Florasis, founded four years ago, has surpassed 3 billion yuan in revenue, making it the fastest-growing dark horse among new domestic cosmetics brands in recent years. Behind this, the marketing methodology of its founder, Wu Chenglong, accumulated through years of practice, is crucial. But can this methodology endure?

In July 2011, The Beijing News published a story about three elderly men who, over 15 years, planted 140,000 trees to green the Great Wall. Due to a severe drought in 2011, they watched helplessly as large swaths of trees on the mountain nearly died. While they were anxious, they were also swindled out of 300,000 yuan by fraudsters. The initiator of the tree-planting effort, in a fit of anger, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and became paralyzed in bed. The youngest of the elderly men broke eight ribs while transporting water with a tractor... This heart-wrenching story moved Hong Kong actress Karen Mok. On August 18, she appeared for free at a charity sale organized by Pechoin called "Spring Water Repayment" to raise funds for the elderly. The charity sale not only helped the elderly dig wells on the mountain, solving their urgent need, but also made Pechoin successfully break out, with sales surging. In December, Huamantian (real name Wu Chenglong, with Huamantian as his online alias), the operations director of Pechoin's Tmall flagship store, shared on a forum how he planned this event and introduced his "Eight-Step Marketing Method" that increased the store's daily sales from 4,000 yuan to a maximum of 210,000 yuan within three months.

However, some netizens mocked him: "You seem very powerful, spending others' money and using others' resources, aren't you happy? If you really think you're great, go build a brand yourself." Wu Chenglong was also tough. Six years later, in 2017, he created the brand Florasis. Even more impressive, Florasis transformed from a novice to a cosmetics leader in just three years. In 2019, its sales reached 1 billion yuan, and in 2020, it exceeded 3 billion yuan, achieving a nearly vertical growth line. Additionally, activities planned and operated by Florasis attracted praise from CCTV and People's Daily.

So, how did Wu Chenglong orchestrate this miracle from zero to over 3 billion in four years?

The Prequel to Florasis

Wu Chenglong is a post-80s generation. He studied landscape architecture in university and has deep knowledge of Eastern aesthetics, classical gardens, landscape design, flowers, and plants. "Since my university days, I've had a dream: to create a brand that can carry Chinese culture and Eastern aesthetics," Wu said. After graduation, he entered a company doing brand marketing work, serving companies like Gulong Group, Zhonglv Group, Yinxiang Group, and Marie Dalgar.

In 2010, by chance, Wu Chenglong began overseeing the operations of Pechoin's Tmall flagship store, entering the "beauty + e-commerce" field. The "Spring Water Repayment" event mentioned earlier was his first integrated marketing success.

As an expert in integrated marketing, he likes to tell the story of "How to Become Rockefeller's Son-in-Law":

How to turn a farmer's son into the vice president of the World Bank and Rockefeller's son-in-law? First, go to the World Bank and recommend a vice president, introducing him as Rockefeller's son-in-law; the World Bank will surely agree. Then go to Rockefeller and say that this young man is the vice president of the World Bank and wants to marry his daughter; Rockefeller will also agree. Therefore, in his view, the secret to integrated marketing is "build the stage first, then invite the actors." First, use keen insight to discover high-value resources, then use the marketing plan as the "thread" to string together the resources, and then use that plan to persuade the resource holders.

He said, "In the face of resources, you must be like a bloodthirsty wolf, with a keen sense of smell and enough greed; second: always remember two words - win-win!" For example, the "Spring Water Repayment" event used the needs of the tree-planting elderly to secure celebrity endorsements, achieve emotional investment from users, and solve media coverage; he also persuaded Pechoin to embed Tmall's logo in TV ads, in exchange for Tmall advertising resources worth 600,000 yuan; and by hanging banners for Manzi stockings on the Pechoin flagship store, he obtained stockings worth 800,000 yuan as sponsorship gifts for users... Resources were activated, and every participant in the event received tangible benefits.

In terms of promotion and placement, Wu Chenglong also achieved surprising success. Taobao Affiliates were the most cost-effective paid promotion method at the time, with a standard commission of 10%, but Wu Chenglong directly raised the commission to 100%. This meant that affiliates earned as much as they promoted, and they also received free masks worth millions of yuan from the company.

This news immediately caused a stir in the Taobao Affiliate community, and daily transaction volume quickly increased from 5,000 to 60,000 yuan. Wu Chenglong used the wisdom of "attacking the weak rather than the strong" from The Thirty-Six Stratagems to launch saturation attacks on weak points. Wu Chenglong is also a master storyteller, with activities like the "Hand Protection Action" giving hand cream to couriers, the "Amber Plan" seeking Eastern beauty, and "More Beautiful than Huang Yongling" that kept users intrigued... allowing users to participate in each story, complete their emotional accumulation with the brand, and finally fall in love with it. During his four years at the helm of Pechoin's Tmall flagship store, daily sales skyrocketed from 4,000 yuan to 2.1 million yuan.

Feeling he had mastered marketing tactics, Wu Chenglong founded his own planning company in 2014 and took on the task of operating the Skin Secret Tmall flagship store. Under his management, in just three months from August to November, the store's monthly GMV rose from 2.7 million yuan to 15.4 million yuan, and it even entered the top 20 on Tmall's store ranking. Through fierce market competition, Wu Chenglong gradually summarized his "Three Generations of Operations" theory:

  1. Generation 1: Operations as maintenance, i.e., handling a series of store management and maintenance from listing to after-sales;
  2. Generation 2: Operations as promotion, i.e., using tools and platforms like Zhitongche, Drill Show, Taobao Affiliates, and Taobao Trials for marketing;
  3. Generation 3: Operations as marketing, i.e., based on a clear brand and store positioning, comprehensively applying various marketing methods, integrating resources with various marketing plans, making customers more likely to remember or even love the brand.

"Marketing-style operations" is precisely the secret behind Wu Chenglong's successful management of Pechoin and Skin Secret. Marketing-style operations are not about holding events in a rough manner. To maximize results, Wu Chenglong treats the store as a wooden barrel, with DSR (Seller Service Rating System), conversion rate, average order value, repurchase rate, collection rate, and cross-selling rate as the planks, and sales as the water in the barrel.

To ensure a high water level, every plank must be monitored, so he divided personnel with fine division of labor to avoid short boards. In 2014, when Wu Chenglong operated the Skin Secret flagship store, 130 employees were involved in various operations, which was relatively rare at the time. As his capabilities grew, Wu Chenglong's desire to create his own brand became stronger. In July 2016, Hangzhou Yige Enterprise Management Co., Ltd. was established in West Lake, with Wu Chenglong holding 99% of the shares, and he began his brand practice.

Positioning: The Classic Business Magic Weapon

In Wu Chenglong's view, "Whether a brand can grow into a big brand is often determined by its DNA - brand positioning." Wu Chenglong is well-versed in the importance of precise "positioning" and differentiated competition. Early on, a netizen asked Wu Chenglong to recommend introductory books for operations novices, and he recommended "Positioning," "Blue Ocean Strategy," "Competitive Strategy," "The Art of War," and the 4P theory.

In 2017, the global cosmetics market reached $72.5 billion, accounting for 13.18% of overall cosmetics revenue. The US, Japan, and South Korea ranked top three globally with 18.21%, 17.78%, and 15.99% respectively, while China's cosmetics market share was only 9.22%, indicating huge room for growth. Wu Chenglong once said, "The Art of War says: 'Therefore, a skilled commander seeks victory from the situation, not from individual efforts. Thus, he can choose the right people and exploit the situation.' The success or failure of a business war is often decided at the beginning, and the decisive factor is the momentum!"

At that time, among the top 20 cosmetics brands in China by market share, only four were domestic: Marie Dalgar, Hansu, Lanser, and Hanhoo, with a combined market share of no more than 8%. The trend of pursuing natural ingredients and the rise of national aesthetics were major trends in the cosmetics industry. So Wu Chenglong decisively positioned the product category in the blue ocean of "Eastern cosmetics." Before determining the brand positioning, he and his team spent over a year researching a large number of historical documents.

He recalled, "We found that thousands of years ago, ancient Chinese people used natural ingredients like plant flowers and animal fats to adorn their faces; ancient texts from various dynasties also recorded many beauty recipes. We hope to use flower and herbal ingredients to create a brand that nourishes makeup with flowers." In March 2017, the Florasis brand was officially launched, and in August of the same year, it entered Tmall. However, Florasis, positioned as "Eastern cosmetics, nourishing makeup with flowers," needed to let the products speak for themselves to support such category and brand positioning. They applied many Chinese elements innovatively to the brand and products - reliefs, small window lattices, traditional Chinese colors, and then Miao silver, the Ode to the Luo River Goddess, peonies, makeup boxes... These elements all highlight Florasis's "Eastern cosmetics" identity.

And in lipsticks, they replicated the ancient formula of flower dew and rouge; in eyebrow pencils, they used the eyebrow material of snail shell; plus Florasis's flower and plant formulas, which are hormone-free and safe for pregnant women, also tell the story of "nourishing makeup with flowers." "We want to create products that no one has ever seen," to achieve differentiation, Wu Chenglong proposed micro-carving on lipsticks. "There was no supply chain, no technology, no standards, and no one had done it before. From idea to implementation, a series of problems needed to be solved."

Just achieving the perfect micro-carving effect on lipstick texture and hardness took a lot of time. "It's no exaggeration to say that failed products could fill an entire table," the R&D staff lamented. To refine differentiated products, Florasis set no upper limit on product R&D costs. The Lock of Love lipstick alone invested over 10 million yuan in mold opening and formula polishing.

Because they had never raised funds, these initial investments were all Wu Chenglong's own money. Florasis also launched a "User Co-creation" project, inviting over 100,000 users to become product experience officers, participate in testing every product, and provide real feedback on usage experience, which also took considerable time. Time-consuming, costly, and energy-draining, but Wu Chenglong said, "We have to be slow because we need to adjust the skincare formula bit by bit, polish the product design bit by bit, and pass tests layer by layer. So it's very slow." Perfect Diary has over 2,000 products, but Florasis has only a third of that, leading to users urging Florasis to release new products.

Some think this is Florasis's lack of ambition, but according to Wu Chenglong's approach, it seems more deliberate. In the early stages of brand rise, to maximize promotion effects, focusing on creating blockbuster products (rather than following trends with a flood of products) is the only way to break out. As for creating blockbusters, he doesn't choose conventional categories but selects a small and blank category, using his own efforts to expand the category through investment. For example, he turned loose powder from a niche category into a well-known one, then gradually expanded from loose powder and eyebrow pencils to lipsticks and eyeshadows. This again embodies the wisdom of "attacking the weak."

Pricing is also an "art" of positioning. Pricing too low not only reduces profit margins but also makes consumers question product quality; pricing too high will keep most consumers away. Florasis cleverly chose a price vacuum. Take its best-selling Air Setting Powder as an example: international brands like Givenchy, Nars, and Make Up For Ever mainly sell powders above 300 yuan, while domestic brands mostly gather below 150 yuan. Florasis set its price in the 150-300 yuan blank zone.

E-commerce: A Platform for Brand Secondary Development

As a seasoned "e-commerce player," Wu Chenglong has a unique understanding of e-commerce. He does not only view e-commerce as a new sales channel but also as a platform for brand secondary development. Just as he once targeted Taobao Affiliates, Wu Chenglong keenly discovered the huge traffic pool of live streaming. He spent a full year with his team continuously collecting live streaming data, researching major streamers, and finally established a comprehensive list of influencers.

In September 2017, Wu Chenglong offered a high commission of 60%-80% against the industry standard of 20%. Within three months, he invested in over 300 small and medium-sized streamers, KOLs, and UP hosts, but the results did not meet expectations. "In the early days, when Florasis was exploring live streaming, we took some detours. At first, we only treated live streaming as a sales channel, but it didn't achieve the expected results. This made us realize that the '1.0 live streaming sales model' couldn't provide enough imagination space for the brand's long-term development," Wu said.

On Double 11 in 2018, after Li Jiaqi defeated Ma Yun in a live streaming competition, the "Lipstick King" became famous in the beauty circle. This news shocked Wu Chenglong, and almost the moment he heard it, he decided to visit Li Jiaqi in person.

After reaching a "deep binding" with Li Jiaqi, Wu Chenglong began to upgrade Florasis's live streaming model, leveraging the momentum of the "Lipstick King" to "choose people and exploit the situation."

It wasn't easy to persuade the hugely popular Li Jiaqi, but Wu Chenglong is a marketing expert. He successfully intertwined Florasis's ambition with Li Jiaqi's dream, and of course, there was also a substantial share of real money. It is rumored that Florasis gave Li Jiaqi 100% commission, meaning that for a live streaming session, the brand takes no share of sales, all going to Li Jiaqi. This is similar to his previous "million masks for Taobao Affiliates" activity, but this time on a much larger scale. Wu Chenglong is never stingy when it comes to "win-win," and his eye for discovering high-ROI resources is indeed sharp.

In March 2019, Li Jiaqi began promoting Air Setting Powder, and Florasis experienced its first explosive point. In April, Florasis launched the "Flower Hidden Starry Sky Carved Lipstick," and Li Jiaqi continuously created suspense and issued coupons in his live stream. After a month of fermentation, it became a Tmall bestseller, with monthly sales exceeding 5.948 million yuan, a month-on-month increase of 165%.

On September 28, 2019, Li Jiaqi became Florasis's Chief Recommendation Officer. Consulting Li Jiaqi's opinions before product launch became an important part of the cooperation. The "Li Jiaqi + Experience Officer" model built a complete experience chain from influencer recommendation to ordinary user experience.

This not only helps improve product quality but also stops product defects at the experience stage and accumulates good reputation for the company after product launch. Li Jiaqi's relentless traffic generation made Florasis a big winner on Double 11 in 2019, with GMV reaching 220 million yuan that day, ranking second among domestic beauty brands. Tmall data showed that around Double 11, Li Jiaqi's live stream contributed nearly 80% of Florasis's Tmall flagship store total traffic, and over 64% of transaction volume came from Li Jiaqi's live stream.

The huge sales figures and 100% commission led people to say "Florasis is working for Li Jiaqi." But Li Jiaqi is just one step in Wu Chenglong's marketing. Since 2018, Florasis's investment strategy has been: deep binding with Li Jiaqi for sales + celebrity matrix for endorsement + KOL and KOC seeding.

In 2019, "Beauty for 4,000 Years" Ju Jingyi became Florasis's brand ambassador, and that year Florasis also increased KOL and KOC investment on Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili.

In 2020, Florasis only participated in Li Jiaqi's live streams when launching new products and during key consumption cycles, and began to insist on "self-broadcasting." In February 2020, Du Juan became the brand ambassador, and in June, Zhou Shen's new song "Florasis" was officially released, as Florasis continued its "breakout" investment.

So saying Wu Chenglong is working for Li Jiaqi doesn't hold water. Even in 2019, the year of deep binding with Li Jiaqi, his live stream sales never exceeded 20% of Florasis's total sales, and by the first half of 2021, this proportion was only around 5%.

During the Florasis period, Wu Chenglong's marketing-style operations skills were not lost. He integrated ethnic cultural elements with product R&D, activated multiple resources, and played with holiday marketing and brand collaborations.

Take the Miao "Silver" Fire Passing activity as an example: he combined Florasis with Miao girls' education support, national trend going global, intangible cultural heritage beauty display, makeup blockbusters, fashion week, Li Jiaqi, and other elements, and even attracted reports from People's Daily and News Broadcast, making Florasis the center of attention.

Conclusion

As a marketing expert, Wu Chenglong has gathered traffic for Florasis, and the brand's four-year growth is indeed astonishing. However, on Florasis's official flagship store, Weibo, Douyin, and other platforms, there are also many complaints about "eyeshadow clumping, poor spreadability," "old-fashioned color schemes," "marketing with heart, products with feet," "poor quality control, low cost-performance." As a pure e-commerce brand, a good-looking appearance is the catalyst for Florasis's sales surge, but its products mainly rely on OEM factories. The assembly-line products make some users feel they are just paying a high price for packaging, which is clearly detrimental to user repurchase.

And the market trend seems to be changing. According to Haitong Securities, compared to the pre-sale sales of Double 11 in 2020, in 2021, Perfect Diary, Florasis, and One Leaf saw sales decreases of 45%, 30%, and 42% respectively. In the 2021 Tmall cosmetics brand TOP transaction ranking, YSL and Estée Lauder took the first and second places, while Perfect Diary and Florasis ranked fourth and fifth respectively. International brands have also joined the discount army, and cost-effective new domestic brands like Judydoll and COLORKEY are eyeing the market, making Florasis's path ahead no longer smooth.

In fact, quickly launching new products through OEM factories was once the specialty of Korean brands, but those fast-paced Korean brands have now exited the historical stage under homogeneous competition. Florasis cannot ignore this lesson. In 2021, Florasis made a successful debut in the Japanese market, achieving good sales and even attracting imitation by Japanese companies. But after the novelty of packaging fades, product strength, user reviews, user retention and repurchase, and brand reputation remain key for Florasis, which is less than five years old, to defeat international century-old brands.

Source: Lishi Business Review (ID: libusiness)

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