The price is more successful than the top of the shoulder salon, is the high -end domestic perfume brand successful?

Entering 2022, the domestic perfume brands positioned in the mid -to -high -end position became much high -profile.

In March of this year, Melt Season, a thousand -dollar domestic perfume brand, announced the completion of more than 10 million RMB angel round financing, and the first offline store landed in Shanghai. In the same month, the perfume brand Documents, which is also a single price of 1,000 yuan, Wenxian's third offline smell of incense space opened in Beijing SKP. This is the brand's first shop to open in the department store. In July, Guanxia, ​​a domestic perfume brand, which was positioned in the mid -to -high -end positioning, opened the second offline store in the Siheyuan of Beijing. It was only half a year since the opening of its first Shanghai store. In the mainland, there are hundreds of stores in the mainland. Its first store in Taiwan landed in Zhongshan Eslite in Taipei in January this year, attracting many consumers to "find incense."

There are more and more domestic perfume brands that can sell hundreds or even thousands of yuan. The "base gas" behind the perfume consumer market behind is high -end. According to Tmall related data, the unit price of Chinese consumers purchased perfume has reached 500-800 yuan, which is the highest in the world. "White Paper 2.0" released by Yingtong Group shows that the market proportion of high -end perfume brands has increased year by year, from 70%in 2015 to 91%in 2020. High -end perfume has become the main force driving the growth of the Chinese perfume market.

From the perspective of brand positioning and market strategies, most domestic high -end perfumes should belong to the category of salons. Just as other consumer market segments on the air outlet in the past two years, while the domestic salon incense has opened up and loose leaves, it also faces the giant's pinch, the pressure on the supply side, and the change of consumer interest. Essence

"Back to God" Beauty Giants and Absolute Strong Fragrance Company

In the business division logic of luxury giants such as Kaiyun, LVMH, Chanel, etc., makeup and perfumes are usually classified as the same business category, which shows at least two things: perfume is part of makeup, to a certain extent for consumers' purchase psychology Similarly, the brand "make perfume with makeup" is feasible from a certain level. On the other hand, perfumes, like makeup, are products that can make high -brand premiums. With the limited cost of the perfume itself, its strong cultural attributes have greatly increased the premium space. Therefore, quality and high -end are the end of the development of perfume categories, and brands that rely on low prices and replace circles will eventually be eliminated. This means that the first step is to have a unique style, (at least from the price) to position high -end perfume brands, but this does not mean that the road in front of them is frank. These brands are facing a market that is controlled by the upstream by international spice giants, the scarcity of local incense registers, the order of the midstream foundries is monopolized by the big name, and the downstream is dominated by the European and American brands. Every link in this industrial chain is covered with reefs And dark surge.

Since 2019, the overseas niche salon has accelerated its layout in China and has formed positive competition for domestic brands. According to incomplete statistics from CBNData, between 2019 and 2020, Byredo, By Kilian, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, L'Artisan Parfumeur, Penhaligon's, Maison Margiela and other niche salons have entered China. At the Shanghai Consumers' Expo in July, many niche incense was also for the first time for domestic consumers. The latest news is that the first physical store of Australian brand AESOP, which mainly sells skin care products and perfumes, has landed in Shanghai, and Le Labo, who is well -known in the circle by relying on Santal 33 and other fragrant types. News from mainland Chinese market.

The good reputation that had been established and accumulated in the circle of perfume lovers and purchasing channels before, and paved the way for these niche perfumes to start in China. On the eve of the Double 11 of 2021, Serge Lutens, a salon perfume brand of Shiseido, opened an official overseas flagship store in Tmall International. For Double 11, the global limited "Golden Clock Perfume Dance Mengtarabu" and amber king limited gift box. Multiple explosive pre -sale is sold out, and store sales are ranked first in perfume category. CBNDATA "2021 Online Snoise Economic Research Report" also shows that compared with the same period of 2020, more niche brands rushed into the TOP20 of perfume category during the double 11 period in 2021. Rush on top50.

At the same time, the International Fashion and Luxury Group continued to increase the proportion of self -employment and acquisition layout of the beauty and perfume business. Since 2014, Estee Lauder, L'Oreal and LVMH's competition for niche perfume brands have never stopped. Until this year, the Spanish beauty giant PUIG announced in June that the acquisition of the perfume brand Byredo's majority of the equity; August, Estee Lauder Group discussed the news of the acquisition of luxury brands Tom Ford, which had a strong beauty and perfume line in the latter; Kaiyun Group At a recent performance conference, we revealed that the tendency to recover the business rights of GUCCI's beauty perfume business -in the past, most of these luxury group's beauty and perfume business were handed over to several large -scale beauty agents for operations. The management right of recovering the beauty and perfume business represents a stronger autonomy and a more unified brand style for the group. The Chinese market is just a matter of time. If the challenges brought by the niche salon perfume and big -name self -employment belong to the competition of peers, they can still teach the products through polishing products, then the upstream weakness that is difficult to change in a short time is the "Dam memory that has been lingering on the top of the domestic perfume head. The Sword of Lis: The four major fragrance companies have more than half of the global spice business in the world, and also monopolize the cultivation and planting technology patents of certain key raw materials and strategic raw materials. Upstream barriers. Compared with the large -scale purchase of commercial fragrances, small batch of original spice orders are weak, and adhering to the self -developed incense type will inevitably cause costs. Some people in the industry revealed to the media that the high pricing of some domestic salon brands does not come from the brand premium, but the high supply cost caused by small batch orders.

In contrast, the power of large -scale beauty groups has a stronger right to speak, and the large -scale orders of commercial fragrance make the brand's premium space wider. Some incense divisions told Financial Network that large companies like L'Oreal and Estee Lauder will involve some odor research and development when they cooperate with the four major fragrance companies. What elements are contained, after getting the appeal of the fragrance company, you will first search in the existing flavor library. Is there a smell that meets the requirements? After that, you will take out a series of smells for the brand choice. The teacher conducts fine -tuning or re -researching. Since Chinese spices are not traditional spices commonly used in perfraues, the production standards for upstream manufacturers are different. For most of the domestic salon brands that want to tell the "Oriental Story", from proposal to receiving product samples, it usually costs more than half a year for more than half a year. The only time for the brand is to accept or give up two options [1].

The reality is that in the cognition of the industry, there are only a handful of brands that are self -developed from spices to the true sense of formula. Such brands have maintained the embarrassment of out -of -stock due to unstable supply. For example, Guan Xia's controversial "limited purchase every Thursday", consumers laughed and said "the feeling of spending money for begging." The possibility of shaving the brand's hunger marketing, the unstable supply of "relying on imports and handmade" in Guanxiakou is also the main reason for product stocking. However, if the brand chooses the incense type under the so -called "limited innovation", but at the marketing level, the words "original" and "independence" are not loose, which will cause the brand value to dilute to a certain extent.

Can the offline "space" of different styles shape a high -end brand?

In addition to cooperating with the top perfumers and flavors giants, choose high -quality raw materials, and work hard in the aspects of component formulas and incense duration, more and more brands have begun to create unique stores as another way to shape high -end tone. Essence

Let's call back the clock back to 2020. At that time, Guan Xia was not now the fragrance brand of Oriental aesthetics. The English name of the brand was Summerlab, not to Summer, which was more artistic. At the end of 2021, Guanxia's first offline experience store opened in Lian Kaifo in Beijing. The grade is very high, but the effect of smelling incense is not friendly, and the products are not sold on the spot. In the words of the founder of the brand, Guan Xia at that time was more like a "light young girl", not "35 -year -old sister who was accustomed to being alone" [2]. It is undeniable that in the process of Guan Xia, in the process of brand evolution, an offline store with a unique style, a strong sense of artistic and cultural atmosphere plays an extremely important role. From the Sanlitun Guanxia living room with the theme of water wave pattern and cave elements, to the Shanghai Anfu Road Guanxia Xian Court, Shanghai Anfu Road, and the old Beijing Hutong store that has just opened a Zen aesthetic, Guanxia almost got rid of the "Net The label of red aroma "has gradually precipitated into a model of Oriental Salon Fragrance.

Another brand that is more "radical" is Documents. Established in July 2021, Wen Xian's first offline store was landed in Huaihai Middle Road. The wide, dark and silent shop design made many netizens join the "black shop" of Huaihai Middle Road. Subsequently, Wen Xian's second and third stores successively settled in Shanghai Jing'an Kerry and Beijing SKP-S. The two stores were based on the theme of "altar" and "wine kiln". The decoration design was full of sense of ritual and high-level. In April of this year, Wen Xian launched a flash event called "Wen Xian Ark", and the ship -shaped island platform created by recycled wood for 30 days on the first floor of Beijing SKP. In order to cooperate with this flash, Wen Xian also launched a Ark filter. Douyin and Instagram users can "moor" the Ark to anywhere, and the entire marketing planning style continues the strong vision and sensory line of Wen Xian. Melt Season, which was established in 2020, also chose to skip the "cold launch" stage such as the mall store and pop -up shop. The first offline store chose a single house on Shanghai Taiyuan Road. This belongs to the Hengfu style reserves, and the owner of the house was Zheng Nian. According to the field visit of interface journalists, the trees outside the house are lush and the environment is pleasant. The empty sense of emptiness in the house is mainly based on warm soil. There are not many decorations. The purpose is to make consumers "immerse in the fragrance space." The first floor of the bungalow is mainly the display space of the brand -name model, and the second floor displays the full series of Melt Season. At present, Melt SESAON's products are divided into two series of four perfumes: Classic and Gao Ding. The classic series is priced at 100ml/980 yuan, and the high -definition series is priced at 100ml/1280 yuan. The online channel is WeChat Mini Program. Or the movement of channel layout and other channels. According to Melt Sesaon, the brand hopes to show the contradiction and integration of the diverse smell world under the balancing of ancient and modern collision balancing through the olfactory aesthetics of the oriental temperament.

It is not difficult to find that domestic brands

It is not difficult to find that domestic brands through special districts, historical buildings, or high -end malls to create an ultimate experience in the empowerment of the ultimate experience. But in CBNData's view, this trend is risky.

First of all, the domestic salon brand is still in the early days when the brand image is established. Most of them do not have the endorsement of the luxury brand gene, and there is no cross -border blessing of designer or star halo. The label, the brand positioning is still being explored, so the right to speak in the entire high -end perfume market is weak. In order to make the "high -level sense" fastest, high -end "Guoxiang" through the sophisticated polishing of the offline stores in the location, decoration design and layout, with a high -level shaped brand that consumers can perceive Essence However, when the brand image has not yet been established, the product polishing has not yet been complete. Whether it is the "experience space" in Shanghai's net red neighborhood or Beijing Old Hutong, it may only give consumers a "advanced experience", not the impression of "advanced products". In the end As a result, the brand itself is out of focus. In addition, in order to attract the flow of passenger flow, it will continue to launch a store with a huge difference between the concept and the theme, but it will disperse the attention of consumers to the product, and the final result will be lost.

Secondly, the so -called offline experience provided by the brand is not too high, and it is difficult to reflect the brand's competitiveness. For example, Melt Season's first shop style is like the hybrid of Guan Xia and AESOP. The founder of its brand once bluntly stated that Melt Season will be transformed according to urban style, like AESOP [3]. The first offline flagship store of Bingheli, a 100 -dollar commercial incense brand, also chose to exhibit high -end real estate Shanghai Xingye Taikuhui, and is a neighbor with a lot of luxury goods and emerging lifestyles. According to the brand's draft, the design of the store is biased towards the experience instead of selling goods. It has also set up a DIY perfuel area to provide consumers with room for creativity.

It can be seen that for brands, store building is not a must -have for competitiveness. The value of independent products is the first. Aside from the store, whether consumers can be surprised to the product are important considerations. When consumers are willing to pay for separate products, the brand has a long continuous value. Subjects instead of the unique option.

The stone of other mountains: What can domestic fragrance brands learn?

Aside from the factors of the founder's origin, brand heritage and inspiration, we tried to dig the brand shaping path that can be reused on the overseas salon brand. Compared to the long -standing and deeper brand of Serge Lutens, Diptyque, Frederic Malle, Jo Malone, we choose young brands like Byredo, Le Labo, D.S. & Durga, Memo Paris as a reference department to find highlights from their growth path.

(1) Pay attention to the cultivation and cultivation of "angel users [4]"

Different from senior enthusiasts in Western countries, consumers of senior fragrances are usually mainly young people in domestic consumers in China. Dao Nguyen, the founder of Essenzia By Dao, a boutique creative strategy, believes that this phenomenon is related to the distinctive wishes that China wants to be different in China, and rare and avant -garde perfumes are more popular. This boom is also attributed to social media, and many new media platforms enable young people to educate themselves very casually. [5] In addition, the vigorous growth of online fragrance consumption has also been unique -in the past 4 years, the sales of the Tmall platform perfume industry have increased tripled. In the first half of 2021, only the category of aromatherapy ornaments achieved 17 times the year -on -year increase in Tmall [6]. Although rich grass content and convenient purchase channels make consumers easier to place orders, it also puts forward new challenges for product sales: only to outline a bottle of fragrance with text and pictures. The specific fragrance is based on consumers Imagine through graphic and text, there will be situations that consumers get the aroma and imagination. In particular, the target group is a salon incense of perfume enthusiasts. Once the impression of "marketing is greater than content" is fatal, the damage to brand value is fatal. For example, the oriental cultural concept and copywriting that Guanxia focused on the grass platforms such as Xiaohongshu attracted many ordinary consumers. However, in the eyes of some perfume enthusiasts, these brands are masters who play with copywriting, masters of feelings, and returning to the perfume itself, they are mediocre and even a little uncomfortable.

Therefore, the brand's cultivation of the first batch of "angel users" was particularly important at the beginning of promotion. These users can come from the creator's circle of friends, professional fragrance or beauty bloggers, or ordinary consumers. Nowadays, the bloggers of lifestyles have been subdivided into the bloggers such as perfumes such as perfumes, Ahua, and Dashan. one. Take Memo Paris as an example. From the small -scale fragrant critic to the incense test, to the KOL/KOC test experience of Xiaohongshu, Weibo, WeChat and other channels, it lasted for more than half a year. This part of the group became the early audience of the brand, and then promoted the small -scale lap of the brand.

(2) Perfume naming should pay more attention to realism

The salon fragrance is particularly different from the commercial fragrance. Its products cater to personal characteristics rather than market -oriented needs. The marketing method of "niche brands" deepen this feature. In this way, many domestic salon incense is easy to fall into the situation of lonely. It is more clearly reflected in the name of perfume.

If the name of the perfume is good, it can make consumers think about the underground order without thinking. It can be a simple fragrance description, the context creation, or emotional expression. From the naming of many domestic salon incense, CBNDATA has discovered a flat, fewer and fewer ways to name the plant -based description. "Echo". It seems that the description of the plant aroma is not characterized enough and not attractive. But in fact, perfumes with plant -based tone such as wood, green leaves, citrus, and various types of flowers and plants are still mainstream. Some specific situations or cities also have related plant fragrances. For example, Tokyo and Kyoto labels are usually wooden. Fragrant, Jiangnan City is often associated with osmanthus flavor, and so on.

The description of the incense type is "not realistic enough", and it is difficult to produce Lenovo is also a criticism of domestic fragrance.

After comparing the four products of a brand known as "the light of domestic goods", a respondent admitted frankly that "due to the lack of more realistic plant -like atmosphere, and the vagueness and texture of each aroma characteristics , I can't associate this product with any real flower fragrance or artistic conception atmosphere. "[7]

Although a rich perfume name is important, it is effective for consumers to produce a direct name of Lenovo.

Taking the salon brand Le Labo as an example, the name of its products is simple but clear enough: the type of spice contained in the main ingredients+products. For example, Le Labo Rose 31, one of the best -selling products, takes hundreds of petals and Damascus roses as the main ingredients, accounts for more than half of the perfume, and is paired with 31 materials. There are countless perfumes on the market, but the uniqueness of Rose 31 is that spicy, wood and a lot of musk are used to make the breath of roses more stable and neutral, and Rose 31 is the favorite of many men's consumers.

(3) Cultivate the "nose" belonging to the brand

Due to the smaller salon incense affected by the market trend, the style and level of the perfumers largely determine the final presentation of a perfume, so it is particularly important. Salon fragrant brands can improve the brand tone and uniqueness from the cultivation of the perfumers who belong to their own or long -term cooperation, which are commonly known as the "nose" in the industry.

The perfumer is often divided into a commercial perfumer and an independent perfumer. Most of the commercial perfumers work in the fragrance spice company. The cooperation targets of these companies cover most of the mainstream brands in the market. Independent perfumers set up a studio by themselves to cooperate with the brand or create brands themselves. The number of global perfumers is extremely scarce, and the global CEO Gilbert Ghostine of the world publicly declared that "there are only 400 incense artists in the world, which is scarce than astronauts." Chanel, Dior, Loewe, Guerlain, Hermes. The founders of some salon fragrant brands are the perfumers, such as Le Labo, Jo Malone, Tauer Perfumes, etc., and the founder of the domestic salon fragrant brand, the founder of the schoa incense, is also an independent perfumer. , Its founder Link has played a fragranceist in the IFF, playing a bridge between the perfumer and the customer.

Other brands want to try to highlight the creative value of the incense master. For example, French brand de Parfums Frederic Malle, founded in 2000, believes that the relationship between the perfume and the brand should be more like the relationship between the writer and the publisher. Named by the name of the perfumer, the brand also gives the maximum freedom of the fragranceist, and it also attracted the in -depth cooperation of the top fragrance divisions that are deeply limited by the market business rules. In 2014, Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle was acquired by Estee Lauder. After officially entered the Chinese market in 2020, Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle opened its popularity by hosting a series of art exhibitions and pop -up boutique models.

At present, the relationship between domestic brands and perfumers is relatively loose and moderate, and most of them are occasional cooperation. For example, the Steve Guo, who has won the SFP annual youth incense regulatory award, used the "Xixi Peach Blossoms" to Mizhuan. Balio is the only brand in China that has an independent incense regulator, but its SKU and brand positioning are closer to commercial incense instead of soda incense. The packaging is also suspected of plagiarizing Byredo. Essence

Domestic salon is still in its infancy, and the brand's understanding of high -end routes is different. High -end skills, longer polishing, more famous perfumers or stacks, each option can become a selling point. Today, people are increasingly pursuing "not incense", many commercial perfume brands have also launched their own salon lines, such as Armani Privé of Armani and Dior Collection Privée. Methods are sold, which also has a certain impact on the independent salon brand. Therefore, high pricing and marketing is a means to help Salon incense to establish brand tone, but making real quality products is the rule of long -term development.

Author: He Zhexin

Edit: Zhong Rui

[1] "Five -year 2,000 companies entered the bureau, Bing Hyori, Smell Library, Guan Xia, Wen Xian how to subvert the right to spoke? | Circuit Observation ", Knife Research Institute

[2] "The local fragrance is popular, how does Guan Xia tell the contemporary Oriental incense story? ", Brand Star brand planet

[3] "There is another new net red card in Shanghai: a perfume shop opened in the old house | Buying and shopping in Shanghai", interface news

[4] The term "Angel user" originated from Steve Blank, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, refers to a wave of consumers who are the earliest willing to trial products or services, and also promote enthusiasm, as the saying goes "tap water".

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[5] "Reverse Consumption Psychology: the more people know the perfume, the more young people love to buy", Vogue Business

[6] Quoted from CBNDATA "2021 Online Smell Economic Research Report"

[7] "Marketing in heaven, product pull," Smell Economy "is a good business? ", Open pineapple finance

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