At the start of 2026, another beauty brand has officially announced the closure of its store, once again becoming a hot topic of discussion across the industry.
In fact, since 2025, more than 20 overseas beauty brands have successively adjusted their strategies in the Chinese market. News of online flagship store closures and channel contraction has repeatedly trended on social media hot search lists and has been a recurring theme in industry discussions over the past year.
Recently, CHAILEEDO noticed that the FILORGA Tmall flagship store issued an announcement stating that it will officially cease operations on January 31, 2026, citing “adjustments to the company’s business strategy” as the reason. In response, CHAILEEDO promptly contacted the store’s operating entity, Weidai (Beijing) Trading Co., Ltd., for further details, but as of press time, no response had been received.
Notably, the flagship store has accumulated more than 3 million followers on the Tmall platform. Among overseas functional skincare brands, this is a sizable following—surpassing even some peer brands that continue to increase their investment in the Chinese market and are still expanding their distribution channels.
Store Boasts Over 3 Million Followers, with Top-Selling Products Exceeding 30,000 Units Sold
Recently, the official Tmall flagship store of French skincare brand Filorga announced that it will cease operations on January 31, 2026, citing “adjustments to the company’s business strategy.”
CHAILEEDO noted that, unlike some other foreign brands that previously closed their Tmall stores, Filorga’s performance in China has not been entirely disappointing. On the contrary, at the time the closure announcement was released, its Tmall flagship store still maintained a sizable user base, with more than 3 million followers. Among overseas functional skincare brands, this figure is by no means low and even exceeds that of some peer brands that continue to ramp up investment in the Chinese market.
According to publicly available information, Filorga’s online sales in China are primarily concentrated in functional products such as face creams, serums, and eye care, positioned in the mid-to-high price range. After years of development, the brand’s hero products—such as the Meso-Mask—have built a certain level of consumer recognition and word-of-mouth. On Filorga’s official Tmall flagship store, the brand offers a total of 49 SKUs, with the best-selling item being the Filorga Meso-Mask (2.015 ml), which shows sales of over 30,000 units.
Meanwhile, further investigation by CHAILEEDO found that Filorga’s Douyin flagship store has currently removed all products. According to CHAILEEDO Intelligence data, in 2025, Filorga’s sales on the Douyin platform amounted to between RMB 2.5 million and RMB 5 million, with sales volume ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 units. Of this, more than 80 percent of sales were driven by livestreaming and influencer promotions.
It is also worth noting that Filorga once had an extensive presence in China’s offline channels. According to public reports, after entering the Chinese market, Filorga expanded across tier-one and tier-two cities, partnering with major cosmetics retail chains such as Yanli and Ubest. In 2018, Filorga opened its first department store counter in China in Wuhan, later expanding into cities including Shanghai and Nanjing, and entering the travel retail channel through international airports such as Sanya.
Multiple media outlets have reported that “all Filorga offline counters in China have now been closed.” However, based on checks conducted by CHAILEEDO via map services and major review platforms, two Filorga counters are still listed in mainland China—located in Fuzhou and Haikou—while one additional counter remains in Hong Kong.
It is also noteworthy that there has long been a degree of systemic confusion surrounding market perceptions of the Filorga brand.
In 2019, Filorga underwent a key corporate split: its consumer skincare business was acquired by Colgate-Palmolive and continued to operate under the brand name “FILORGA,” while the original medical aesthetics business was carved out as an independent entity and renamed “FILLMED.” Since then, FILORGA has been part of Colgate-Palmolive, while FILLMED was acquired by investment firm HLD, with the two entities no longer related in terms of ownership structure or business operations.
Despite this separation, the distinction has not been clearly understood by consumers or even some industry professionals. On social media platforms, many content creators still use “Filorga” as a keyword when promoting FILLMED medical aesthetics products. Medical aesthetic treatments familiar to consumers—such as the “Filorga 135HA Skin Booster”—in fact all belong to the independently operated medical aesthetics line, FILLMED.
This long-standing overlap in perception means that when the market discusses “Filorga,” it often implicitly combines the brand equity of both the skincare and medical aesthetics businesses, which in turn has, to some extent, inflated external expectations regarding the actual operating performance of its consumer skincare business.
Earnings Fall Short of Expectations; Colgate Says Asset Impairments Are Needed
According to publicly available information, FILORGA was founded in 1978 and is a professional anti-aging skincare brand originating from France. It initially entered the market through the medical aesthetics injection field. Its founder, Michel Tordjman, is a medical doctor, and in its early years the brand was known for providing injection-grade formulations to dermatologists and medical aesthetics institutions. This background has become FILORGA’s most core and distinctive brand asset over the following decades.
As the functional skincare market gradually matured, FILORGA began translating its technological strengths into daily skincare products, gradually building a product system spanning anti-aging, repair, and radiance. In 2015, FILORGA officially entered the Chinese market, launching popular products such as masks, eye creams, and serums, and quickly accumulated consumer recognition.
According to public information, within just three years of entering China, FILORGA’s online performance grew 21-fold. By 2018, the brand’s full-year performance surged 148% year-on-year, securing the top spot in the sheet mask category on Tmall during that year’s Double 11 shopping festival. Several celebrities, including Karry Wang and Yu Wenwen, have also served as brand endorsers. In the first quarter of 2019, Filorga’s total sales across all channels in China increased 106% year-on-year.
After entering China, FILORGA followed an operating path highly similar to that of many overseas functional skincare brands: first testing the waters through cross-border e-commerce, leveraging keywords such as “French,” “medical aesthetics heritage,” and “laboratory formulations” to build trust, before gradually transitioning to mainstream e-commerce platforms to scale up sales.
Notably, CHAILEEDO found through a review of the qualifications of the FILORGA Tmall flagship store that its operating entity is Weidai (Beijing) Trading Co., Ltd. According to Qichacha public records, the operator of the FILORGA skincare brand in China is Weidai (Beijing) Trading Co., Ltd. On the imported non-special-use cosmetics filing platform, FILORGA’s manufacturing entity is listed as Laboratoires Filorga Cosmétiques, with the domestic responsible party being the same Weidai (Beijing) Trading Co., Ltd.
Further equity penetration information shows that the parent company of Weidai (Beijing) Trading Co., Ltd. is Fung Chi Group Limited, a Hong Kong–based company, and that the ultimate controlling shareholder of Fung Chi Group Limited is Colgate-Palmolive.
This means that, whether in terms of brand sales, channel strategy, or resource allocation, operational decisions for FILORGA in the Chinese market are in effect still made within Colgate-Palmolive’s overall management and strategic framework.
In other words, the closure of FILORGA’s official Tmall flagship store may represent a targeted adjustment to its China strategy following Colgate-Palmolive’s global reassessment of its business priorities.
In response, CHAILEEDO promptly contacted Weidai (Beijing) Trading Co., Ltd., the operator of FILORGA’s official Tmall flagship store, to seek further details, but as of press time, no reply had been received.
However, insights from Colgate-Palmolive’s publicly available financial reports suggest that the pressure facing FILORGA in the Chinese market had long been evident.
As early as 2019, Colgate-Palmolive acquired FILORGA’s skincare business for approximately €1.5 billion (about RMB 12.27 billion), aiming to expand into the premium personal care segment and placing particular emphasis on the brand’s long-term potential in China and the travel retail channel. In the years that followed, however, Colgate-Palmolive recorded impairment charges related to FILORGA’s goodwill and intangible assets in both its 2021 and 2022 financial statements.
In the relevant financial reports, Colgate-Palmolive explicitly stated that “due to the slow recovery of the China market and the continued weakness in travel retail, expectations for the future profitability of the FILORGA business have been revised downward, necessitating asset impairment.” While Colgate-Palmolive maintained a cautiously optimistic view of FILORGA’s long-term value in its wording, the repeated impairments reflect a reassessment of the brand’s growth prospects. In subsequent public financial reports, Colgate-Palmolive has not mentioned FILORGA’s market performance.
It is also worth noting that Colgate-Palmolive’s China business has likewise shown signs of decline. According to the company’s latest financial results, in the first three quarters of 2025, net sales and operating profit in its oral care, personal care, and home care segments both declined, reaching US$11.735 billion (approximately RMB 96 billion) and US$2.961 billion, down 0.6% and 5% year-on-year, respectively. In the third quarter of 2025, Colgate-Palmolive’s net sales in the Asia-Pacific region fell 1.5% year-on-year.
This suggests that while FILORGA still retains a certain scale of sales and a user base in China, its strategic importance and the level of resources allocated to it within Colgate-Palmolive may have been reduced in practical business terms.
Diverging Fates of Overseas Premium Brands
From an industry perspective, the closure of FILORGA’s official Tmall flagship store may be more than a brand’s own short-term adjustment; it could also signal a broader strategic contraction by overseas premium skincare brands in the Chinese market in 2026.
Looking back at 2025, China’s beauty industry had already witnessed a relatively concentrated wave of overseas brand exits. According to CHAILEEDO’s incomplete tally, more than 20 foreign brands exited the Chinese market in 2025 or significantly scaled back their sales channels in China.
These included not only lesser-known niche overseas brands, but also brands with a certain level of influence within specific segments. For example, U.S. anti-aging brand StriVectin closed its Tmall Global flagship store in 2025, while South Korean premium skincare brand AP also shut down its only online sales channel in China—its Tmall flagship store.
From the outcomes observed, the common thread among these exiting brands was not an inability to sell, but rather the difficulty of establishing a sustainable growth model under current Chinese market conditions.
Some analysts believe that, on the one hand, many overseas brands have viewed China primarily as a short-term growth engine rather than a core market for long-term operations. As channel dividends fade and customer acquisition costs rise—leading to a continued decline in return on investment—strategic retrenchment becomes a rational choice.
On the other hand, the narrative frameworks traditionally used by overseas brands are also facing challenges. In the past, international backgrounds, medical concepts, or lifestyle positioning were key factors in attracting Chinese consumers. However, as the concept of functional skincare becomes widespread and domestic brands rapidly mature in R&D and supply chain capabilities, the conversion power of such narratives has clearly weakened and is no longer sufficient to support sustainable growth.
That said, not all premium or overseas brands are facing the same predicament in China. Alongside these contraction cases, there is another group of brands that continue to deliver growth.
Take The Whoo as an example: its market performance clearly demonstrates that premium brands can still grow under the current environment. According to CHAILEEDO’s previous analysis, during last year’s Double 11 shopping festival (October and November), The Whoo’s average monthly sales on Douyin each exceeded RMB 100 million, and the brand entered Douyin’s monthly beauty TOP20 ranking twice, maintaining a long-term position among the platform’s top beauty sellers.
Within a similar premium price range, Helena Rubinstein and La Mer have also delivered strong performances. Public data show that in 2025, La Mer’s sales grew 32.33% year-on-year, while Helena Rubinstein posted growth of 31.38%, with both brands improving their rankings compared with 2024.
According to senior industry insiders, premium brands that are “doing well” in China are not simply relying on historical heritage or an international halo. Instead, they are consistently doing three things: truly treating China as a core strategic market rather than a supplementary one; proactively adjusting brand communication to align with the content distribution and conversion logic of digital platforms; and building in-house operational capabilities across emerging channels, rather than relying entirely on platform-driven traffic distribution.
To some extent, as China’s beauty market shifts from incremental expansion to structural competition, the fate of premium brands is no longer determined by their “foreign” identity, but by whether they possess the capacity for long-term investment, continuous adaptation, and deeply localized operations.
