Since opening its first cooperative store in June 2022, Face Wash Bear has rapidly gained visibility within just two years, with nearly 3,000 cooperative stores. It has emerged as a dark horse in the fiercely competitive beauty market. What sets Face Wash Bear apart and what inspirations does it bring to the beauty industry by adhering to the principle of “only washing faces, not selling products”?
User demand is the core concept repeatedly emphasized by Tang Huabo, the founder of Face Wash Bear, in an interview with CHAILEEDO. He firmly believes that only by deeply understanding and meeting the real needs of consumers can one break through.
It is understood that Tang Huabo has over ten years of experience in the beauty industry, providing him with profound insights and observations into cosmetic retail and offline beauty businesses. When discussing the reasons for starting the business, he stated that the beauty market has a market capacity of nearly 800 billion yuan, so why hasn’t a well-known brand emerged and gained recognition in a specific field? By exploring vertical and segmented areas for growth, Face Wash Bear was born.
“One must start from the fundamental logic of the business and truly identify the users’ needs in order to solve their problems,” said Tang Huabo. It is precisely based on this philosophy that Face Wash Bear has been able to successfully expand to 2,800 stores in a short period, becoming a leader in the industry.
For example, Face Wash Bear has always been working on building a closer relationship with its users. In terms of brand development, Face Wash Bear has attracted the attention and love of many consumers through its collaboration with Louis Koo.
Furthermore, to reduce the threshold for consumers to visit the stores and alleviate their financial burden, Face Wash Bear not only adheres to the principle of “only washing faces, not selling products,” but also provides subsidies on platforms such as Douyin and Meituan, keeping the price for a single face wash below 60 yuan. Through precise market positioning and affordable prices, Face Wash Bear has not only become more accessible to a wide range of consumers but also stood out in the fiercely competitive market.
It is worth noting that among Face Wash Bear’s consumer base, over 48% are male consumers, almost on par with female consumers, which is rare in the beauty industry. Tang Huabo told CHAILEEDO that after conducting follow-up interviews with over 200 male consumers, he discovered that there has always been market demand from this specific group, but no brand has been able to effectively meet their needs. The emergence of the Face Wash Bear brand precisely fills this market gap and accurately meets their demand for facial care.
In addition, Face Wash Bear has always attached importance to the development of offline business. In Tang Huabo’s view, the success of a store depends on three key factors.
Firstly, the choice of geographical location is crucial for the survival and prosperity of a store. Secondly, the motivation and proactivity of the store staff should not be ignored. The results achieved with an active and positive attitude are significantly different from those achieved with a passive attitude. Lastly, the amount of foot traffic directly relates to the profitability of a store. He believes that in today’s era, traditional businesses will face enormous challenges if they do not actively embrace the internet.
In fact, the ability of a physical store to attract customers is usually limited by its geographical range. Typically, customers prefer to consume at stores within a one or two-kilometer radius from their location. Therefore, it is crucial to effectively convert these potential customers, who have obtained store information through online channels, into actual customers and retain them.
Tang Huabo said, “Online channels are an important means of acquiring new customers and expanding brand awareness, and their significance is self-evident. However, equally important is the need to provide high-quality products and services when customers visit the physical store through online channels to ensure their satisfaction and willingness to return.”
Currently, Face Wash Bear attracts customers to its stores through platforms like Douyin and Meituan, achieving a positive interaction and complementary development between online and offline channels. According to him, the back-end operations of Face Wash Bear’s store on Douyin and Meituan are managed by the headquarters. According to statistics, from March to December 2023, they successfully redirected online traffic to stores nationwide, resulting in 1.3 million orders and a cumulative sales revenue of 127 million yuan.
Regarding the current prosperity of new retail channels and the increasing emphasis on offline expansion by many beauty brands, Tang Huabo, who focuses on offline development, also shared his views. He believes that there are opportunities in both online and offline channels at any given time, but the key lies in how to approach them. In his opinion, conducting business requires a rational, steady, and rigorous attitude, starting from user needs and the market environment to find a suitable path for development. Only by doing so can one stand undefeated in the fiercely competitive market.
Tang Huabo is full of expectations for the future. He hopes to achieve anationwide expansion of Face Wash Bear’s cooperative stores, reaching 5,000 stores by the end of 2024. He believes that by continuing to focus on user needs, providing high-quality products and services, and effectively integrating online and offline channels, Face Wash Bear will continue to thrive in the beauty industry.
In conclusion, Face Wash Bear has gained significant visibility in the beauty industry by adhering to the principle of “only washing faces, not selling products.” By deeply understanding user needs, offering affordable prices, and targeting underserved markets such as male consumers, Face Wash Bear has successfully differentiated itself from competitors. Through a combination of online and offline channels, the company has created a strong presence and achieved impressive growth in a short period. With its focus on user demand and continuous expansion plans, Face Wash Bear is set to make further strides in the beauty industry.
On March 19th, the 2024 (9th) Conference on China Cosmetic Trends, organized by CHAILEEDO and supported by MeiDD, was held in Hangzhou with the theme “Offline Reconstruction.” The conference brought together the top ten domestic beauty companies, offline channel agents, CS channel stores, and beauty retail conglomerates to discuss the new trends and opportunities brought about by the reconstruction of offline channels in the cosmetics industry. During the conference, Tang Huabo delivered a keynote speech titled “Reconstruction of the Non-surgical Cosmetic Treatment”.
Here is a transcript of his speech:
Thank you very much for the invitation from CHAILEEDO. In fact, business and entrepreneurship are complex entities, and even slight differences in input can lead to significant variations in output.
In China, the logic of doing business is somewhat different from that of international countries. In China, it is common for people to follow what others are selling successfully and want to sell the same thing. In many foreign countries, entrepreneurship is based on discovering a problem in society that needs to be solved or finding a better solution based on the first principles of user needs. Just as Mr. Zhang from the flash sale platform mentioned earlier, he provides affordable options for consumers.
Therefore, when doing any business, we need to ask ourselves a question: Does this business truly address the first principles of user needs, solve real problems, and fulfill societal demands? This is crucial.
Face Wash Bear is a non-surgical cosmetic treatment brand that focuses on facial cleansing and care. We only wash faces and do not sell products, concentrating solely on the facial cleansing and care sector. Since June 2022, we have reached over 2,800 cooperative stores as of March 18th, with 1,853 stores on the Douyin platform. This data may come as a surprise. We only wash faces and don’t engage in sales or promotions, so why do we have so many stores? I have summarized some of the things that Face Wash Bear has done right, although it may not be a comprehensive summary. I would like to share my observations on the industry.
Many of you here are involved in the traditional beauty industry, which has faced challenges since the 1980s and 1990s when the market supply and demand dynamics underwent significant changes. The market, which used to have higher demand than supply, has now shifted to a situation where supply exceeds demand.
In a market where demand exceeds supply, the business logic is very simple: as long as the product range is rich, there are enough categories, and it can reach more people, the business will thrive. However, the market is changing, and the supply-demand relationship is changing. Few people in the beauty industry in China have considered this issue. Therefore, applying the business strategies and mindset from the 1980s and 1990s to the present is clearly not in line with the current consumer market environment.
In the past, it was widely believed in the industry that the breadth of operations and the number of people covered were closely related to business success. Therefore, businesses rushed to increase the variety of products and services in their stores. For example, if weight loss services were popular, they would venture into that field. With the rise of the nail industry, many businesses joined in and expanded into services like eyelash extensions.
This competitive mindset has made many businesses worried that if they don’t follow market trends in a timely manner, they will lose potential user groups. As a result, the operating model of the beauty industry has become increasingly complex, constantly integrating various technologies, instruments, and product categories, and the skill requirements for practitioners have also risen.
But what do users remember from this process? It seems like they remember nothing. In weight loss, you are not the most professional. In nail services, there are specialized shops that are efficient, do beautiful work, and offer competitive prices. Compared to specialized eyelash extension shops, you are not the most professional either. At this point, the logic that the broader the range of operations and the more people covered, the better the business becomes no longer holds true. However, many people still remain trapped in this misconception. This is the first issue in terms of mindset.
The second issue is the lack of standardization in the industry. I entered the beauty industry in 2009, starting in the factory. As the quality of life continued to improve, people’s attention to their appearance increased. But if we look at the overall supply side, in a situation where demand continues to be strong, the supply side should be flourishing and business should be thriving. But is that the case? No, it’s not.
The entire supply side can be described as devastated. There were numerous cases of store closures last year, including even more closures the year before. We might think that the impact of “face masks” was the cause, but even after the “face mask” period, we haven’t seen a resurrection or signs of improvement. This is also due to the changing market environment and the resulting information asymmetry. Because the mainstream consumer groups are no longer the people born in the 1970s and 1980s, but the post-2000 and post-1990 generations.
Let’s take a look at how well the traditional beauty industry covers these mainstream consumer groups. According to industry data, the 85s and 70s generation of users in the traditional beauty and personal care sector account for nearly 90% of the total. That is, the 85s and 70s generation make up 90% of the members in this sector. The current mainstream consumers are the post-2000 and post-1990 generations, but how many stores have established communication and a connection with this group? If they haven’t, then the notion that business will keep thriving is a fallacy.
I am confident that among those present here, there are individuals from the post-2000 and post-1990 generations or those who have had close contact with these young consumers. You may have already noticed that these groups have a relatively low probability of entering traditional beauty stores for consumption. In fact, fewer and fewer people are choosing to go to beauty salons for their needs. This observation doesn’t require detailed data; it can be confirmed through our daily observations and conversations with people around us.
In business operations, if a company chooses to ignore the mainstream consumer groups and the incremental market, and instead overly focuses on the 85s and 70s generation, the market size will gradually shrink. This phenomenon is directly related to the increase in information symmetry and transparency.
In the past in the beauty industry, bundled products for freckle removal, skin whitening, wrinkle reduction, and other purposes could be successfully sold even at prices ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of yuan, because consumers often lacked understanding of the actual efficacy of the products. However, nowadays, if you try to clearly explain to consumers the specific effects that a set of products can achieve and label them with price tags of seven to eight thousand or eight to nine thousand yuan, consumers may choose to walk away after hearing that.
This is because through the widespread dissemination on platforms like Douyin (TikTok), Baidu, and Kuaishou, consumers have already learned that these types of products cannot truly solve skin problems and can only serve as auxiliary skincare items. If a product can truly achieve significant results, it is likely that the ingredients it contains do not comply with relevant national regulations.
With the increasing transparency in the industry, if the outdated opaque sales methods, such as deceptive consumption and hidden costs, are still used, it will fail to gain recognition from the current mainstream consumer groups, namely the post-2000 and post-1990 generations. This is also why more and more post-2000 and post-1990 individuals choose to reduce their consumption in beauty salons.
Furthermore, in doing business, we should always start from the fundamental principle of putting the user first, but we have never considered one question: What problems can we actually solve for the users? This is the first issue. The second issue is what demands the users actually have, and have we deeply considered them? If we deviate from these two principles and engage in aggressive promotion, it will lead to price wars, reduce overall profits, and it will be discovered that poor sales and business performance are just surface manifestations.
Returning to the essence of the problem, have we truly paid attention to the users’ needs? I believe that the current demands in the entire beauty industry, whether it’s for male or female consumers, can be summed up in a few aspects. Firstly, there are those with genuine and effective demands. These individuals seek beauty treatments or skincare solutions that can address specific issues like pigmentation, acne, and require noticeable results.
With increasingly stringent national regulatory policies, this group of people may choose to consume through non-surgical cosmetic treatment. This is due to both government policy regulations and the continuous maturation of non-surgical cosmetic treatment and medical beauty technologies, resulting in lowering prices and highly visible effects. Individuals with direct demands for significant results may choose non-surgical cosmetic treatment to solve their problems. This is the first category of people with beauty demands, and they often generate high average transaction values.
For simple daily maintenance, such as face cleansing, blackhead removal, pore tightening, does it last long? No, it doesn’t. Daily beauty treatments only last for about 3-5 days. After a few days, sebum production resumes, blackheads reappear in the pores, and it requires another round of cleansing. Therefore, it is a repetitive, daily routine that doesn’t have very noticeable effects. It can be quite troublesome to do it at home, but in a professional beauty salon, there are specialized personnel who can solve this problem in about 40 minutes, and the fees can be very low, such as 68 yuan, 98 yuan, or 138 yuan, allowing for 2-3 sessions per month.
Due to the increasing information symmetry, consumers have a clearer understanding of products and ingredients, and hidden costs and deceptive consumption no longer work in the current consumer environment. The reason why the traditional beauty industry is declining is because all industries are continuously segmented. This includes the beauty industry.
Everyone talks about traffic, and traffic is becoming more expensive, including online traffic. The theme of today’s meeting is the reconstruction of offline entities. Why do many people choose offline? One aspect is market demand. Another aspect is that they feel tired of the online competition, and shifting to offline seems like a new opportunity. However, if they don’t truly start from the perspective of user needs and don’t genuinely solve the problems that exist in society, they will find that it is equally difficult to succeed in the offline space.
Traditional beauty stores focus more on offline traffic acquisition because many stores are operated by individual owners who lack experience in online operations, such as short videos, live streaming, and account management, which require a certain level of technical expertise. This has also led to the difficulties faced by many traditional beauty businesses, resulting in the continuous elimination and screening of customers within the existing user base.
The industry development trend is moving towards vertical segmentation. Whether it’s online or offline, traffic will only become more expensive. In November last year, we conducted marketing on Douyin (TikTok) and Meituan. In October, we invested 4.3 million yuan to generate over 17 million yuan in sales for the stores. However, during the “Double 11” period in November, we invested nearly 4.6 million yuan to drive traffic to the stores, but the sales shrunk by three to four million yuan, reaching only a little over 12 million yuan. At that time, I realized that whether online or offline, the cost of acquiring traffic is becoming more expensive. During the “Double 11” period, many brands spend tens of millions in just a few days, making it difficult for our investment of over 4 million yuan on Douyin to stand out. Overall, traffic is becoming more expensive. It is crucial for us to focus on understanding the needs and perceptions of our users.
In the beauty industry, it’s hard to think of a chain store that specializes in hydration, or a brand that excels in cleansing. There are many opportunities in the lifestyle beauty sector, and many areas are still untapped.
Why hasn’t such a brand emerged? This is the reason we created Face Wash Bear. Since 2009, I have been involved in the beauty industry and have always pondered a question: why hasn’t the lifestyle beauty market, with a capacity of nearly 800 billion yuan, produced a brand like KFC or McDonald’s? Why haven’t we seen a widely recognized brand in a specific field? It’s because the market lacks verticality and segmentation, and it’s too complex.
When we think of fruit, a brand immediately comes to mind. When we think of hot pot, there is also a brand that pops into our heads. But in the beauty industry, we can’t think of a brand for acne treatment, hydration, or cleansing. It’s because the market is too fragmented and lacks vertical specialization, resulting in a lack of consumer recognition. There is still tremendous potential for vertical and segmented development in the beauty industry, but the model needs to be simple and not overly complex. I can’t speak for other industries, but in the beauty industry, adding more elements may not be the solution; sometimes, it’s about subtraction. The more elements you add, the more complex the operations become, and the harder it is to replicate and scale the business, making it difficult to establish consumer recognition.
For example, people often ask how long Face Wash Bear can stay competitive in this field. The duration of success in this field is not determined by the market, but by the size of the company. The number of stores in the market and the coverage of users are determined by the users themselves, so the model must be simple.
Secondly, it must be efficient. I believe many women here have experienced a significant change in their concept of time. We rarely see women spending a whole afternoon or two to three hours on perming or dyeing their hair because it takes too long. The same applies to the beauty industry. There are three types of demands in the beauty industry: specific targeted treatments, simple daily care, and experiential consumption. However, these groups are gradually shrinking, and the beauty industry is no exception. People’s perception of time and efficiency has significantly changed, and the pursuit of efficiency has become inevitable. They can’t tolerate procedures that take 60 to 70 minutes; they prefer to achieve results within 20 to 30 minutes while enjoying a high-quality experience.
A simplified model is not only easier to replicate but also reduces the time and cost for entrepreneurs in store operations and staff training, thus increasing the survival rate of the project. The core of operation lies in location selection, staff management, and traffic management. When the scope of staff operations becomes too complex, training becomes more difficult and their learning curve slows down. Taking Face Wash Bear as an example, 70% to 80% of their services are performed using instruments, requiring only 20% to 30% of manual techniques. New employees can learn it within 2 to 3 days and quickly get to work, which is a key factor in its rapid development.
The non-surgical cosmetic treatment is innovating the traditional consumer model of the beauty industry. Fundamentally, the lifestyle beauty sector still belongs to the service industry. In the past, the service industry often faced challenges of low frequency and high expenses, making it difficult to cultivate user habits. Many businesses attempt to meet both high customer expenditure and high frequency demands, but in reality, this is unrealistic. Once a high customer expenditure is set, it becomes difficult to ensure high service frequency, and vice versa, pursuing high service frequency makes it difficult to maintain a high level of customer expenditure, as excessively frequent and expensive consumption is burdensome for consumers.
Therefore, Face Wash Bear has adjusted the consumer model of the non-surgical cosmetic treatment, transitioning from a low-frequency, high-expenditure model to a high-frequency, low-expenditure model. This shift is more conducive to forming consumer consumption cognition and helps cultivate consumer habits.
After initial observations, we found that the frequency of male and female customers visiting the stores was initially similar, with males visiting approximately once every 15 days and females about three times per month. However, through our follow-up surveys, the results showed a significant change in female customer consumption habits, with about 60% of female customers now visiting twice a week, while male customers maintained a frequency of once a week.
Since adjusting the pricing strategy, consumer habits have gradually solidified, and store visit frequency has noticeably increased. This change has led to an increase in customer expenditure, resulting in a significant improvement in our monthly cumulative sales compared to before.
To further optimize this trend, we must focus on scaling development while pursuing simplicity and efficiency to reduce marginal costs. In the process of business operations, enterprises must possess a long-term vision rather than being limited to immediate benefits. Instant profits generated from any business activity do not truly belong to the company; only those profits based on long-term planning and future-oriented approaches are the real wealth of the company. We are committed to creating value for customers and partners, which forms the core foundation for revenue growth.
From March 2023 to the end of the year, we attracted a total of 1.6 million orders for our stores through the Douyin and Meituan platforms, all of which came from new customers. Due to the platforms’ new customer discount policies, each customer only had one purchasing opportunity. As a result, we successfully guided approximately 167 million yuan in new customer consumption, with an average of around 150 new customers per store per month. This achievement is the key factor behind the rapid rise of the Face Wash Bear brand. Initially, our store expansion speed was relatively steady, with a monthly increase of 30 to 40 to 45 stores in 2022. However, in 2023, our expansion speed significantly accelerated, rapidly growing from 160-170 stores per month to 200 stores per month, and even reaching a peak of nearly 400 stores per month.
This change is closely related to our strategy adjustment. In the past, we mainly focused on increasing the number of B-end stores and invested a significant amount of advertising resources for that purpose. However, since March 2023, we shifted the advertising focus to C-end customers and achieved more significant results. The increase in store traffic provides strong support for the brand’s healthy development. This strategy adjustment not only drove rapid growth in the number of stores but also significantly increased the brand’s exposure. Since the start of advertising targeting C-end customers in 2023, Face Wash Bear’s topic exposure increased from hundreds of thousands to 870 million by the end of the year.
When seeking certainty in uncertainty, we realized that although it is difficult to predict the future trend industry, what we can be certain of is that as the quality of life improves, people’s focus on self-image will continue to strengthen. Additionally, the pursuit of high-quality, low-priced products is an enduring consumer psychology. These two certainties point us in the right direction.
Furthermore, a noteworthy phenomenon is that the male demographic accounts for 48.2% of our customers, exceeding our expectations. Through follow-up surveys, we learned that males also have skincare needs but previously lacked suitable consumption scenarios. Our brand positioning as the “facial cleansing brand loved by both men and women” successfully attracted this potential customer segment. As we continue to explore and expand on these certainties, we believe this customer group will continue to grow.
