As we all know, the Chinese beauty market has entered a new phase. With a market share of 50.4% last year, China’s beauty industry has for the first time stood shoulder to shoulder with international beauty brands, demonstrating its unique charm and strong capabilities. It is evident that Chinese beauty brands have formed a considerable force in terms of product competitiveness and consumer perception.
As a leading content platform, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) is committed to creating more growth opportunities for Chinese beauty brands. Yesterday (April 24th), the “2024 Xiaohongshu Chinese Beauty Industry Summit” was held in Shanghai. During the summit, relevant executives from Xiaohongshu and industry experts explored various aspects such as future trends in the beauty industry, insights into beauty consumers, business marketing strategies, and closed-loop business operations. They delved deep into the inexhaustible driving force behind the continuous growth of the Chinese beauty industry.
Forward-looking trend insights and audience insights: Xiaohongshu drives a new direction in Chinese beauty marketing
On the stage of the Chinese beauty market, Chinese brands are undergoing an unprecedented transformation and rise. According to the 2024 Xiaohongshu “Chinese Beauty Industry White Paper” jointly released by Xiaohongshu’s commercialization and CHAILEEDO, the market size of the Chinese beauty industry has increased from 275.9 billion yuan in 2014 to 797.2 billion yuan in 2023, with an average annual compound growth rate of 7.32% over the past decade. This transformation demonstrates the strong growth power of Chinese brands, which have evolved from followers to trendsetters in the beauty industry.
It is worth noting that in 2023, the trend of “China Blooming Red” was fully reflected on the Xiaohongshu platform. Xiaohongshu has always been regarded as an important platform for consumers to discover and make decisions about beauty products. Based on its platform attributes, diverse user demographics, precise trend insights, and a rich user-generated content (UGC) community, Xiaohongshu provides significant marketing opportunities for Chinese beauty brands.
During the summit, Yu Si, the General Manager of Xiaohongshu’s commercial market, stated that Xiaohongshu has become a muse for 300 million monthly active users to gain inspiration for consumer trends and a better lifestyle. In the past six months, some new keywords have emerged within the Xiaohongshu community, such as “self-reclamation,” “listening and interacting,” and “diverse aesthetics.”
Taking “self-reclamation” as an example, it has become increasingly important in the eyes of Xiaohongshu users. They seek help or share experiences regarding makeup, skincare routines, and emotional well-being. Additionally, there is a warm atmosphere of ordinary people helping each other within the Xiaohongshu community, breaking the norms of the traditional slim and fair beauty standards and embracing diverse beauty, with Chinese elements gradually integrating into daily life.
Moreover, with the increasing cultural confidence of consumers, the trend of Chinese aesthetics revival is particularly evident. It can be observed that as consumers’ demands for product quality and cultural connotations continue to rise, Chinese beauty brands are presented with new development opportunities.
In Xiaohongshu, users discover beauty in their daily lives and showcase beauty in their lifestyles, from morning skincare routines to evening relaxation rituals, from dopamine-inspired makeup to travel looks. It can be said that the hottest beauty trends are thriving on Xiaohongshu. The “White Paper” summarizes 11 major forward-looking trends in the beauty industry.
In the skincare, the trends include technological skincare, new vitality in skincare, delicate and chill vibes, and the rise of Eastern influences. In the makeup field, the trends include makeup with skincare benefits, chasing new crushes, sophisticated layering, and cultural awakenings. In the personal care field, the trends include face care as skincare, high-end care at home, and beauty salon experiences.
Taking the trend of “cultural awakenings” as an example, with the wave of Chinese aesthetics, there has been a significant increase in searches for Chinese-style makeup, with keywords like “Chinese vintage makeup” growing by 90,671% and “Quanzhou hairpin makeup” growing 1,401 times. It is evident that “Chinese aesthetics are the true top trend,” providing new directions for product innovation and marketing for Chinese makeup brands.
Overall, the insights into beauty trends provided by Xiaohongshu indicate that innovation, personalization, and cultural heritage will be key to the future development of Chinese beauty. Brands need to continuously innovate in product development. Simultaneously, personalized services and the exploration of China’s rich cultural resources will help shape a unique competitive image for Chinese beauty brands.
However, regardless of market changes, beauty ultimately revolves around people. Therefore, Xiaohongshu has always emphasized that “people matter” and returns to the fundamental understanding of people’s needs. Huo Wa, the head of Xiaohongshu’s Marketing Lab Research Group, discussed the breakdown logic of audience insights in the “White Paper” regarding the “beauty power amplification.”
According to the “White Paper,” people’s pursuit of beauty stems from their desire for personal development and empowerment in social relationships, which includes enhancing “inner motivation,” “personal charm,” “appropriate strength,” and “influence.”
For example, in terms of enhancing “personal charm,” individuals seek to amplify their unique traits and attractiveness when pursuing beauty. People belonging to groups such as skincare enthusiasts and makeup trend followers actively explore and experiment with different products, forms, and scents, enjoying the process of discovery. On the other hand, individuals characterized by the features of “New Chinese Beauty” draw inspiration from traditional culture, using Eastern elements to highlight their personal charm and resonate deeply with their cultural heritage.
Therefore, for Chinese beauty brands, understanding user insights and futuretrends on Xiaohongshu is crucial for their marketing strategies. By leveraging the platform’s diverse user base, trend insights, and UGC community, brands can tap into the growing demand for personalized, innovative, and culturally relevant beauty products.
Empowering Chinese Beauty Brands with Xiaohongshu
Based on Xiaohongshu’s audience insights and trend forecasts, Chinese beauty brands can accurately position themselves in the market and cater to consumer demands. However, in this process, how can Chinese beauty brands effectively communicate with users, convey product information, and establish brand awareness?
Xiaohongshu provides solutions from three dimensions: “Efficient Seeding,” “Brand Shaping,” and “Linking Transactions.” These solutions help Chinese beauty brands seize opportunities, cultivate popular products, build reputable brands, and achieve a dual effect of increasing brand exposure and business growth.
At the summit, Lei Qiu, the Director of Business Strategy for the Chinese Beauty and Personal Care Industry at Xiaohongshu, showcased Xiaohongshu’s unique approach called the “User-Product-Demand Funnel Model.” This model accurately matches “users-products-demands” and helps brands identify the most crucial “core audience.”
In simple terms, it stimulates proactive responses and sharing from the core audience through content and promotions. Based on the influence of person-to-person interactions within the community, it forms word-of-mouth communication that gradually penetrates high-potential audiences with similar needs and pain points.
Using Perfect Diary’s Bionic Membrane Essence Lipstick as an example, Lei Qiu demonstrated how the product broke through the dry lips market and gained momentum by promoting the concept of “makeup nourishing lips.”
They achieved this by leveraging Xiaohongshu and partnering with the platform’s IP “New Trend Manufacturing Bureau” to create the new trend of “high-end makeup nourishing lips.” Through effective content, they precisely reached audiences concerned about dry lips and lip lines, communicated the benefits of moisturizing and lip care, and gradually expanded their reach to independent modern women, high-spending consumers, and sophisticated white-collar professionals. They consistently conveyed the concept of women’s lifestyle attitude and ultimately captured the “makeup nourishing” market and the audience with dry lips. This resulted in rapid expansion of the brand’s audience and the product becoming a hit during its launch, continuously radiating the brand’s influence.
It is understood that Xiaohongshu has also developed various innovative content and marketing strategies to drive brand growth. For example, brands can utilize Xiaohongshu’s diverse content formats, including text, images, short videos, live streams, etc., and combine them with their product features and user preferences to develop innovative content strategies. With Xiaohongshu’s precise audience targeting feature, brands can directly reach potential consumers based on their own positioning. They can also explore cross-industry collaborations with KOLs, celebrities, or other brands, engaging in co-branding or cooperative promotions to achieve resource sharing, mutual benefits, and expand their brand influence.
In the era of new consumption, Xiaohongshu provides comprehensive support and services to brands through its unique market insights and innovative marketing strategies. By leveraging precise trend insights and audience analysis, Xiaohongshu helps brands capture the latest market dynamics and consumer demands. Its rich and diverse content and marketing strategies inject new vitality into brand growth.
Closed-loop Business Strategy, Driving Comprehensive Transformation of Chinese Beauty Brands
Of note, in preparation for the upcoming 618 shopping festival, a beauty and skincare product selection event was held during the summit on April 23rd and 24th at the Zhangjiang Science Hall in Shanghai. The event invited 250 domestic and international beauty brands and 200 Xiaohongshu buyers.
As the two crucial factors in Xiaohongshu’s closed-loop business chain, this selection event aimed to provide a direct communication platform for buyers and brands to foster friendly interaction, facilitate efficient matching, and promote the closed-loop efficiency and transformation of e-commerce business.
Currently, Xiaohongshu seamlessly integrates the value of its community and e-commerce, connecting users throughout the entire process from reading posts and watching live streams to making purchases. It has established a complete chain of comprehensive transformation, helping brands achieve significant business growth.
During the summit, Aolin, the Head of Xiaohongshu’s Beauty and Skincare E-commerce in China, shared the overall sales trends of Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce market in 2023. The overall sales were on the rise, with China leading the way in beauty and skincare brands. The three major domains—product posts, buyer live streams, and store live streams—continued to perform well, with posts and live streams leading the way, and store live streams showing immense potential.
It is reported that the Chinese beauty brand YOSEIDO was among the first to embrace Xiaohongshu’s closed-loop chain and achieved remarkable results in the fourth quarter of 2023. They surpassed 10 million yuan in sales for their Winter Nurturing Essence product and experienced exponential growth in SPU searches compared to the previous year.
During the summit, Wu Yifan, the General Manager of YOSEIDO Cosmetics, mentioned that YOSEIDO identified three key elements on Xiaohongshu: high-value audience, content with grass-planting genes, and the trend of live-streaming e-commerce. After collaborating with Xiaohongshu last year, they achieved success in conveying their brand values and experiencing a business breakthrough.
Within the closed-loop chain, YOSEIDO identified three key stages:
- In the brand’s initial stage, they conducted small-scale live streams with micro-influencers who had millions of followers in related fields. This allowed them to validate the product’s selling points and feasibility and attract the first batch of grass-planting users.
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In the growth stage, they collaborated with Dong Jie, a popular actress, to create high-profile events and increase brand visibility. Dong Jie then joined the brand’s live stream, further accumulating and converting traffic.
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In the explosive stage, they leveraged multiple domains such as live streams, posts, and searches to convert their core luxury consumer group into brand fans, completing the establishment of an internal closed-loop and ultimately experiencing tremendous business growth.
Lingling, a Xiaohongshu buyer, also shared her experience collaborating with YOSEIDO during the summit. She mentioned that YOSEIDO is a brand that takes product quality seriously. Before promoting the products, they invited her to the company to understand the research and development achievements firsthand, which showcased YOSEIDO’s solid scientific capabilities. Lingling also expressed that live-streaming on Xiaohongshu feels like gathering with friends to share good products, creating a particularly friendly atmosphere.
It is evident that on the Xiaohongshu platform, brands can go beyond content marketing and achieve a closed-loop operation from grass-planting to conversion through key domains such as buyer live streams and brand live streams. This ultimately helps them achieve the marketing goal of integrating product and effectiveness.
Olin stated, “Last year, the number of merchants on Xiaohongshu with transaction volumes exceeding 100 million yuan increased by over 500%, and the number of merchants with transaction volumes exceeding 10 million yuan increased by over 380%.”
With the increasing maturity of Xiaohongshu’s commercialization, the closed-loop chain of Xiaohongshu’s integrated “operation + marketing” e-commerce will continue to improve. It not only helps brands achieve business growth within the platform but also enables comprehensive transformation, including word-of-mouth growth, through the overflow of grass-planting value.
Collaborating with CCTV.com to Launch the “Discovering China” IP, Empowering a New Chapter for Chinese Beauty Brands
In the digital era, the rise of Chinese beauty brands relies not only on product innovation and quality improvement but also on strong brand communication and cultural representation. In the context of globalization, effectively promoting Chinese beauty culture, showcasing the unique charm of Chinese aesthetics, and enhancing cultural confidence pose both opportunities and challenges for Chinese beauty brands. Xiaohongshu, with its massive user base and influential content, provides a unique stage for Chinese beauty brands.
During this summit, Maniko, the General Manager of Xiaohongshu’s Business Marketing Center, announced the 2024 Chinese Beauty IP landscape on Xiaohongshu and partnered with CCTV.com to launch the “Discovering China” IP. The aim is to provide a platform for Chinese brands to showcase their products’ technological prowess, uncover the cultural connotations and value concepts behind each brand, and thus help Chinese brands shape profound and distinctive brand images.
In the “Discovering China” season, the focus will be on Chinese beauty brands. Through collaborating with CCTV.com to create brand-origin tracing documentaries, China’s ingredient education programs, and other content, it will comprehensively demonstrate the brand strength and cultural charm of Chinese beauty brands. With the endorsement of the authoritative media CCTV.com and the platform power of Xiaohongshu, it is believed that not only can consumers’ awareness and favorability towards Chinese beauty brands be further enhanced, but it can also greatly promote sales growth and market expansion for the brands.
There is no doubt that Chinese beauty brands are undergoing a series of positive transformations, and Xiaohongshu, as an important driving force, has opened up a new path for their growth.
If the previous approach of brands seeking promotion, seeding, and conversion in a single chain can be considered as the Brand-Effect Integration 1.0 version, then with the help of Xiaohongshu’s platform power, Chinese beauty brands can not only achieve effective conversion of seeding but also demonstrate unique brand value in terms of cultural inheritance and market competition. This marks the arrival of the Brand-Effect Integration 2.0 era for Chinese beauty brands.
It is foreseeable that with the continuous development of Xiaohongshu’s commercialization, it will provide a fertile marketing soil for more Chinese beauty brands and together with them, write a new chapter for the Chinese beauty industry.
