Author | Li Xiaowei
Edit | Meow rice
Chinese consumers are no strangers to Thai beauty brands.
From the rise of human flesh sea tao many years ago, to the successive entry into the Chinese market in recent years, the Thai cosmetics brand has circled a large number of consumers with low prices and clear functional positioning.
The so-called Thai beauty can lay half of the chinese market like Japanese and Korean brands, and it may be obstructive and long at present.
Even when the momentum of japanese and Korean beauty is not as good as in the past, Thai beauty brands have little room to play. First, European and American brands continue to raise the priority of the Chinese market under the epidemic, and second, domestic beauty has sprung up.
Judging from the popularity and strength of European, American, Japanese and Korean brands in China in the past two decades, the ability of a country's overall culture and commercial output determines the discourse power and class nature of brands in the subdivision field.
This makes it difficult for Thai beauty brands to enter China with a relatively high-end unified image, and it is impossible to achieve mass collective output. Scattered small batches of purchasing, a small number of shelves display in new beauty collection stores, are not enough to impress Chinese consumers.
To put it bluntly, the economic base determines the superstructure. The popularity of Korean dramas can trigger a wave of Korean makeup, but the popularity of Thai dramas follow-up brands to break through China is still weak. Born in China, it is difficult for consumers to develop brand admiration for countries with less powerful surrounding economies.
As a result, a large number of Thai beauty brands in the low-end market have to share the market with the fast-rising emerging national brands, but they are obviously not as good as the localization capabilities of the national brands. Consumer insights, supply chains, and product packaging are all slow-paced.
More chaos ensued. The lack of local teams has made the brand's channel circulation system and price system chaotic, and individual brands have even appeared 4 agents, making it difficult for consumers to distinguish between true and false.
With the strengthening of domestic cosmetics supervision, the determination of the responsible persons of overseas enterprises and the listing of raw material ingredient lists have become clearer and clearer, and a top-down industry standardization and standardization order is being established.
Thai beauty brands need to grasp it, if they have been hovering at a low level, it is only a matter of time before they are out.
One head is more than one point, and the high-end is weak
To sum up the current pattern of Thai beauty in China, "one head and many points" is the most appropriate.
The head player is only Mistine Mistine (hereinafter referred to as Mistine) and nothing else. Beauty Buffet (hereinafter referred to as BTFQ), Ray and others are in the second echelon, the former became popular in China because of a milk facial cleanser, and the latter was popular because of the silk mask. The third echelon is Orangeique, Baanidin and other brands that have not yet formed a wide recognition.
A point worth speculating about is that the well-known national treasure brand SNAILWHITE Snivi and the snake venom mask brand VOODOO have not yet entered the high-end sequence in China, and there are no popular single products. On the contrary, the affordable light Ofe Mesting and BTFQ have appeared in the Little Red Book and Weibo with a large number of grass stickers, which have a great potential to be unique.
This is the second typical feature of thai beauty in the Chinese market at present, "high-end weakness, affordability is popular". That is, the current performance of these brands in the Chinese market is partially misaligned with their local brand positioning and consumer perception in Thailand.
Parts of the historical origins have formed this dislocation.
Most of the Thai brands that were accepted and popular by Chinese consumers during the Haitao period were conveyed through explosive items. Self-employed and non-institutional purchasers, considering external factors such as logistics and customs clearance, are often reluctant to choose large and heavy products.
"Many years ago, when the industry was not standardized, compared with the large packaging of snake venom cream, Mistine and BTFQ were small and light, and a package could be sent more; the price was cheap, even if the original people who wanted the goods regretted going to China, they also improved their hands", Ms. Zhou, who settled in Chiang Mai and did purchasing for many years, believes that the probability of small brands being investigated and taxed before is relatively low.
The key word here is cheap.
Even if you go to the grass farming community to search for keywords such as milk cleanser and Ray mask, most of the labels connected to them are still "high-end flat replacement", "childlike artifact", etc., which is in line with the reasons why consumers originally pursued them, hoping to spend less money to get the same effect and quality.
This part of the product circle is the user with limited consumption power, at least forming a single product breakthrough. High-end brands don't even have the opportunity to make consumers buy it.
Located in The Ningbo Bonded Warehouse, the head of a foreign trade company specializing in Indonesian products told me that after high-end skincare lines such as Whoo hou and SK-II became popular in China, high-end beauty brands in other Southeast Asian countries actually had an opportunity to enter.
With the same whitening or moisturizing ingredients, Thailand and Cambodia have significantly lower labor costs, and they do not need to cover a large number of marketing costs spent in China by high-end lines similar to Japan and South Korea, and the natural price has an advantage.
"But at that time, the country was in a period of rising consumption", the person in charge believes that at that time, it was difficult for consumers to form trust in foreign or local brands with low pricing, but instead admired high-end, which is why European, American, Japanese and Korean beauty brands have been strong in China for many years.
But Thailand's economic strength, geographical location and history were not enough to convince Chinese consumers that their products were high-end enough that it was naturally difficult to enter the Chinese market cold start.
Dealer as a pusher
After the development of scattered small batches of purchasing to a certain extent, thai beauty entered the pace of China, ushered in a stage of integration for the first time, a group of traders and dealers familiar with cross-border trade began to go down, and institutional integration of retail customers became the main feature of this stage.
Several fire brands well known to Chinese users were introduced by different dealers and traders at this stage.
The Thai milk facial cleanser Beauty Buffet (BTFQ) mentioned above was introduced to China by Yatai Sagi International in 2019. The company has also previously sold silk mask Ray, which was brought to fire by Lin Yun and Fan Bingbing.
(Source: Cosmetics Finance Online)
UZI, a cosmetics company founded by Thai actress Kwan Usamanee, has reached a cooperation with Beijing Taifengsheng International Trade Co., Ltd., and its organic cosmetics will also be introduced to the Chinese market as planned.
Aloe vera brand Ouganique and makeup brand Fruites were taken by a Guangzhou trader, Zammar, whose global sites can directly buy these two brands.
Distributors play a particularly important role here, first, they are more familiar with local laws and regulations, and second, their ability to control downstream distribution channels is much higher than that of brands.
However, the end of the institution at this stage is basically the capable person. There are also many information gaps between brands, distributors, channel providers and consumers.
For example, when Thai brands are negotiating with two or three Chinese trading companies at the same time, it is difficult to tell which one is stronger locally based on limited information.
The usual ways of choosing are proximity and familiarity. UZI, a cosmetics company founded by Thai actress Kwan Usamanee, chose to cooperate with Beijing TaiFeng Sheng International Trade Company, most likely because the company's legal representative was originally Thai, and Tianyancha showed that he owned many industries under his name and was the president of the Thai Beijing Chamber of Commerce.
BTFQ chose Yatai Sagi International, probably because it also valued its successful experience in operating Ray. The BTFQ brand side is also willing to let the channel providers benefit, so combined with the different online and offline operation methods of the retail terminal of Chinese beauty products, it was decided to operate by channel.
In the stage of relying on distributors and channel providers, the development of Thai beauty brands, although rapid, has not been smooth.
After some Thai brands have a small fire, there are a lot of good and bad middlemen. The chaotic agency system, distribution system and price system have greatly damaged the brand's image in the hearts of Chinese consumers.
The dispute over the authenticity of the agency right of silk mask brand Ray is a typical case at this stage.
At that time, there were four versions of Ray masks on the market, which were commonly known in the industry as makeup bud edition, ANJERI edition, Sagi edition and Rui ichi edition. Kun Nong, one of the founders of the Ray brand, and Zhang Zhen, executive director of Ray International, the owner of the Ray brand, are almost speaking out, trying to prove that they are the real Li Kui of the Ray brand mask. The trademark and ownership structure war did not come to an end until 2018.
In addition to brands like Mistine and Snicker, which have the ability to enter the Chinese market on their own and build local teams and channels, other Thai beauty brands that have made some efforts, in addition to the active introduction of dealers and traders, are basically entering China through large-scale exhibitions such as the Beauty Expo.
The importance of local teams
In fact, when Thai beauty does not yet have the ability to enter the Chinese market as a whole, a professional and centralized output expo is a better choice for brands to quickly establish contacts with consumers.
In 2019, CBE China Beauty Expo identified Thailand as the main guest country, and Thai beauty brands did have a chance to make a concentrated appearance at the policy level.
BSC, a beauty brand backed by Saha GROUP, a famous FMCG company in Thailand, was a hit at the CBE exhibition. Of course, this success has inherent advantages.
Saha GROUP, the parent company, has more than 200 branches, 17 listed companies, more than 20 of its own beauty brands, and is also a foundry for many international brands such as Shiseido, ZA, POLA and so on.
The aforementioned head player Mistine is also currently part of the Shaha Group. Its base makeup brand FACE SO! Also exhibiting at the show, judimune Joan Charongsu, the heroine of the popular Thai film "Genius Gunner", is the spokesperson for the brand.
It is not difficult to see that the way for the big group to go down is to first throw out the seed player (Mistine) to test the waters, explore the mature Chinese operation methodology, and then let SAHA's beauty brand BSC and FACE SO! Successive admissions.
Relevant analysis believes that in the five years since Mistine entered China in 2016, she has indeed found a marketing route that adapts to China.
This has to mention the importance of the brand's self-built local team. As far as channel construction is concerned, CS channels such as offline Watsons, Wuzhouhui, and KK Pavilion are covered, and the first brand store has also landed in Shanghai's Superbrand Plaza, online stationed on mainstream platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, and Xiaohongshu.
The gameplay of celebrity endorsements has also been thoroughly explored. At the beginning of entering China, Mistine chose the spokesperson for the actor Pincena Leveser, who is widely known in China for playing the heroine Xiaoshui in the movie "The Little Thing Of First Love". After the opening of the first year of the draft, Meng Meiqi, the champion of creation 101, and Liu Yu, the C of the creation camp of 2021, have also become their sunscreen spokespersons and thermal spokesmen.
Due to the presence of local teams, the brand found that it took almost ten days for consumers to place an order from overseas direct mail delivery to customs clearance to local delivery in China. So I cooperated with local logistics rookies to cut the delivery time to 2 days, which is also to catch up with the logistics speed that consumers are accustomed to.
According to this year's field visit at the Thailand Cultural Festival, we found that in addition to Mistine, Snicker and VOODOO, most Thai beauty brands have not yet formed a relatively complete operation team in China. But the gesture of seeking a partner is generally positive.
And with the end of the Ray agency dispute, a topic around "who is genuine" returned to the center of the stage. How to ensure the quality of overseas cosmetics purchased by consumers? Obviously, a more standardized and systematic cosmetics circulation market is becoming more and more demanding.
At the beginning of this year, the State Drug Administration relaxed the restrictions on pre-filing review of cosmetics registration and filing management, but this does not mean that the overall supervision is relaxed. From the details of the policy, stricter requirements are put forward for raw material composition, clarification of responsible persons, etc.
For example, if the person responsible clarifies this item, the main body is in place. Previously, the regulations set the legal liability only for production enterprises, but most of the foreign brands in the domestic client are business units, they do not have production capacity. Even if there are relevant safety problems in the product, it is difficult for the regulatory part to trace or implement the main responsibility of the entrusting party.
For registrants and recorders abroad, the enterprise legal person in China shall be designated as the domestic responsible person, and the domestic responsible person also needs to perform the responsibilities related to quality and safety such as assisting in the detection of adverse reactions of cosmetics and assisting in the recall of new raw materials for cosmetics.
This kind of standardization and grooming is not necessarily a good thing for Thai beauty brands at this stage. It can not only help brands self-examine themselves to a certain extent, but also establish an affordable but high-quality image in the minds of consumers.
With this cornerstone, the road to deep ploughing in the Chinese market in the future will be more or less smooth.
Original production by Wu Yiyi Studio