Today (January 17), the National Bureau of Statistics released the latest retail data for consumer goods.
The data shows that in December 2024, the total retail sales of consumer goods amounted to 4.5172 trillion yuan ($616.4 billion), an increase of 3.7% year-on-year. For the entire year of 2024, total retail sales reached 48.7895 trillion yuan ($6.7 trillion), up 3.5% compared to the previous year. Among these, retail sales of cosmetics in December 2024 totaled 34.5 billion yuan ($4.7 billion), a year-on-year increase of 0.8%. From January to December, total retail sales of cosmetics amounted to 435.7 billion yuan ($59.44 billion), a year-on-year decline of 1.1%.
In 2024, the national online retail sales reached 15.5225 trillion yuan($2.1 trillion), an increase of 7.2% year-on-year. Online retail sales of physical goods were 13.0816 trillion yuan ($1.78 trillion), up 6.5%, accounting for 26.8% of total retail sales of consumer goods. Among online retail sales of physical goods, sales of food, clothing, and daily-use goods increased by 16.0%, 1.5%, and 6.3%, respectively.
Reviewing data from 2024, December’s cosmetics retail sales were only higher than those of April, July, and September. In terms of year-on-year growth, December ranked fifth for the year, with an increase of 0.8%.
According to CHAILEEDO’s analysis of the past five years (2018–2024) of annual cosmetics retail sales, 2024 marked the second decline in the past five years, the previous one being in 2022, when sales dropped by 4.5% year-on-year. Additionally, from 2022 to 2024, the annual growth rate of cosmetics retail sales has been below the growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods for three consecutive years.
CHAILEEDO also reviewed the December cosmetics retail sales over the past ten years (2015–2024) and found that from 2015 to 2021, December sales consistently showed a growth trend. However, December 2022 experienced a sharp decline of 19.3%. In 2023 and 2024, December sales began to rise again.
Regarding customs import data, in December 2024, the total national import volume of “beauty and personal care products” was 28,508.3 tons, an increase of 16.9% year-on-year, with an import value of 9.21 billion yuan ($1.26 billion), up 7.6% year-on-year. From January to December 2024, the total annual import volume of cosmetics was 324,778.8 tons, a year-on-year decline of 9.4%, and the total import value was 116.08 billion yuan ($15.84 billion), a year-on-year decrease of 7.9%.
