Reporter | Viann
Editor | Lou Qinqin
Beauty brands want to make explosive items. Relying on explosive products to gain popularity is also one of the methodologies for the rise of domestic beauty brands in recent years. However, it is becoming more and more difficult to make explosives.
According to the "White Paper on Beauty Industry of Huge Engine in 2021" (hereinafter referred to as "White Paper") jointly released by Huge Engine and Kado Consumer Index recently, it is becoming more and more difficult for best-selling products to get out of the circle.
According to the statistics on the purchase data of facial skin care products and cosmetics in the first-and fifth-tier cities in China in 2019 and 2020, in 2020, the number of best-selling cosmetics declined slightly from 850 in the previous year to 775, with a decrease of 9%, and the categories of skin care and cosmetics all declined.
Specifically, the number of best-selling skin care products fell from 687 to 632, a decrease of 8%; The number of best-selling cosmetics dropped from 163 to 143, a decrease of 12%.
The absolute number of best-selling products of skin care products and cosmetics has declined, which is partly due to the rising marketing cost.
In the past few years, most beauty brands have made explosive products through relatively accurate product and crowd positioning and intensive social media marketing. As the traffic dividends of Weibo, Tik Tok, Xiaohongshu, bilibili and other major platforms gradually disappear, the brand marketing costs continue to increase, and the difficulty of manufacturing explosive products also increases.
However, the "White Paper" also pointed out that although the absolute number of best-selling products of skin care and make-up has declined, their sales share in the market has remained stable at 25%, which indicates that the average market contribution of each best-selling product is rising, and powerful single products have increasingly become an important support for the brand to stabilize its market share.
In other words, although it is not easy to make explosive products, it is quite critical for beauty brands to make explosive products.
For beauty brands, if they want to make explosive products, the reasonable layout of categories is very important.
According to the "White Paper", the categories that are daily necessities and have a large base of consumer goods are the most prone to explosive products. From the category point of view, cleansing and toner, as basic categories, each contribute more than 10% of the best-selling products year after year, and the number of best-selling products will remain stable in 2020.
It is worth noting that although the number of explosions in the elite category has decreased significantly, the sales contribution has increased. This means that under the support of sufficient resources, the brand will invest heavily in the essence of explosive products, and it is possible to achieve greater benefits.
In addition, beauty brands also need to identify unique selling points for single products.
Focusing on the "student party" is one of the effective beauty selling points at present. According to the White Paper, judging from the amount of content broadcast in Tik Tok, many explosive products focus on students, and drive consumers to try with cost-effective communication. For example, the velvet lip glaze of the perfect diary and the high-profile "little yellow hat" whitening sunscreen spray are all selling points with a price of less than 100 yuan and a sense of use close to big brands, which have become explosive products.
Endorsement of product efficacy through star ingredients is another effective beauty selling point, especially in skin care products. Yin Yuli, a beauty and personal care analyst at Mintel, said in an interview with Interface Fashion that after years of market education, consumers in China have a deeper understanding of skin care products. When choosing skin care products, they are mainly efficacy-oriented, and they will buy products according to the problems they want to solve. Skin care brands should not only tell consumers what ingredients are contained in products, but also point out what specific effects these ingredients have.
Take Guerlain’s Emperor Bee Posture Repair and Restoration Honey as an example. This product emphasizes the natural extract of French black bee honey, which can repair the skin. L ‘Oré al Paris’ purple iron eye cream claims to contain anti-aging ingredient Bosin, which can stimulate collagen formation.
Innovating product form is another effective way to upgrade consumer experience and make explosive products. For example, New Zealand Mystery unpacks the jelly-like sleep mask, which is convenient for consumers to control their daily dosage, and is also convenient to carry in outdoor scenes.
In addition, in the case of high market competition, last year’s best-selling products may not sell well this year, which requires beauty brands to be "prepared for danger in times of peace". According to the White Paper, the sales of best-selling products in 2019 accounted for 25% in that year. By 2020, the proportion of the same batch of products will be reduced to 22%, especially in essence, mask and cosmetics.
Therefore, after manufacturing explosive products, brands still need to continuously carry out research and development and upgrade to maintain brand popularity.
