This month, ChemLinked research analyst Ye Chen participated in the 26th China Beauty Expo and was deeply impressed by the performance, marketing, and trend of the domestic perfume market. This article is created hereby.
In the Beauty Expo, some domestic perfume brands built big and beautiful pavilions just like those world-known brands, breaking the stereotype that new small brands usually only had small booths. More surprisingly, long queues of visitors were waiting outside their pavilions to go inside, implying the rise of domestic perfume brands.
Although the Chinese perfume market is still dominated by international brands, the rise of domestic brands has been an unneglectable trend. Kantar Worldpanel pointed out in a recent report that, from 2018 to 2020, the annual sales growth rate of the domestic perfume industry is about 15%-20%, and the market size is expected to exceed 40 billion yuan by 2022. 1
Which domestic perfume brands in the Market are worth noting?
Boitown (冰希黎)
- No financing record
At present, Boitown is one of the most popular domestic perfume brands. According to the latest data from O-O consulting, Boitown is the only Chinese brand ranked in the TOP 20 perfume brand sales ranking list of 2020. 2 This achievement is attributed to its strong manufacturing, distributing, and marketing abilities. Unlike many other domestic brands who often cooperate with OEM/ODM when first starting, Boitown built its own factory early in 2013 and teamed with Firmenich, the world’s largest flavor & fragrance company, for ingredient supply. It also frequently invites famous international perfumers to participate in their new products’ research and development. As scent testing is an essential part of the perfume buying decision, Boitown actively joins offline distribution channels. It has entered 30% of the top 100 chain CS stores nationwide. 2 When the niche perfume category rises online, it also invests heavily on online marketing and invited sone of the most popular girl group idols, Wu Xuanyi, to be its spokesperson.
Boitown
ReCLASSIFIED (RE调香室)
- Founded time: 2013
- Latest financing time: January 18, 2021
- Financing amount: unknown
ReCLASSIFIED, called RE by its fans, focuses on high-end salon perfume production. Its product line includes perfume, space fragrance, car fragrance, fragrance candles, fragrance personal care products. This brand’s products are mainly distributed through offline channels. It has opened more than 100 offline stores in more than 50 cities in China.
RE's perfume
RE's offline store
to summer (观夏)
- Founded time: 2013
- No financing record
To summer is good at using traditional Chinese scent to make perfumes. It is also a good storyteller, by connecting those beautiful Chinese ancient stories with their products to do promotion
To summer doesn’t have online stores on any e-commerce platforms. In addition to selling products in its own offline stores, it only limitedly launches new products on its WeChat mini program at 8:00 every Thursday night. These products are often sold out in half an hour. The brand explains that the limited quantities are attributed to the complex manufacturing process, which involves delicate hand-making and extracting process in France. Although some consumers criticize for this “hunger marketing” strategy, to summer still becomes more and more popular for its unique products with beautiful stories and limited quantities in the market. Some people even start to provide Daigou services online.
to summer's products
to summer's Aroma
Scentooze (三兔)
- Founded time: 2019
- Latest financing time: May 2021
- Financing amount: unknown
Scentooze is a new domestic perfume brand targeting young female consumers. This brand is good at getting inspiration from the common things and scenes in ordinary Chinese life to develop new products. For example, it launched a perfume named Bubble Tea, the most popular hand-made drink among young Chinese consumers, especially female consumers. Another product is called Grandpa’s Attic, reminding people of childhood in Grandpa’s home.
Scentooze's products
Plustwo (普拉斯兔)
- Founded time: 2019
- Latest financing time: January 2021
- Financing amount: Tens of millions of yuan
Plustwo is another domestic fragrancy brand that develops products for girls’ bathrooms and bedrooms. It covers categories such as hair care, skin care, and fragrance. Little Red Book and Douyin are two of its main marketing platforms. Its first short video on Douyin has more than 50 million views and led to two million yuan sales. 3
Plustwo's product
Barrio (巴莉奥)
- Founded time: 2019
- Latest financing time: December 2020
- Financing amount: Tens of millions of yuan
Barrio is a perfume brand launched by YFF COSMETICS (御梵), an OEM/ODM/OBM cosmetic company with a near-40-year history. The company now has two business lines. One of them is to B, producing fragrancies for other brands. Barrio belongs to its to C business, a self-owned perfume brand targeting young college students and office workers.
Barrio's products
What can brands learn from them?
Domestic brands focus on developing the social function of their products. The "2020 China Perfume Industry Research White Paper" released by iResearch shows that female users aged 18 to 45 are the current mainstream perfume consumer groups. They usually get perfume information from counters, friends, e-commerce platforms, Little Red Book,and Weibo. Also, they are easily affected by KOL and KOCs and often want to “try it” when looking through perfume testing posts online. In this situation, local brands invite many KOLs on Little Red Book and Weibo to try their products and write testing posts. These high-quality and creative fragrance testing posts often describe the fragrance with full details with beautiful words and write about what stories will come in their minds when smelling the scent, thus helping a brand build a unique brand image. To summer is undoubtedly a successful case in this way since now it has successfully built a mysterious oriental brand image in the market.
Local perfume brands are skilled in using Chinese scents, connecting them with Chinese stories. Some plants, such as pine, lotus, bamboo, and osmanthus, are Chinese special scents, with a long history in China. Many famous poets and writers wrote beautiful ancient Chinese literature and poetries about these plants and scents in ancient time. As Chinese people have a natural preference and pride for ancient Chinese literature, thinking these works are elegant and adorable, some brands seize this psychology. They use these traditional scents to develop new products, then create product stories based on those ancient poetries, thus attracting many young consumers.
Local brands are also enthusiastic about exploring niche scents for young consumers today as they don’t want to meet someone wearing the same perfume, which is another reason why to summer’s hunger marketing strategy becomes so successful.
