Out | Venture Forefront
Author | Li Xiaobian
Editor | Egg General
There's a fierce battle going on in the offline beauty store circuit.
The two sides of the game are the new beauty stores represented by Plum, Colorist, etc., and the traditional beauty retailers represented by Sephora and Watson's.
The two sides of the game are the new beauty stores represented by Plum, Colorist, etc., and the traditional beauty retailers represented by Sephora and Watson's.
The game is a battle between the two sides.
During its visit, Venture Forefront found that in the same shopping mall, there was a clear differentiation between these two different models of beauty stores. For example, Watson's and Colorist on the negative floor of the New Zhongguancun Shopping Center, the former has less than one-third of the foot traffic of the latter. In terms of popularity, the new style of beauty collection store won for the time being.
But from the perspective of sourcing ability and customer trust, new-style beauty stores are slightly inferior, they are difficult to get the authorization of international brands, and have to look for other pick-up channels, which leads to the risk of authenticity of the source, and there is no great advantage in price.
In the multifaceted battle between the two species, who will be the final winner?
In January 2020, next to Watson's on the negative floor of Beijing's New Zhongguancun Shopping Center, the beauty collection store THE COLORIST (hereinafter referred to as "The Colorist") officially opened. Also from this time onwards, here staged a beauty store "new style and traditional" battle.
I do not know whether it is by chance, or deliberately "steal business", the colorist's location, it seems to be to Watson's, Sephora, represented by the traditional beauty collection store "declared war".
These two different forms of beauty collection store, in the store decoration, business philosophy, product selection and other aspects of the embodiment of a small difference.
At 6 p.m. on Saturday, the Colorist store was crowded with consumers picking and trying out products, most of whom, by visual inspection, were between 20 and 30 years old. Here, consumers are free to pick and try out colors without being disturbed by guides. If you need help, the shopper will come forward to recommend.
According to the observation of "Venture Forefront", the colorist's staff are also young people in their 20s, wearing white T-shirts and jeans, and with the store's design dominated by grey and pink tones, the store as a whole is bright and lively.
Watsons, on the other hand, has taken a very different path. As soon as you enter Watson's, a shopper will warmly welcome you and ask what you need. Its store design is dominated by black and yellow tones, and the shoppers are uniformly dressed in black, and their age looks a bit older than the colorist staff.
Watson's store area is much larger than that of the colorist, but in the 20 minutes of the visit to the "front line", its traffic was less than one-third of the latter's. Who can win the favor of young people? It seems clear who is winning the favor of young people.
The competition between Colorist and Watson's is no exception.
Also in July, on a weekend afternoon, in Xidan Joy City, "Venture Forefront" visited and saw that the WOW COLOUR store on the second floor was crowded with people, and every shelf was surrounded by consumers. The Sephora store downstairs was much cooler, with less than 10 consumers choosing goods in the store. Not only that, the second floor of the MAC, CHANEL and other beauty brand counters are also rarely visited by consumers.
Colorist and WOW COLOUR products sold by most of the national products, as well as Japan and South Korea affordable brands, if they may be relying on low prices to attract a large number of young consumers, and can not compete with Sephora, Watson's, then, go to the high-end HARMAY plums (hereinafter referred to as "plums"), is qualified to compete with them.
HARMAY is located in Beijing.
The HARMAY store, located in Beijing's Xidan Renewal Square, is more like a Netflix site, with its industrial-style personalized design attracting many consumers to take photos. On weekends in July, not only young people, but also many middle-aged mothers with children, came to the plum card, and there was a long line in front of the cash register. From the popularity point of view, the new-style beauty collection store is a proper winner.
Beginning last year, it became clear that the wind was blowing up the beauty collection store.
At the end of last year, H.E.A.T Hi-Burn, received angel round financing from Banyan Tree Capital; HAYDON Black Hole also received angel round financing led by Gao Tiles and Tencent. In March this year, WOW COLOUR announced that it had received 500 million yuan in Series A financing.
They are also opening stores at an extremely rapid pace. The CEO of the color mixer, Peng Yao, mentioned in his speech that he had opened more than 300 directly-managed stores in a year, spreading across the A-class business district of first-tier cities. Public information shows that WOW COLOUR also opened nearly 300 stores in 8 months. In the new style of beauty collection store is in full swing, the traditional beauty store has a trend of decline.
A.S. Watson's earnings report showed that its share of China's performance fell 19% year-on-year in 2020, and the epidemic also affected Watson's performance, with its global sales falling 11% year-on-year last year. Last July, veteran beauty chain Mannings, too, was rumored to be pulling out stores on a large scale.
The law of nature is being validated in the beauty collection store industry.
In the new beauty collection store wind mouth, in addition to the above mentioned new brands to obtain financing, there are some small and medium-sized brands with franchisees running into the field. They strongly advocate the beauty collection store "way to attract money", attracting many players who want to enter the gold.
"Since 2007, our company has been doing snack collection store franchise business, now this franchise is not doing well, the transition to do beauty collection store franchise." A self-proclaimed makeup collection source manufacturers of staff Wang Lin (a pseudonym) said.
Wang Lin introduced, they can provide customers with "one-stop" service - the owner only need to store a simple basic decoration can be, they will help the owner to choose the site, provide store design programs, shelves and other equipment, as well as beauty sources.
"We do not charge any franchise fee, management fee, deposit, you send us the store plan, we give you a design plan, the color of the shelves, backdrops, mirrors, lights, etc., can be done according to your requirements." Wang Lin said.
She also told "Venture Forefront" that there are a lot of customers who originally opened snack collection stores directly transformed into beauty collection stores on the original store, and there are also many people who do clothing, shoes and bags business to change their profession to do.
"Makeup collection store is a wind mouth, everyone wants to seize this wind mouth, so in the past two years we have a particularly large number of orders." Wang Lin said. Their labor period for making shelves takes about 15 days, and the current orders are already scheduled for a month from now.
In the mouths of these franchisees, beauty collection stores are a good business worth investing in.
"For a store of about 100 square meters, the cost of hardware and first-time stocking is about 350,000 to 400,000 yuan." Another makeup collection store franchise chain brand "YISUCOLOUR Yisu life" staff Shen Yang (a pseudonym) said.
58 City, Beijing, Sanlitun SOHO near the ground floor, about 120 square meters of stores, the monthly rent of 42,000 yuan. If it is in the county, the rent for a store of about the same size is a few thousand dollars per month.
"The profit of color cosmetics is very considerable, we are all in accordance with the 3.5 ~ 4.5 fold this interval to the store owner supply, the profit can basically reach about 50% ~ 70%." Shen Yang said that some of their franchises have mall stores that can reach a turnover of more than 100,000 yuan a month. "Some customers can sell 20,000 to 30,000 yuan in one day, and double that on holidays."
That is to say, if the operation is good, some store owners more than 1 month of revenue can cover the initial investment.
Shen Yang said they currently have more than 40 franchises across the country, located in Henan, Yunnan, Xinjiang and many other regions, and there are even stores opened to the county and township. "We mainly do affordable beauty, most people can accept the price. Nowadays, users in counties and townships also have the need to change their beauty and makeup. Therefore, the audience is also broader, in addition to the post-90s and post-00s, some post-70s and post-80s will also have the demand." Shen Yang said.
According to Shen Yang, the price of the goods is as low as 9.9 yuan, most of them are around 69 yuan and 79 yuan, and the guest unit price is basically between 100 and 500 yuan. "Very few guests can go out empty-handed after arriving at the store, and there is a high probability that they will buy multiple items."
Shen Yang also introduced the products sold in their franchise, there are currently more than 200 brands, mainly domestic hot beauty and imported niche brands, but also big brand samples, "We will also ensure that there are 3 to 5 brand new every month, to put it bluntly, it is nothing more than what the current brand, monograms are hot, we will do what. " Shen Yang said.
However, the rise of offline beauty stores, was frantically promoting the franchise model does not mean that "everyone has money". "The first batch of stores is to eat crabs, behind the stores will only get more and more, like milk tea stores, everywhere, but the later can make money on not much." Shen Yang claimed.
Although in catering to young users and the speed of development, the new species is slightly better, but in the most fundamental source of goods, the new collection of stores is not as advantageous as traditional stores.
One of the most worrying points for consumers is whether the products in beauty stores, especially the samples, are genuine. Some people believe that the small samples as a gift, the brand is a controlled amount, but it is a constant flow into the market, there may be some problems.
In February of this year, the blogger "Big Molecule Laboratory" released a video in Xiaohongshu, where he tested nine samples of a net red beauty collection store and compared them with the counter's genuine products, and found that one of the eye creams had a significant difference with the counter's genuine products through the NMR*** vibration experiment.
He analyzed the eye cream and the counter.
He analyzed, in response to such a result, one possibility is that the version of this eye cream is different, another possibility is to buy a fake.
The video also sparked controversy and discussion in the industry.
The video also sparked controversy and discussion in the industry, but in any case, it reflects a certain degree of skepticism among consumers about the authenticity of some of the samples in the newer beauty collection stores.
In contrast, traditional beauty stores don't have to worry about this issue.
For example, Sephora's sources are authentic channels in the public's mind. It is reported that Sephora is LVMH (Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Group) under the middle and high-end cosmetic retail stores, and LVMH, Estee Lauder Group, L'Oreal Group, as well as a number of other large European, U.S., Japanese and South Korean daily chemical group cooperation, the countries Sephora directly from the brand in the local market of the top channels to pick up goods, so that pick up the way to ensure that the authenticity of its products.
However, some new-style beauty collection stores in China, it is difficult to directly get the authorization of the brand side, they can only look for other channels.
"Some of our customers were originally in the makeup business and have pickup channels, so if you need them, we can also help you dock the channels." Wang Lin claimed.
But these shopkeepers and franchisees said "pick-up channels", must be reliable?
Claiming to have more than 10 years of experience in the makeup business, the Little Red Book blogger "Nanmu ah", has revealed in the video that there are two main channels for imported cosmetics.
One is the "general trade" channel, this way "basically no risk", the brand needs to carry out the general trade record, but the brand will be in the price of the goods itself plus 21% of the tax points, coupled with brand control, resulting in the supply of goods in the price of the goods, the price of the goods, the price of the goods, the price of the goods, the price of the goods, the price of the goods, the price of the goods. The brand name of the brand will add a 21% tax on the price of the goods itself, plus the control of the brand, resulting in the supply of goods in the price is no advantage.
"Above medium-sized brick-and-mortar merchants, and in the case of strict market regulation, it is recommended to go through the channels of formal trade in order to minimize the risk of business." Nanmu claimed.
The other is the circulation channel, that is, the product is not through the formal trade channels into the country, practitioners can be purchased in wholesale markets, distribution centers, websites.
There are several larger cosmetic wholesale distribution centers in China, such as Xingfa Plaza, Yifa Plaza, and Meibo City in Guangzhou, as well as the Shenzhen Mingtong Cosmetic Wholesale Market, which has sprung up in the last two to three years. "Some of the big-brand imported cosmetic stores in Meibo City basically do high-fashion or super-A goods (high-end imitations)." Nanmu said in the video.
She also explained that most of what Shenzhen Mingtong sells is parallel imports. "Meaning products that do not come in through regular tariffs and regulatory channels, parallel imports are not the same as fake goods, but it does not exclude individual merchants real and fake adulterated sales, or some stalls half real goods, half fake goods."
Therefore, beauty collection stores may get fake or parallel imports once they are not cautious, thus facing business risks.
In addition to the problem of sourcing, the price of some products in the beauty collection store has also been trolled by some users, who believe that their cost-effectiveness is not high.
Xiaohongshu blogger "Ili Shark White" in the plum store visit found that the price of makeup is not cheap, with the counter is not much difference. For example, MAC a lipstick, the official price of 170 yuan, the plum price of 167 yuan. "It would be better to find a MAC counter lady to draw me a European and American makeup." The blogger said.
Lanc?me "powder water" as an example, "entrepreneurial forefront" in the plum store to see, the price of a single bottle of 340 yuan, while in the cdf duty-free store small program, the lowest price of this product for 242 yuan, the offer of the purchase is also generally within 300 yuan.
As a new species, the popularity of the new style of beauty collection store does evoke the curiosity of young users, but also allows some source manufacturers to see the development potential of the collection store model, which further contributes to the rise of offline beauty franchise.
However, in front of the two mountains of source capacity and price advantage, whether the new beauty collection store can successfully break through, and run a sustainable profit model, there is still to be a further test of the market.
*The title image in this article is from Photo Gallery, based on the VRF protocol.