POLA Launches New for Firming Skin in China
- Chaileedo Press
- Jul 15, 2022
- 4 min read
POLA Clear Toner was launched in China recently and the product is available in offline stores and online in its flagship store on Chinese e-commerce platforms Tmall and JD. In 2021, POLA reached 38% growth and soared 50% in the Chinese Double 11 Festival.
According to CHAILEEDO, the product is officially priced at $133. POLA claims that the product consists of reducing pore, firming, and elasticity, as well as anti-glycation.
POLA is from Pola Orbis Group, one of the four major cosmetic groups SHISEIDO Group, Kao Group, and Kose Group in Japan. Pola Orbis Group enjoys two flagship brands POLA and ORBIS and it acquired brands H2O +, Jurlique, Three, and other developing brands. POLA as the company's flagship brand Pola, the company's flagship brand, has a strong presence in the local high-end cosmetics market in Japan. Jurlique and Three already have a presence in the Chinese travel retail market and have opened counters at Beijing Daxing International Airport in 2019 in partnership with CDFG.
Pola Orbis Travel Retail plans to accelerate the opening of stores in China starting in 2021 to expand its China business. Headquartered in Hong Kong, the company oversees and operates the growing travel retail business of Pola Orbis Holdings. In 2021, Pola Orbis Travel Retail is reportedly partnering with CDFG to open Hainan's first Pola counter in CDF Haikou Riyue Plaza. The company expects to open a second store in China in 2022.
It is reported that Pola released its full-year 2021 financial results earlier this year, which showed that for the fiscal year 2021 (January 1 to December 31, 2021), net sales of Pola Orbis Group increased 1.3% year-on-year to $26.42 billion and gross profit increased 2.5% year-on-year. Its operating profit increased 22.8% year-on-year to $2.5 billion, of which its beauty business accounted for 98% of the group's sales with full-year sales of $26.4 million and another 2% from real estate gains and others.
The company stressed that consumption in the Japanese domestic cosmetics market has declined due to the collapse of inbound demand caused by the epidemic. In this environment, on the one hand, the company is highly dependent on e-commerce in terms of its domestic business in Japan. On the other hand, sales in overseas markets, especially in mainland China, continued to grow.
The profitability of the ultra-high-end brand POLA, which supports 60% of the Group's revenue, was in the spotlight. The brand's annual sales of $15.54 billion, a slight increase of 2.2%. But its profits achieved $2.4 billion, a surge of 49.8%, operating profit margin of 15% with strong performance. As with most other beauty brands, POLA's e-commerce sales rose sharply. Chinese consumers' interest in the POLA brand continues to grow with sales in mainland China up 38% and the brand's sales in China soared by more than 50% on Chine Double 11 Shopping Festival due to the popularity of the BA series.
POLA is looking to further enhance the value of its brand and build a medium- to a long-term customer base with efforts to launch highly functional products in the anti-aging and whitening segments, said the company, which is "very focused on the growth market and travel retail in China."
In recent years, the Chinese cosmetics market has seen a clear trend towards premiumization and it is international brands like Shiseido that have seized this dividend to usher in a major turnaround in the Chinese market. In the first half of 2019, Shiseido's premium skincare brand saw a 40% year-on-year rise in offline sales in China. From 2015 to 2019, Shiseido's China market sales grew from $1.2 billion to nearly $2 billion with the share of China business climbing by 5 percentage points to 19.1%.
Although along with this dividend, POLA, the main brand of the Pola Group, has also achieved some growth in the Chinese market, the overall market size is still very limited. As mentioned above, POLA China's sales in 2018 were only $17.7 million. This is closely related to its conservative channel and marketing strategy.
In the face of the huge potential of the Chinese market, luxury brands such as Chanel and CPB have not hesitated to lower their pride to hire Chinese celebrities as spokespersons. It also fully expanded in e-commerce channels and launched digital marketing. Although being noblewoman brands, their target group has long been not noblewomen, and the consumers who were born between 1990 and 1995 are paying for these products. CPB, for example, its 25-29-year-old consumers accounted for nearly 30%. POLA, on the other hand, has been extremely conservative, and its expansion into the Chinese market in recent years is still dominated by offline physical channels and has not hired a Chinese spokesperson.
Until 2017, POLA only opened a flagship store on Tmall. At present, POLA has two stores on Taobao, POLA's official flagship store mainly sells skincare and cosmetics. POLA's overseas flagship store mainly sells beauty and health products. However, CHAILEEDO noted that POLA this year began to increase the operation of the e-commerce platform. Take B. A high-end product as an example, the product only has 66 monthly sales in 2020. And as of July 5, 2022 (China Standard Time), the highest product is POLA B.A. cleanser, which is priced at $116.8 with a total sales volume of 2000+.
It can be shown that POLA enjoys a strong intention to expand its business in China from the launch of POLA Clear Toner and other moves.
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