In 2024, Chinese “Double 11” Shopping Festival (“Double 11”) is destined to be different from previous years.
Visibly, the “Double 11” major promotion has already started ahead of time. Recently, CHAILEEDO learned from sources in the US that the official start time of Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room for the “Double 11” event is 11 days earlier than last year. At the same time, CHAILEEDO also noticed that various e-commerce platforms have tacitly advanced the start time of “Double 11”. This means that this year will see the longest “Double 11” in history.
Many industry professionals believe that with the extension of the promotion period, in addition to strengthening stocking capabilities, it increasingly tests the marketing capabilities of beauty brands. During this period, not only do brands need to fully showcase themselves to attract new customers, but they must also scientifically promote transactions and encourage repeat purchases throughout the entire sales cycle. Simultaneously, user experience, popular products, and brand building have all become key factors in winning the major promotion.
Running ahead is the main theme of this year’s “Double 11” major promotion.
Undoubtedly, running ahead is the main theme of this year’s “Double 11” major promotion. Recently, relevant staff from the US disclosed to CHAILEEDO that “Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room will officially start the ‘Double 11’ event on October 14 this year.” It is reported that this is 11 days earlier than last year when Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room started the “Double 11”.
The Taobao platform where Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room is located also announced not long ago that they will start the first wave of pre-sales for “Double 11” on October 14, which is 10 days earlier than last year. It’s not just Taobao, all e-commerce platforms this year have advanced the start time of “Double 11”. For example, JD announced the start of “Double 11” pre-sale on October 17, a week earlier than last year; Kuaishou entered the pre-sale period for “Double 11” on October 16, two days earlier than last year; Douyin even earlier, will fully start “Double 11” on October 8, 10 days earlier than last year.
It is worth mentioning that according to the times publicly announced by different platforms, this year’s “Double 11” may last for 26-34 days, while the 2023 “Double 11” was only 22-24 days. This means that this year could be the longest “Double 11” in history. In response to this, the General Manager of Alimama’s commercial operation center at Taobao & Tmall Group openly stated, “Alimama will bring about the upgrading of brand effectiveness, support for goods, merchant incentives, and nearly 3 billion yuan in red envelope subsidies to help merchants sprint, plant, harvest, and win throughout the entire cycle.” JD, on the other hand, stated, “We hope to help merchants gain more sales increment through a longer event period.”
Correspondingly, the themes of activities on various e-commerce platforms have also changed this year. Last year, e-commerce platforms focused on “low prices,” attracting consumers with “lowest prices on the whole network” and “really cheap” slogans, but this year they are gradually shifting towards attracting merchants and increasing support for merchants. Specifically, various e-commerce platforms have introduced a series of preferential measures. On the operational end, by reducing costs and speeding up merchant payments, the financial pressure on the latter is alleviated; on the consumer end, there is an increase in the distribution of coupons.
For example, this year on Tmall’s “Double 11,” there will be major promotions and commission-free live broadcasts, unbinding shipping insurance for merchants. At the same time, Tmall provides “zero fee rapid payment service.” This means that during Tmall’s “Double 11” period, as long as the merchant ships the order, they can immediately receive payment.
Meanwhile, JD is promoting the slogan “more traffic, faster operations, better service, and cost savings,” focusing on helping merchants reduce costs and increase efficiency, and helping merchants gain more sales increment. Kuaishou E-commerce will provide 20 billion yuan in traffic subsidies and 2 billion yuan in user red envelopes during this “Double 11” period, as well as 1 billion yuan in product subsidy bonuses, to help merchants and influencer partners achieve synergy across the board and overall growth.
Additionally, this year’s Douyin “Double 11” will feature “official 15% discounts and direct reductions” as core gameplay, aiming to promote business growth for merchants. Among these, brand strategies mainly focus on major discounts and marketing IPs (super brands/super new products, etc.); mall strategies include brand memberships, product card tasks, super value purchases, flash sales, etc.; live broadcast strategies include super value group live broadcasts, super value category live broadcasts, live broadcast task competitions, and more.
It is worth mentioning that the progress of interconnection between various e-commerce platforms is also continuing. According to media reports, Taobao Tmall is about to formally integrate with JD Logistics, and JD will officially integrate with Alipay payments, expected to be launched on the eve of “Double 11”; according to a post from the official Taobao blog, “Taobao supports various payment methods such as Alipay, WeChat, etc.”
Overall, on the eve of this year’s “Double 11,” it can be said that competition and cooperation coexist among various e-commerce platforms, and their common goal has shifted from competing on low prices to expanding traffic and reducing costs for merchants, while focusing on helping merchants gain more sales increment.
Multiple beauty brands are stocking up early to prepare for “Double 11”.
Public information shows that “Double 11” originated in 2009 and has now been around for 15 years. During this time, the significance of “Double 11” has also been changing. In the early days, the sales volume of “Double 11” showed explosive growth. Based on data analysis by CHAILEEDO, from 2010 to 2014, the annual growth rate of GMV for “Double 11” across the entire network reached three digits, especially in 2010, with a record 1700% highest growth. At that time, “Double 11” was also the most intense promotional activity of the year.
However, with the gradual rise of events like 618 and Double 12, from 2015 to 2022, the growth rate of “Double 11” GMV has slowed down, but still achieves double-digit growth of 30% to 60% each year. At that time, some industry professionals expressed that “‘Double 11’ is like the final exam for businesses, and the results depend more on the daily accumulation, whether the products, services, operations, brand reputation, etc., are done well or not, all will be magnified during ‘Double 11′.”
Fast forward to 2021, after the market experienced the baptism of the epidemic, consumers’ shopping mentality also underwent a huge change. Therefore, “Double 11” has entered a slow growth period in the past three years. The total online sales on “Double 11” in 2023 only increased by 2.1% compared to the previous year, which many media outlets dubbed as the “most disastrous ‘Double 11’ in history.”
After experiencing explosive growth, stability, and softness, this year’s “Double 11” has been brought forward and the period extended, how will this affect the beauty industry and brands?
Xianji founder Luo Yun told CHAILEEDO, “Usually, brand marketing warming up takes about 20 days, but now due to the earlier timing of ‘Double 11,’ there may only be about a dozen days of warming up time. This may force brands to re-allocate marketing budgets and plan marketing rhythms.”
HUNGCHI General Manager Wang Jie also stated, “This tests the brand’s optimization and upgrading in content marketing and data analysis capabilities, requiring an increase in marketing precision and personalization, strengthening collaborative marketing on the B side, which may yield twice the results with half the effort. Tailored response measures have also been developed for different platform characteristics by HUNGCHI.”
It is well known that brands usually need to stock up before “Double 11” to avoid stockouts or inventory congestion. However, the earlier timing of “Double 11” means that the stocking time is shortened. In response to this, Luo Yun told CHAILEEDO, “There are pros and cons to this. The time pressure may create stocking pressure for the brand, but the longer time period can give the factory more production time.”
In fact, in preparation for this year’s “Double 11,” many brands have already made preparations. Proya told CHAILEEDO, “On the production side, we have already reserved ‘Double 11′ goods half a year in advance and efficiently followed up on production capacity. At the same time, we actively enrich products, including newly upgraded products and new products, as well as different product sets tailored to consumers’ daily skincare needs, such as ‘toner lotion cream’ sets, ‘toner lotion cream face cream’ sets, etc.”
“To warm up for ‘Double 11,’ the Proya brand has started to accumulate resources online and offline. Online, starting from mid-September, the brand launched a 0.01 early bird offer to lock in ‘Double 11’ discounts, and during the event period, additional valuable gifts will be given for repurchases. Offline, during the National Day holiday in 2024, Proya’s ‘Infinite Space’ pop-up store launched in Beijing and Chengdu with a more diverse and fun way to showcase the skincare concept of ‘scientific formula, the scientific choice for skin’.” Proya also stated.
Wang Jie also mentioned, “HUNGCHI has consciously started adjusting the product mix and reserving packaging materials since August.” According to him, for its flagship products, HUNGCHI will focus on popular products such as non-greasy makeup remover oil and white fluffy makeup remover balm on Douyin this year. On Tmall, it will promote the new product of the year, the Pro makeup remover oil, and the post-promotion upgrade of the small clean face. In terms of sales, HUNGCHI will focus on content production and streaming on Douyin and more on shelf e-commerce content promotion on Tmall.
A longer time period not only provides more sales opportunities for brands but also tests their innovation capabilities. Blispring eco-friendly toothpaste founder Cheng Yingqi told CHAILEEDO, “Currently, all brands are competing for consumers’ attention. Therefore, brands should not only pay attention to changes in platform rules but also remember the importance of self-innovation. This year’s ‘Double 11,’ the Blispring brand will focus on integrating marketing on Tmall to increase traffic, while on Douyin, it will focus on self-broadcasting and reaching a wider audience matrix.”
Fan Makeup founder Zhifanfan expressed that long-term large promotions actually raise the requirements for brand outbreak power and refined operations, which can easily create gaps between brands. For this reason, Fan Makeup has started preparations earlier on all aspects, while also focusing on adjusting the state of employees to deal with the conflicts between the National Day holidays and the preparation for “Double 11.”
“Each brand is like a barrel, where the length of its strong board is the upper limit of short-term outbreak power, and the length of its weak board is the upper limit of sustained receivables capacity over a long period,” Zhifanfan said.
“This year’s ‘Double 11’ could be a turning point.”
According to the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the total retail sales of consumer goods in the first eight months of this year reached 31.2452 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.4%. In the category of cosmetics, the total retail sales of cosmetics from January to August this year were 273 billion yuan, a decrease of 0.5% year-on-year. In August alone, the sales of cosmetics were 31.9 billion yuan, a decrease of 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is worth noting that in June and July of this year, the total retail sales of cosmetics decreased by 14.6% and 6.1% respectively. This means that the total retail sales of cosmetics have been declining for three consecutive months this year, the first time this continuous decline has occurred in many years.
The cosmetics market was once considered a representation of consumer upgrades and quality living, and its rapid growth was also seen as an important manifestation of China’s economic vitality. However, the sentiment that “doing beauty business this year is getting more and more difficult” has become a common feeling among most industry insiders. Previously, many industry professionals told CHAILEEDO, “It is now clearly felt that people are reluctant to consume, and the lack of an increase in consumer confidence is currently the biggest issue.”
It is worth mentioning that by the end of September, China has introduced a series of monetary stimulus measures to boost the economy, including lowering the reserve requirement ratio and policy interest rates, reducing existing mortgage rates, and a special plan aimed at boosting the stock market. With the implementation of this policy “combination,” market sentiment has also been ignited, especially evident in the capital market. As of the close of trading on September 27th, the cosmetics sector index stood at 878.26 points, an increase of 5.81%. Among individual stocks in the cosmetics sector, the top 5 with the largest increases were: IMEiK, China Herb, BTN, RUNBEN, Proya.
“The expectation of economic recovery after the clear policy stance will actively drive expectations for a rebound in consumer sentiment,” a research report from CITIC Securities stated. “Although the overall market growth of cosmetics has slowed down, in the first half of 2024, the revenue growth of 11 listed companies is around 24%, slightly higher than 24% for net profit attributable to the parent company, indicating that leading companies are gaining more market share. This trend is expected to continue, but the gap with the industry growth rate may narrow in the second half of the year.”
Nod, the founder of Jiubian Cosmetics, told CHAILEEDO, “This year’s ‘Double 11’ is likely to be a turning point, with overall transaction volume potentially reaching new heights, possibly even a small climax in these downward economic years.” However, Nod also noted that this year’s ‘Double 11’ consumers may increase their frequency of purchases, but what they buy may not be as expensive. “After all, the consumption downgrade habits of the past few years are still difficult to change in the short term.”
Wang Jie also expressed a similar view, stating, “With changes in the overall environment and years of ‘Double 11′ activities, consumers’ purchasing concepts are becoming more rational and mature. They will no longer blindly follow trends, and consumption will become more cautious, potentially weakening some purchasing power.”
