Nowadays, instead of solely competing among themselves, global beauty brands in China have to also compete with smart local companies. These local innovative brands have found new ways to directly reach their consumers. They understand that the best strategy is to focus on evidence-based skin analysis and safe and nontoxic products, while also integrating their skin labs into their direct-to-consumer product channels. These new beauty ecosystems were created because of China’s “skintellectuals” — a group of demanding and highly-intelligent consumers that has become the force behind the current global beauty boom — and they will do anything to satisfy their obsession with perfect skin and a delicate, youthful look. 

NEIWAI, born as an online lingerie brand best known for its wireless bras, it has since morphed into an online and offline retailer, with 73 stores in mainland China after eight short years. In the initial launch post of No Body Is Nobody, released at the end of February, each of the six featured women were rebranded from social stereotypes. This campaign wanted to emphasize the concept of ‘Body Diversity’.And NEIWAI’s representation of diversity is reciprocated by the many long comments underneath their two official WeChat posts, which collectively have garnered almost 100,000 views since the release. By shining a spotlight on the consumers themselves, NEIWAI has built strong emotional connections with its target audience, who share the collective struggle of accepting their bodies. In a public virtual space like WeChat, women started openly sharing their own insecurities that parallel the six NEIWAI women, which makes the campaign stretch beyond

This playbook navigates the dynamics of Social Retail, the current trends and practices of the leading players, and highlights the strategic transformation that brands can leverage in the social media era. Four key takeaways from the whitepaper that speak to fashion, beauty, and luxury industries are: 1) Consumer touchpoints become diversified and socialized, 2) Decentralized distribution channels trigger “social fission”, 3) Generating private domain traffic is crucial to maximize customer lifetime value, 4) Brands have to be specific, fast-paced, and flexible. How could your company apply these four key takeaways in order to better adapt to the Chinese market?

The luxury world is now very dependent on Chinese consumers, but the COVID-19 crisis is revealing the cracks in that once rosy relationship. Now that the Chinese government has locked down the Hubei province (keeping about 60 million residents indoors while encouraging even more to work from home).Chinese buyers can’t satisfy their consumption needs outside, so they must rely on digital platforms for their daily indulgences. In addition, since China has extended the Lunar New Year holiday, an increasing number of private companies “have cut wages, delayed paychecks, or stopped paying staff completely.” As a result, designer and factory digital outlets with lower price points and bigger discounts will be more attractive than top luxury labels that sell at full price in physical stores.

Chinese travelers and businesses have expressed confidence in the development of the country’s tourism industry, although it was hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak. “China’s tourism economy will prove strong resilience against the epidemic,” Dai Bin, president of China Tourism Academy, said during an online conference Thursday. A survey by the academy shows 71.5 percent of the respondents would travel after the outbreak ends and everything stabilizes for a while, and 20.7 percent would go traveling as soon as possible after the epidemic.

E-commerce behemoth Alibaba’s livestreaming unit, Taobao Live, has seen rapid growth in February as offline businesses increasingly seek out online marketing and sales channels during the Covid-19 epidemic. Livestreamed e-commerce has been gaining momentum since last year thanks to the rise of content-driven e-commerce. The epidemic has certainly accelerated its expansion from standard categories such as cosmetics and apparel to cars and real estate. Even the entertainment sector is also tapping livestreams to engage audience and fans.

China has the world’s largest livestreaming industry and Wuhan – the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak – was already something of a livestreaming hub. So when the new virus emerged, confining millions of people to their homes, the industry responded quickly, with new programming genres emerging and a shift in the formats of popular TV reality shows. Audiences have been watching livestreams of both celebrities and ordinary people singing, cooking and exercising in their own homes. Programmers that usually feature live audiences have instead come to resemble video conferences – but have still proven an unusual hit. Recognizing the appeal that unconventional livestreams have had among audiences while Chinese have been in self-quarantine, some new shows quickly sprang up on online streaming services. Therefore, the flexibility and popularity of the livestreams industry are extremely high in China.

This shouldn’t come as a great surprise given China’s gender imbalance. Today, China’s roughly 33 million surplus men have become a powerful consumer base that turns to shopping to avoid loneliness and boredom. These Guanggun or “bare branches” have distinctive consumer habits and interests compared to men in Western societies and they have a different understanding of luxury. For these men, luxury items are a way of communicating financial security and demonstrating that they have the financial means to satisfy the needs of an eligible life partner. Consequently, global luxury brands need to employ personalized marketing strategies and ad campaigns that break through the noise and become memorable and inspirational to this group of men. This is difficult when most Western brands still don’t get the factors that influence the buying habits of Chinese men, which makes it harder for them to build an authentic relationship with this consumer segment.