Chinese products going global aren’t just limited to cars that appeal to men, but also include beauty products loved by women.
According to the latest customs data, in the first eight months of 2023, Chinese cosmetics exports to South Korea increased by approximately 190% compared to the same period last year!
And in the first 11 months of 2023, the amount of Chinese cosmetics exported to South Korea reached 935 million yuan.
In contrast, this figure was only 258 million yuan during the same period in 2022.
Export growth and import decline.
This is not only a trend in the new energy vehicle market, but also in the current Chinese cosmetics market.
For a long time, there has been a common perception in the Chinese cosmetics market:
Foreign big brands are considered good, while non-big brands are deemed unworthy. SK-II, Estée Lauder, Givenchy, Chanel, Estée Lauder, Dior… are all favorites among Chinese women.
However, domestic Chinese cosmetics are often labeled as “affordable” and “low-end”.
But now, at least in the Japanese and South Korean markets, the trend and reputation of Chinese cosmetics are taking a different direction.
At the high-end Japanese fashion department store “Isetan,” Japanese staff introduce that categories from Chinese brands like Perfect Diary, Into U, and Flower Knows are becoming more and more popular.
In 2022, Perfect Diary launched an eyeshadow palette in Japan with animals like foxes and cats as the theme, priced at 3,520 yen (approximately 174 yuan), which became popular since its launch in July.
Into U launched a lip mud with a “mud” texture, priced at 1,359 yen (approximately 67 yuan), which also became popular on TikTok and Twitter, and even was ranked first in the “2023 Lipstick Product” by the Japanese beauty magazine “LDK the Beauty”.
How do Chinese beauty products attract overseas users?
Unique packaging design, relatively cheap prices, and fresh product concepts are the main features.
“All eyeshadows and lipsticks are printed with cute cartoon images, and no matter which one you buy, it will look beautiful in your bag.”
From the mouths of consumers in overseas markets, products from China have already conquered them through their sense of quality.
In fact, in the eyes of older Japanese consumers, “Made in China” was synonymous with “low-end” for a long time.
Many times, they even changed the origin from “Made in China” to “Made in PRC” in an attempt to reduce the resistance of Japanese consumers.
But now, the perception of young people has changed.
Especially for brands like Flower Knows and Perfect Diary, they are actually manufactured in the same factories as some high-end brands in Europe, the United States, and Japan.
In terms of quality, there is not much difference.
In South Korea, according to import data from the South Korean customs, in the third quarter of 2023, the amount of basic skincare products imported from China to South Korea increased by 8.4% year-on-year.
Among them, eyeshadows increased by 187% year-on-year, powder increased by 135% year-on-year, and masks increased by 170% year-on-year.
It can be said that beauty products have become one of the main drivers of Chinese products going global.
Once upon a time, domestic brands like Kazi Lan were struggling in foreign markets, but the response was mediocre.
But why can these domestic beauty brands now capture the minds of foreign consumers?
The rise in quality is one aspect, but the more important experience is “copying the Chinese model”.
Someone once summarized the formula for creating new consumer brands as:
5000 Little Red Book notes + 2000 Zhihu questions and answers + endorsement by top anchors + promotion by mid-level anchors.
Almost all the domestic brands that have quickly set off trends in China follow this path.
And abroad, emerging domestic beauty brands have also continued this approach.
They invested a lot of advertising resources and collaborated with Japanese beauty KOL bloggers, quickly creating a “Chinese style” on social platforms.
As early as 2019, some well-known beauty KOLs in Japan began to imitate Chinese makeup styles, sparking discussions.
For example, YouTuber “Deer Room,” with nearly a million fans, posted instructional videos on her channel.
The video “Chinese Makeup” exceeded one million views.
With traffic, more Japanese beauty bloggers began to imitate and promote Chinese brands, increasing their traffic.
And like China, during the three-year silence period, many people in Japan were trapped at home, and many could only pass the time by watching YouTube and TikTok.
Even a small blogger’s recommendation can naturally ferment into thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of impacts.
In the subtle influence of soft marketing, overseas consumers have gradually become interested in Chinese beauty products.
Take Flower Knows as an example, in 2021, they invited the well-known Japanese girl group member Miyasako Sakurako as their spokesperson.
In the same year, Flower Knows ranked first in the topic challenge on TikTok in Japan.
In 2023, Flower Knows, with Chinese style as its selling point, was pushed to the forefront by a brow pencil priced at 790 yen.
But in the same month, Flower Knows collaborated with the well-known Japanese luxury department store Isetan to set up a two-month “pop-up store”.
Many Japanese consumers were curious: they didn’t expect Chinese beauty products to have a place in the high-end fashion market.
According to statistics from the Japan Import Cosmetics Association, in 2022, the amount of cosmetics imported from China to Japan increased by nearly 44% compared to the previous year, reaching a total of 10.4 billion yen.
In the first half of 2023, the import volume increased by about 45% year-on-year.
According to a report by the data analysis company iMedia Consulting, from 2015 to 2021, the scale of China’s cosmetics market grew from 25.2 billion yuan to 44.9 billion yuan.
According to the “2021 Beauty Industry Trend Insight Report,” the growth of domestic cosmetics going global exceeded tenfold in 2020.
And according to analysis by the investment bank Jefferies Group, in the first half of 2023, sales of LVMH’s beauty division in China decreased by 8%.
The brand power of foreign luxury brands no longer has such a significant comparative advantage in the face of the increasingly rising domestic brands.
The beginning of change is always the most difficult, the process is always the most painful, but the ending will also be the best.
After conquering the high-end markets of Japan and South Korea and exploring successful experiences, the next destination for domestic cosmetics is Southeast Asia.
Currently, “Xunhuiji,” with natural aloe vera as its selling point, has already started overseas sales in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Thailand.
Under the situation of over-concentration in the domestic market and a slowdown in industry growth, going global has become the choice and opportunity for the entire consumption track.
Still, from the analysis of publicly available customs data, the import of beauty products from China by many Southeast Asian countries has skyrocketed.
Taking Vietnam as an example, the amount of beauty products imported from China in the first 11 months of 2022 was 7.427 million yuan.
By the same period in 2023, it had increased to 47.615 million yuan.
Thailand is even more exaggerated. In 2022, it was 47.637 million yuan, and in 2023, it became 1.043 billion yuan!
The exponential growth has greatly encouraged the determination of Chinese beauty companies to go global.
Relying on the vast market demand overseas and the mature and low-cost scale supply chain domestically, such comparative advantages can enable China to grow several highly internationally influential cosmetics groups in a short period.
Of course, in this process, domestic beauty brands still need to continuously upgrade their brand power.
It must be admitted that in the high-end beauty field, the recognition of Chinese brands is still far from that of big brands like Dior.
The way to break through is only through brand and the operation of overseas agents to form a stronger brand influence.
In 2023, China became the world’s largest exporter of automobiles in one fell swoop.
It is believed that the beauty industry will follow this development path in the future, fully utilizing the dividends of going global to allow Chinese brands to capture more market share globally.