The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Though thousands of brands crowded into the country’s largest mid-year shopping festival in June, Shiseido, Lancôme, Estée Lauder, L’Oréal and Yves Saint Laurent were the highest performing beauty brands, according to a new Launchmetrics report.
Shiseido raked in $41.9 million in media impact value (a metric estimating the value of brands’ visibility and engagement across digital platforms) and $33 million in sales on Tmall during the first day of festivities (although 618 was originally celebrated as a single day of deals on June 18, it has recently ballooned to include a weeks-long pre-sales period ahead of that date). The Japanese skincare brand’s content, which involved livestreams across several channels, featured stars like Leo Luo and Louis Vuitton ambassador Liu Yifei. During livestreams, reward points and prizes were used to encourage viewers to share the activation.
Like Shiseido, Lancôme and Estée Lauder raked in the bulk of their MIV from Weibo and Douyin, followed by WeChat and Xiaohongshu, with each platform playing a unique and key role. Lancôme reached 50,000 users through chat groups operated by sales associates, recording a 20 percent conversion rate, according to Tencent data. Meanwhile, Estée Lauder tapped beauty KOL Austin Li and key opinion consumers (KOCs) on Xiaohongshu.
JD.com, which launched the event in 2009 (June 18 is the anniversary of its founding), recorded a record-breaking $53 billion in total transaction volume, more than quardrupling last year’s figure. Rival Alibaba’s Tmall saw sales in the first hour of the festival increase 100 percent year-on-year.
With consumers tightening their belts in China, the battle between global fast fashion brands and local high street giants has intensified.
Investors are bracing for a steep slowdown in luxury sales when luxury companies report their first quarter results, reflecting lacklustre Chinese demand.
The French beauty giant’s two latest deals are part of a wider M&A push by global players to capture a larger slice of the China market, targeting buzzy high-end brands that offer products with distinctive Chinese elements.
Post-Covid spend by US tourists in Europe has surged past 2019 levels. Chinese travellers, by contrast, have largely favoured domestic and regional destinations like Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan.