Chinese Color Contact Brand Kilala Breaks Record in Sales

Chinese color contacts brand Kilala has already surpassed last year's first four hours of sales before the opening of the Tmall 618 this year (China's mid-year e-commerce promotion) on the Chinese e-commerce platform in just 30 minutes. In its official Tmall flagship store, the top-selling brand is Kilala annual contacts, which are priced at $11.87 and have monthly sales of 100,000+ units.

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According to CHAILEEDO, Kilala was founded in 2011 and is one of the first batches of Chinese color contacts independent brands. It mainly focused on the 18-24-year-old group in Generation Z, providing color contacts, as well as contact lens care solutions, eye lotion, steam eye masks, and other eye fashion and health-related care and peripheral products. From 2016 to 2020, its sales for five consecutive years maintained double growth. In 2020, it ranked No. 1 in sales of color contacts on Tmall Double 11(Chinese Shopping Carnival in November) and Double 12(Chinese Shopping Carnival in December).

According to official information provided by Kilala, from May 2020, Kilala's color contacts sales surpassed those of international brands such as Hydron, Bausch, and Johnson & Johnson in the Chinese online market. From July of the same year, it ranked first in daily and semi-annual color contact sales across the network. The hot-selling hyaluronic acid daily disposable contacts sold 270,000 boxes per month, and won the color contacts category one in Tmall for six consecutive months, with the first single link sales and single sales of over 10 million. In 2020, the brand's GMV was nearly $74.3 million, up 400% year-over-year. In August 2021, Kilala completed over $59 million in Series B and B+ rounds of financing, with an annual GMV of over $119 million, which is the largest funding amount disclosed in a single round for the color pupil track at that time.

In the 2021 618 campaign, Kilala launched the planet series, as well as the Hyaluronic Acid gift box. In addition to the brand proposition of "black technology", "fun" and "interesting" for the Z generation, the packaging is not only fun from the inside out with a face and material, to meet their consumer proposition of healthier and more beautiful products, but also more unique, more interesting and fun mysterious exploration desire. With the nebula chart of the eight planets as the design inspiration, from the exterior packaging to the interior pattern design, it includes the naming of colors, such as Neptune blue purple, Uranus black dumplings, Jupiter blue dumplings, Saturn pink purple, Mars dumplings and so on. It connected the "trend" and "eye-catching" and the insight of cosmic science and culture. The deep and mysterious brand connotation can be perceived by users, so as to make the Z generation of consumers to be their fans.

In addition, Kilala used the 618 as an opportunity to join hundreds of KOLs and KOCs to focus on a new category of "hyaluronic acid contacts" for the first time to target consumer groups. As the pioneer of this category and the first Chinese brand to introduce hyaluronic acid ingredient technology into contacts, the marketing campaign has achieved good results.

According to the official results list, the Kilala Tmall flagship store achieved 450% growth in 2021 an hour before the start of the sale compared to 2020. During the same year the entire 618 periods, the ace water hyaluronic acid daily disposable contact sales volume reached 200,000 boxes, and sales are more than $1.5 million.

In May this year, Kilala and IP of the Chinese popular game King of Glory co-branded launched Kolalla X King of Glory co-branded a series of color contacts. This is the first time that Kolalla has cooperated with a game IP since its co-branding with anime IP and cute pet IP, and it is also the first crossover of the King of Glory linked color pupil category. This cross-border co-branding cooperation creates a point of differentiation for Kilala, prying the brand to drive users to wear contacts in addition to the makeup scene, creating a new scene where female gamers choose hero-branded contacts for heroes, physicalizing the game equipment, thus penetrating eye fashion into the players' circle, resonating with the heroine's rice circle culture, realizing the communication between color contacts products and gamers.

Boosted by the "Beauty Economy," color contacts have become one of the hot new consumer trends of the moment. The Tmall Contact Lens Industry Crowd Insight White Paper, released on July 21, points out that in the past three years, the average annual growth of color contacts has been nearly 50 percent, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the contact lens market and maintaining high growth. A Research Institute predicts that by 2025, the market size of China's color contacts industry will reach $7.4 billion, and is expected to become one of the most important markets in the world.