Chinese makeup companies are forging ahead, producing quality products much faster than their Western counterparts.
Some Chinese brands take just three to six months to create and launch wide-ranging product lines.
They sell these new products to a wide e-commerce consumer base, at a fraction of Sephora’s prices.
Flower Knows. Perfect Diary. Judy Doll. Florasis. If you don’t live in China, you’ve probably never heard of these make-up brands – but together, they made several billion dollars in revenue in 2020, bucking a COVID-era trend that saw Western beauty brands losing at least 10% of their revenue last year.
The secret to their success is simple: new is always better. These brands take just three months to conceptualize, launch, and manufacture a product line, and they’re selling it on Chinese e-commerce platforms like Taobao at drugstore prices.
This formula is clearly working for them too, as research from Deloitte in 2020 saw China-based beauty brands making around 5.4 billion RMB (around $827 million) in March last year alone, doubling their year-on-year growth despite a nationwide COVID lockdown.
So what exactly is fast beauty, and who are the major players in the industry? Why is it so popular? And how is it even possible to produce an entire line of 20 to 30 beauty products in a matter of months?
