In recent years, the development of China's beauty market has been expanding, becoming the main battlefield of various brands, and Unilever has also become one of its competitors. However, it is hard to say whether Unilever can get a slice of the market competition by relying on the strategy of "buying while buying" after being defeated by its own brand with high hopes.
Withdraw from the China market
Flagship stores of several e-commerce platforms are closed, and Taobao stores are cleared at low prices ... K-BRIGHT, a brand independently developed by Unilever, seems to be withdrawing from the China market like online news.
On February 2nd, beijing business today reporter today found that Unilever's self-developed brand K-BRIGHT had closed its flagship stores in Taobao, JD.COM, Xiaohongshu and other e-commerce platforms. JD.COM and Xiaohongshu's K-BRIGHT brand products have also been removed from the shelves. Although there are still a few K-BRIGHT products on Taobao Tmall, the customer service of several Taobao stores indicated that the brand products are being cleared at low prices.
The customer service of a Taobao shop named "Paris Xiaojing" said that the brand products are currently being cleared for sale, and it is estimated that they will be gone in the future; The customer service of Shanghai Zuoyou Cosmetics franchise store also said that the brand products are being cleared at low prices. Before, the price of K-BRIGHT aurora bottle essence was above that of 300 yuan, but now the price is only around 80 yuan.
In addition, K-BRIGHT official Weibo and WeChat official accounts have stopped updating.
With the above situation, in recent days, there have been news that K-BRIGHT will withdraw from the China market. It is reported that K-BRIGHT will withdraw from the China market and is currently in the process of clearing its positions. In this regard, beijing business today reporter contacted Unilever for an interview today, and no reply was received as of press time.
It is understood that K-BRIGHT Copley is a Korean luxury skin care brand launched by Unilever in 20 18. Its products include "Aurora Bottle" essence, "Little Ice Bead" freeze-dried powder and other star items, as well as cleaning powder, toner, emulsion, cream and other sub-categories, with * * * 1 1 SKU and product price.
When K-BRIGHT first entered the China market, it started from WeChat store, but it didn't enter Tmall and JD.COM for the first time. For the offline channel layout, although a special operation team has been set up, the expansion plan of CS channel has been shelved and not really implemented, so the products are mainly sold online. In terms of product experience, many netizens in Taobao, Xiaohongshu and Weibo reported that the product experience effect was not good and the product packaging design was "unreasonable". At the sales level, K-BRIGHT's previous marketing method of selling toilet cleaner was "praised" by netizens.
Lai Yang, vice president of Beijing Business Economics Association, said that the positioning of Unilever brand at the consumer level is more about daily care products, but in the field of beauty, Unilever does not have a very prominent brand and consumer base. Based on this, even if luxury brands like K-BRIGHT are independently developed, it is difficult to develop because there is no certain market user base in the early stage.
Dominate the world by "acquisition"
With the continuous expansion of the domestic cosmetics market, China has become one of the main battlefields of brand competition, and Unilever has also continuously promoted its acquired brands to enter the China market.
According to incomplete statistics, from March 20 15 to March 20 19, Unilever completed 17 acquisitions in the field of beauty and personal care, and all the brands it acquired were introduced into the China market.
20 17, Unilever promoted the newly acquired high-end makeup hourglass to enter the China market; In September of the same year, Unilever acquired Copaya Group from Bain Capital Private Equity Investment Company and Goldman Sachs for 2.27 billion euros, and took AHC into its pocket to promote the market layout of the brand 20 18 in China. On 20 19, Unilever introduced KateSomerville；, a high-end Hollywood skin care brand; In 2020, 3.4 billion acquisition of high-end skin care Tatcha was launched.
In the process of continuous acquisition, Unilever is also gradually adjusting its structure and carrying out high-end layout. It is understood that among the many acquired brands, four high-end products are involved, including REN, Kate Somerville, Hourglass and Tatcha. At the same time, Unilever is also selling some low-end and small personal care brands. Earlier, Unilever said it would sell some small personal care brands to sort out its portfolio and turn to faster-growing areas.
According to industry insiders, Unilever has been building its own beauty pyramid in the China market by acquiring some luxury beauty brands, while reducing its efficiency business.
202 1 At the beginning of the year, Unilever and Hangzhou Gaolang Holdings Co., Ltd. announced the establishment of a joint venture company, Gao Ni (Gao Youyi). Unilever said that it will work with Hangzhou Gaolang * * * to build a local team in China, operate cutting-edge high-end beauty brands and focus on the introduction and incubation of overseas cutting-edge high-end brands. It is understood that Hangzhou Gaolang has helped Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson successfully introduce several brands into the China market. Obviously, the introduction of acquisitions is still the theme of Unilever.
Laiyang said that the advantage of the acquisition strategy is that it can directly integrate existing resources, without too much investment in research and development, and quickly form a market promotion. But it also has inevitable shortcomings. These brands are uneven, with different R&D levels and different product quality. It is difficult to form a unified plan between the brand and the overall development of the enterprise, just like a mess. Even some products will face certain risks because of quality design and other issues.
intensifying competition
As the only independent research and development brand of Unilever in recent years, K-BRIGHT has been highly anticipated. The head of Unilever China once said that the brand is mainly to further enhance Unilever's professional position in the Asian beauty market and the global personal care category. However, with the development of K-BRIGHT China market blocked, this hope has also been dashed.
Independent research and development brands have failed to achieve good development, and Unilever can only pin its hopes on "bought brands". At present, most of the beauty brands acquired by Unilever have settled in Tmall International, and sales of other products are flat except AHC. According to Taobao sales data, 493 people paid for the products with the highest sales volume in the overseas flagship store of high-end skin care Tatcha brand Tmall. Among the overseas flagship stores of the make-up brand hourglass, 578 people bought the products with the highest sales volume.
On the other hand, its biggest competitor, Procter & Gamble's sk-ll flagship store, paid 27,000 people for the products with the highest sales volume. The official flagship store of Olay has the highest sales volume, reaching 45,000 people. In contrast, Unilever has more advantages.
In addition to the challenges of foreign brands, the rise of domestic brands also poses certain challenges to them. In the field of make-up, Perfect Diary ranks first in the list of double eleven make-up in 2020, followed by Hua. In terms of skin care brands, the monthly sales volume of whitening products launched by Polaiya is basically around 1000, while the average sales volume of Unilever products is less than 1000+, which is also not dominant. In addition, shanghai jahwa and Marumi, the old brands of daily chemical products, are constantly laying out high-end product systems, and new online celebrity brands are also rising. It is not easy for Unilever to adopt the strategic layout of "buying while buying".
At the same time, Lai Yang said that Unilever's awareness in the nursing field is too high, and it is difficult to transition to the high-end beauty field. The positioning nature of its own enterprise development limits Unilever's development in the field of beauty. In addition, due to the lack of independent research and development, it is difficult for enterprises to form their own barriers and form strong competitiveness in the long-term development.