Source | Dao Fa Research Institute The signal of the second awakening of "new consumption" is becoming increasingly clear. Queuing to buy Laopu Gold, grabbing Labubu, and drinking Mixue Ice City are true reflections of current domestic consumption hotspots. In the secondary market, investors are debating whether there is a bubble in Hong Kong's new consumption stocks while pushing Pop Mart from new highs to even newer highs. Beyond the capital market, the consumer side is also sending clear positive signals—new consumption is warming up. Each wave of consumption boom is often accompanied by the rise of new brands that challenge industry giants. This trend has already shown signs during this year's Tmall 618 promotion: According to Tmall data, during this year's 618, 260 new brands surpassed industry giants to top their respective trend categories. Swipe up and down to see more Even in the most competitive beauty and personal care tracks, many "dark horse brands" have emerged, including both emerging domestic brands and sub-brands of major groups. Supporting this trend is a vast and vibrant market. "We are optimistic about the Chinese consumer market; the domestic consumer base is large, and e-commerce remains globally leading," Zhao Sheng, E-commerce Director of Unilever's Beauty & Wellbeing division, told the author. "Headquarters believes China is the best soil." But in the same soil, flood irrigation and intensive cultivation yield completely different fruits. Binding with big VCs, aiming at big trends, and rapidly scaling up the business was the typical growth path for past star consumer brands; today's new brands often seize small scenarios, bind with niche audiences, and dig for big opportunities in small businesses. Compared to "China's P&G," these brands prefer to be compared to "China's lululemon." Making small businesses big and big businesses fast is no easy task, especially in today's market environment where consumer decisions are more rational, demands are more diverse, and brand competition is increasingly fierce. So, how can a new brand today seize new audiences and scenarios to rise? After rising, how should it compete with giants ahead and followers behind? The author talked with several representative brands in the beauty and personal care fields. Niche Audience x (Demand Pain Points + Emotional Itch Points) = Potential Hit Product Entering the third consumption era, the Chinese market is unlikely to produce another P&G, but it may produce countless lululemons. lululemon's success represents the rise path of a batch of new brands in the era of demand differentiation: Find the core audience, use new ingredients and new efficacy to meet their diverse needs in different scenarios, and differentiate from competitors. Today's new beauty and personal care brands mostly start along this direction. For example, in the light medical aesthetics track, which has been gaining popularity in recent years, a dark horse brand emerged during this year's Tmall 618—Zhuomeiya. The brand's "Ball PDRN Energy Stick" achieved GMV exceeding 10 million yuan in the first hour of Tmall 618 sales, and reached the full Tmall 618 target in just 15 hours. Zhuomeiya was incubated by the regenerative medicine giant BioRegen, and its products initially targeted the post-operative repair needs of medical aesthetics patients. The surface need of this group is "post-operative redness reduction," but the underlying need is actually "rapid redness reduction." The brand's scientific research team developed the Ball PDRN ingredient, which can take effect quickly to meet the needs of rapid redness reduction and skin stabilization. In addition to short-term efficacy, medical aesthetics enthusiasts are increasingly concerned about long-term anti-aging effects: not just becoming beautiful, but maintaining beauty over time. Zhuomeiya combines Ball PDRN with collagen in its products to simultaneously meet the needs of rapid redness reduction and long-term firming and anti-wrinkle, creating a differentiated advantage. Another example is the oral care track. With the improvement of national health awareness, today's consumers, especially young consumers, are no longer satisfied with basic needs like brushing twice a day and whitening teeth. Different people have different lifestyles, oral problems, and thus completely different needs for toothpaste. The domestic oral care brand Canban has noticed these needs and launched products with different efficacy. Each of its toothpaste tubes is like a label: consumers with smoke stains buy zeolite toothpaste; those with whitening and stain removal needs can buy lysozyme toothpaste; middle-aged and elderly people prefer Chinese herbal ingredients, so Canban specially developed Chinese herbal gum-protecting and tooth-firming toothpaste... By focusing on niche markets one by one, Canban overtook giants in e-commerce share from Q3 2023 to Q1 2024, ranking first. During this year's Tmall 618, two Canban toothpastes entered the top 10 list in the vertical category. In the beauty and personal care track, almost every scenario is a red ocean. For new brands to stand out, they need to put more effort into matching audience needs with products. Canban and Zhuomeiya represent two approaches. One approach is to "go deep" like Canban, breaking a large scenario into multiple small scenarios, and achieving overall brand momentum leap through penetration of niche markets. For example, one of Canban's hit product combinations focuses on the "fresh morning breath, whitening at night" scenario, meeting the needs of office workers for fresh breath during the day and tooth protection and whitening at night. The other approach is to "go broad" like Zhuomeiya, using ingredient and efficacy innovation to meet multiple needs with one product, expanding a small market. The domestic beauty brand Hongzhi discovered that the sunscreen track is growing rapidly, but sunscreen products are often harder to remove than makeup. The market lacked a product with strong cleansing power that could remove makeup and sunscreen in one go while being gentle and non-irritating. So Hongzhi developed the "No Hesitation Cleansing Oil" that can remove 111 sunscreens. During this year's Tmall 618, the brand's main push, the "No Hesitation 2.0" product, can remove 132 sunscreens. Currently, this product surpasses many international brands, ranking 4th in the cleansing oil list. Another example is the body care brand Yujian. The brand's main bath oil product line starts from the concept of "nourishing skin with oil," balancing the cleansing and skincare needs of Eastern women while accompanying consumers with emotional skincare. During this year's Tmall 618, two of Yujian's bath oils entered the top 5 in the vertical category list. It is worth noting that these new brands' hit products not only emphasize ingredients and efficacy but also highlight "emotional value" such as fragrance. Today's consumers not only expect their needs to be noticed but also their emotions to be cared for. In summary, new brands should start from the pain points and emotional itch points of niche audiences, combined with category consumption trends, to successfully create super products with hit potential. IP Collaboration for Water Retention Product Strength Stimulates, Precise Audience Conversion Consumer attention is limited, especially during promotions when countless brands compete on the same stage. This tests both the brand's grasp of content creation and communication rhythm, as well as its ability to operate traffic across the entire domain. Different brands have different growth paths and stages, so their operational strategies during promotions also differ. Not only do consumers have segmented needs, but brand operational needs are also becoming increasingly refined. The author found that this year's "dark horse brands" in beauty and personal care mainly fall into two categories: sub-brands of major groups and domestic brands that grew from content e-commerce returning to Tmall. The Tmall Treasure New Brand IP noticed the differentiated needs of these new brands and launched a "new consumption campaign" with them, providing different strategic support based on each brand's pain points. Sub-brands of major groups often "enter with resources," either with strong B-end scientific research backing or mature team and tactics, but the brand has not yet established a broad and clear brand image recognition on the C-end. The solution is simple: first, use celebrity and industry KOL collaborations to break through across the entire domain, then use refined operations to efficiently drive transactions. For example, Zhuomeiya's parent company BioRegen successfully developed China's first and the world's second artificial skin. The brand needs more polishing of its brand image and breaking through with its brand story. During last year's Double 11, Zhuomeiya, as a new brand, participated in Li Jiaqi's team's variety show "All Girls' Offer." Through this collaboration, Zhuomeiya found a clear brand positioning—"a scientist brand that sincerely listens to advice"—and saw an opportunity to break through. "Li Jiaqi's ability to break through and influence in the beauty circle is unmatched by other platforms or influencers," Changsheng, the e-commerce head of Zhuomeiya, told the author. Therefore, before this year's Tmall 618, Zhuomeiya collaborated with Li Jiaqi to shoot a short film titled "The People Who Made Skin Go to Make Skincare Products." With support from its own channels and the Tmall Treasure New Brand IP's on-site and off-site traffic resources, the short film achieved over 400 million exposures across the internet, strengthening the brand's professional barriers, increasing awareness, and providing a foundation for sales explosion during the promotion. Making a good product for a niche audience is the foundation for a new brand's momentum leap, but the finer the demand, the more precise the audience targeting must be. E-commerce platforms have rich marketing tools and infrastructure. Today's new brands can capture the segmented needs of different audiences from dynamic consumption trends and rise quickly. For example, during communication with the Tmall Treasure New Brand team, NEXXUS, Unilever's high-end hair care brand, found that despite "consumption downgrade," urban white-collar workers and refined moms still have needs for hair care and self-care. Especially among high-quality users represented by 88VIP, the demand for high-end hair care products is even stronger. "Our target audience may have limited time and money spent on themselves in the past, so we hope to solve their hair care troubles through this product and brand communication, and make them feel cared for," said Zhao Sheng, E-commerce Director of Unilever's Beauty & Wellbeing division. Based on this audience insight, NEXXUS developed a new product line for Chinese consumers. The brand officially entered China in February this year. On May 26, after the official announcement of spokesperson Tan Jianci, sales exceeded 5 million yuan in the first hour. The best-selling product was a limited gift box priced at 1005 yuan, inspired by Tan Jianci's birthday on October 5. The brand precisely met the needs of fans in product efficacy, design, pricing, and other details. Now let's look at domestic brands that grew from content e-commerce. These brands usually have advantages in content seeding and live streaming, but consumers often remember the content, not the brand. Therefore, in addition to exposure resources, these brands also need to improve traffic conversion efficiency across the entire domain, accumulate user assets, and then enhance search and repurchase through on-site and off-site operations. In the past, due to non-interoperable links and data between platforms, many brands got stuck at the first step. As platforms open up and collaborations like the "Red Cat Plan" are implemented, the link of "off-site seeding, on-site search" has been fully opened. These brands can more clearly see the user journey across platforms, optimize the entire search-back link, and gain more exposure opportunities. The most direct manifestation of these changes is the growth in sales and return on ad spend. "In the first wave of Tmall 618, our sales increased by 24% year-on-year, and the ROI of core products improved significantly during the entire promotion period," said Yang Jun, sales head of Hongzhi. Yan Hui, e-commerce director of Yujian, revealed that during the entire promotion period, the ROI from the "Red Cat Plan" was around 4, significantly higher than the ROI of a single channel. From 0-1, Compare Strengths From 1-10, Fill Weaknesses At the tactical level, the platform's "new consumption campaign" during this Tmall 618 was "steady accumulation, promotion harvest"—daily sales for water retention, and concentrated conversion during the promotion. This strategy is not new and is not exclusive to new brands. Why did so many "dark horse" brands emerge during this year's Tmall 618? This is related to the platform's strategy over the past year. According to the author's understanding, "supporting the excellent" is the strategic core during this year's Tmall 618 and throughout the year. Under this strategy, at the end of last year, Taobao took the lead in the e-commerce industry to cancel "refund only," and increased investment in the Treasure New Brand IP. Since this year, the Treasure New Brand has cooperated with over 200 brands, exceeding the total number of cooperating brands last year, and the scale will further expand in the second half of the year. The signal behind this strategy is clear—vigorously support new brands that provide quality products and services. The movements of leading e-commerce platforms often reflect trends in the consumer market. In the new consumption boom seven or eight years ago, brands focused on expansion and marketing; in the past two years, brands collectively shifted to price wars. Although seemingly opposite, the essence of merchants chasing short-term traffic is the same. True "new consumption" should be new in products, services, and experiences. Growth from pure traffic play is not healthy for consumers, brands, or platforms. Guiding brands from competing on traffic to competing on quality, meeting the consumption needs of new consumer groups for innovative and quality products, and promoting the long-term healthy development of the platform and the entire industry are the original intentions of the platform's "new consumption campaign" to support potential and quality new brands. Under the major trend of consumption stratification and the rise of segmented demands, brands in different tracks, types, and growth stages face completely different pain points. The Treasure New Brand IP has developed tailored solutions for these differences. For example, in the Tmall beauty track, trends of new ingredients, high efficacy, and light medical aesthetics are becoming more prominent, and a batch of new brands incubated by biopharmaceutical companies are growing rapidly. However, these tech companies often face the problem of "good wine needs no bush" when incubating brands from 0-1, lacking audience insight experience, not knowing how to build brand image or break through. Zhuomeiya is a representative example. For these brands, the Treasure New Brand will help them through the cold start stage through live streaming/seeding/traffic, and then cooperate with on-site and off-site IP matrix to amplify the effect of brand celebrity marketing events, efficiently drive transactions, and help brands achieve breakthroughs in both voice and sales. On the other hand, domestic beauty and personal care brands that grew from content e-commerce have already achieved top positions in certain segmented trend categories with one or two hit products, but they don't know how to cross the threshold of channel brands to become full-domain brands. These brands each have their strengths, such as NEXXUS with Unilever's mature tactics, and Hongzhi, Yujian, etc., who are well-versed in content seeding. But from 0-1, it's about how long your strengths are; from 1-10, it's about who has fewer weaknesses. At this stage, brand image, product innovation capability, and audience operation capabilities across different channels often need to develop simultaneously. For these brands, the core strategy of the Treasure New Brand is to amplify the brand's content advantages on Tmall, while working with them to improve shelf operation capabilities, enhance search and repurchase, thereby strengthening brand mindshare, transitioning from hit products to major categories, and from product operation to audience operation. This process may even reversely drive brand organizational upgrades. Multiple interviewed brands mentioned that they recently reorganized/expanded their Tmall operation teams. Online business is moving towards full-domain, and leveraging the advantages of various platforms and complementing each other is the consensus of these new brands. Under this consensus, Tmall's advantage lies in short-term new product explosion and long-term brand mindshare cultivation. "Tmall or the Taobao system is still the 'first official website' for most brands," Changsheng told the author. On this point, the demands of brands and platforms are aligned—brands hope to reach more audiences and achieve brand leap; with the rise of new consumer groups, platforms also hope more new brands can meet the increasingly diverse consumption needs of consumers. Just as platforms have their own advantages, so do brands. The Tmall Treasure New Brand team told the author that to help potential new brands achieve growth, Tmall will launch a new brand evaluation model, using five dimensions—brand strength, user strength, transaction strength, content strength, and traffic strength—to quickly locate brand problems and solve stage-specific issues for new brands. Analyst Commentary The Treasure New Brand team told the author that in addition to 1v1 services for unicorn brands, the platform will also provide "five-force model" diagnostic opportunities for top new brands and potential track brands, helping more treasure new brands grow into mature brands, or even leading brands. This means that Treasure New Brand is not just about binding a batch of future leading brands, but about long-term, continuous discovery of new brands. In this era full of uncertainty, "long-termism" is a luxury for both brands and platforms. 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