperament and tonality of the actor and the brand are consistent, which also makes "Auntie" a benchmark case for enterprises to create video shorts - it not only implants and promotes the company's products and brands, but also immerses the audience in it and obtains a good viewing experience.
The relevant data also shows the marketing efficiency of Fuerjia more intuitively: compared with domestic competitors that use sodium hyaluronate as the entry point and make functional skin care products at the same time, Fuerjia's gross profit margin is more stable, and it ranks first among comparable companies in the past two years, and the net profit margin is also significantly higher than that of comparable companies. The reason for the higher net profit margin is that the marketing investment is smaller than that of comparable companies, whose marketing expenses were only 16% 21 years ago, and have increased in the past two years to 26%, which is far lower than the two direct competitors' about 40% and 46%.
Overall, the similar "three elements of growth" of Fuerjia and lululemon represent the most basic and effective business logic: starting from the needs of target customer groups, solving their pain points based on technology and R&D innovation, and then deepening the connection with consumers based on the consistency of brand tonality, technology update and iteration, and expanding and growing. This business path may not be like some companies that rely on capital maturation or asset-light technology-heavy marketing, which can obtain explosive growth in the short term, but it is more stable and solid, which can not only allow enterprises to seize opportunities when the wind comes, but also maintain growth potential during the economic downturn.