Jeffree Star Enters Chinese E-commerce Platform
- Chaileedo Press
- Oct 14, 2022
- 4 min read
Recently, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, the personal makeup brand of Jeffree Star, one of the world's most influential beauty bloggers, announced its presence on the JD platform. Previously, the brand was already present in Tmall through overseas channels.
Jeffree Star is "obsessed" with the Chinese market
In Cosmetify's "Richest Beauty Bloggers 2020" list, Jeffree Star is already ranked 8th in the world (combined Instagram and Youtube) with a single tweet earning £40,566. In this year's "Richest Beauty Bloggers" list, Star ranked fifth (for Youtube) with a single video earning £11,400. Jeffree Star has more than 14 million followers on Instagram and is the fifth richest beauty blogger on this year's list, earning £11,400 per video (for Youtube).
In 2011, Star founded the eponymous makeup brand Jeffree Star Cosmetics, with a product line covering lipsticks, lip glazes, concealers and more. Over the years, Jeffree Star Cosmetics brand has created a series of star products including ANDROGYNY eyeshadow palette, BLOOD SUGAR eyeshadow palette, VELOURLIQUID LIPSTICK, which often dominate the major makeup list of popular products.
Jeffree Star seems to have a fondness for the Chinese market. In February this year, after an eight-month hiatus, his first review video chose the Chinese beauty brand Florasis. The review video was once the fourth on the global trend list, and the video generated global buzz on Youtube, once making the Flower West brand famous in overseas markets.
In his 25-minute review video, the "global super star", who has 16 million subscribers on Youtube, shows the makeup-wearing process of many popular items such as Florasis' highlighter, loose powder and BLOOMING ROUGE LOVE LOCK LIPSTICK. He says that Florasis is "the most beautiful makeup in the world."
Since this year, Jeffree Star has opened official personal and brand accounts on Weibo, Xiaohongshu and other social media in China. As of press time, his personal Xiaohongshu account has 16,000 followers and the brand's official Weibo account has less than 10,000 followers. In online channel, one of Chinese leading e-commerce platforms Tmall, the overseas flagship store of his brand has four products with a unit price between 170-450 yuan(about $23.6-$62.5), none of which have sold more than 100. Judging from the current market performance, Jeffree Star, which entered China with a low profile, did not take over its traffic in overseas markets.
International beauty fails in China
There are still many cases of cosmetic brands like Jeffree Star that have been well-received in their home countries or other countries but have failed to make it in China. In the first half of the year alone, no fewer than 10 brands have shut down their Chinese operations and pulled out from the market, even those beauty brands created by influencers that are owned by major international brands.
Recently, Estee Lauder Group's online brand GLAMGLOW was rumored to have pulled out from China. Before that, Too Faced, an online makeup brand also owned by Estee Lauder Group, announced the closure of its Tmall overseas flagship store in June this year.
Another Estee Lauder brand, Darphin, has been in China for four years, but its development prospects are still unclear. In 2018, Darphin entered Tmall. In June of the same year, its first offline store in China was located in Hangzhou Wulin Intime Department. Despite the online and offline linkage, Darphin's sales performance is still less than ideal.
French cosmetics giant L'Oréal Group is no exception. After L'Oréal's brand Roger&Gallet also exited the Chinese market. The brand's Tmall flagship store closed on June 30, 2020. A significant portion of Korean cosmetics is also gradually exiting the Chinese market. In February, HERA announced that it had closed all offline counters in China and that Chinese consumers could only purchase products through the brand's official Tmall flagship store.
Brands that created by influencers acquired by major international brands have failed to take over the Chinese market, while those self-made brands are also having a hard time selling in China. For example, a significant number of these brands that have sales of hundreds of millions of dollars abroad have not made much of a splash in China. Kim Kardashian's self-made beauty brand has been open for 3 years in Tmall with only 54,000 followers. Even the Drunken Elephant, which is supported by the Shiseido Group, has only 330 million followers in its Tmall overseas flagship store. The highest total sales of the product have only 20,000 followers. With dismal sales, many brands created by influencers in the Chinese market are looking for a way to break through.
Why can't they continue their success?
Chinese consumers may have been more interested in international brands five years ago. But in the last two years, the emergence of cost-effective Chinese cosmetics products has made consumers more willing to buy Chinese cosmetics products. According to CHAILEEDO's third-quarter consumer trends report, consumers are more willing to buy products that suit their needs and pay more attention to the products themselves when shopping. According to the research, 37.04% of consumers said they only buy what suits them and don't care much about brand and price, while only 21.96% of consumers believe that they prefer to buy big brands with quality assurance.
In addition, many brands that created by influencers were born in Europe and the United States. There are differences in consumer value choices between the local Chinese and other countries' cultures. Many international brands are poor in localization. So it is difficult to capitalize on the user's knowledge and awareness. The competition from the local market's native brands, such as the rise of the C-beauty trend and the superior quality of new Chinese local consumer brands has also hindered the development of European and American brands that created by influencers in China.
As Chinese consumers become more and more mature, they no longer sought after big foreign brands without thinking. After experiencing the high moment of entering the Chinese market, it is more important for brands to review their brand development positioning and care about the real needs of Chinese consumers so that they can develop in the Chinese market for a long time.
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