Rejecting the Wild Growth of Beauty Instruments

In 2022, the scale of electronic beauty instruments in China will reach 1.522 billion US dollars, and there are hidden worries behind such a large scale. CHAILEEDO searched for "beauty instrument" on BLACK CAT, and found a total of 1144 complaints. The main problems of the complaints are excessive heavy metal content, low temperature burns and false publicity.

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A few days ago, JD.com released the latest JD.com 618 Consumption New Trends, which showed that Chinese consumers had clearer and more professional needs for skin care and beauty tools, showing a trend of "professionalism of the young", and the year-on-year growth rate of the RF beauty instruments and eye massagers was more than 80%.

According to data from the third-party data platform MarketIDX, the scale of electronic beauty devices in China reached 1.522 billion US dollars in 2022, of which the scale of hair removal instruments reached 716 million US dollars, becoming the main source of growth. Judging from the sales market distribution of Taobao and Tmall in the past year, electronic beauty instruments occupied 88.08% of the market for facial beauty tools.

Looking at the overall Chinese beauty device market, in recent years, the styles and effects of beauty devices have emerged one after another, and the industry standards are imperfect and unsound, resulting in uneven quality and use effects of beauty devices on the market in China.

At present, there are electronic beauty instruments with different looks and functions on the market in China, which can be roughly divided into five categories according to their functions: cleaning, moisturizing, lifting and firming, removing acne and freckles, and shrinking pores; technically, there are mainly four categories: radio frequency, microcurrent, phototherapy and ultrasound.

CHAILEEDO searched for "beauty devices" on Tmall, and clicked on a beauty instrument that cost 477 US dollars and sold more than 700 per month. The product is claimed to increase skin elasticity by 12%, increase skin moisture content by 86%, increase skin gloss by 26%, reduce the number of crow's feet by 33%, reduce skin roughness by 3.5%, and reduce skin dullness by 46% after 28 days of use.

However, on the detail page of the product, CHAILEEDO found that the number of samples of the beauty device was only 60 women aged 28-43 and also that the actual effect of the beauty device may vary depending on the different ways of use and the matching of skin care products.

"Microcurrent can promote skin metabolism, red and blue light technology does have the effect of anti-inflammatory repair, and radio frequency technology does have the effect of stimulating collagen regeneration through heating. However, it is impossible for one device to have multiple functions at the same time such as lifting and firming, anti-wrinkle and anti-aging, etc." A dermatologist said: "Most beauty instruments on the market in China have exaggerated in their promotions, seeing promoting skin metabolism as anti-aging, and exaggerating anti-inflammatory repair as lightening fine lines. These technologies can theoretically achieve preliminary results, but because of the lack of clinical trial data, it is often difficult to show the effect after use.

In fact, in addition to the inability to determine the effect after use, the quality of the beauty instrument has also frequently complained. On the Chinese complaint platform Tmall Complaint, CHAILEEDO searched for "beauty instrument" and found a total of 1144 complaints. The main problems of the complaints could be divided into 3 categories: excessive heavy metal content, low-temperature burns and false publicity. In October 2020, CCTV's Weekly Quality Report showed that among the 10 beauty instruments it tested, 2 products were found to be at risk of low-temperature burns, and 6 products had excessive nickel release.

In 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation of the People's Republic of China also organized state supervision and spot checks on the quality of beauty instruments. Among them, 81 batches of beauty instruments produced by 75 enterprises in 7 provinces (cities) were randomly checked, and 5 batches of products were found to be unqualified, and the unqualified rate of the random inspection was 6.2%.

The quality problems of beauty instruments have been frequently exposed, which has also attracted the attention of Chinese regulatory authorities at the legal level. In March this year, the State Food and Drug Administration of China issued the "Announcement on Adjusting Some Contents of the  Classification Catalog of Medical Devices", which took the lead in clarifying that products such as radio frequency therapeutic devices and radio frequency skin therapeutic devices should be managed as third-class medical devices, and should apply for registration according to the Registration and Filing Management Measures of Medical Devices (Order No. 47 of the State Administration for Market Regulation of the People's Republic of China). From April 1, 2024, China Standard Time, products such as radio frequency therapeutic instruments and radio frequency skin therapeutic instruments shall not be produced, imported or sold without obtaining a Medical Device Registration Certificate in accordance with the law.

This means that there is only a transition period of fewer than 2 years left for the radio frequency therapeutic devices. It should be noted that the third-class medical device is the highest-level medical device in China, and it is also a medical device that must be strictly controlled.

According to Qichacha's data, the number of registered companies related to beauty equipment in China has accelerated since 2014. From 2015 to 2019, a total of 69,000 companies were newly registered, of which 24,000 were registered in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 41.6%. 2019 is the year with the largest number of registrations in the decade, with a 19.4-fold increase in registrations compared to 2010.

The Chinese beauty instrument market, which has grown wildly in recent years, may usher in a new reshuffle under the above-mentioned regulations. Some Chinese industry insiders said that beauty instruments have developed rapidly in recent years, and it is necessary to update and iterate supervision. Strong supervision is definitely the right direction.