One of the background colors of the beauty industry is "borrowing".
According to the statistics of the Food and Drug Administration, the number of ordinary cosmetics filed in the country in 2022 will be 1.24 million, and nearly 3,400 new products will be registered and filed every day.
The fierce competition in the market has brought new challenges to the product development and brand departments of beauty brands. In the face of market pressure, some people choose to "cut corners".
Recently, the beauty tool brand Amortals Ermu Grape released a note on Xiaohongshu, saying that its "Ermu Grape Marshmallow Puff" product is suspected of plagiarism, according to the description of Ermu Grape, "In addition to the color, the poster, copywriting, and even the selling points are exactly the same as the Ermu Grape Marshmallow Puff, with a strong Ermu Grape style." ”
In this note, Ermu Grapes briefly describes the R&D process of the "Marshmallow Puff" product and box set launched in 2022, such as how to adjust the material and finally confirm the use of 4mm thicker imported RubyCell material;and the origin of the classic set of "two puffs + concealer brushes" and "two puffs + storage box".
Coincidentally, the new puff products recently launched by a certain brand are highly similar to Ermu grape's "marshmallow puff" from the selling point of the thickened 4mm imported RubyCell material, to the combination form, product poster, and even the operation content of Xiaohongshu.
Although Ermu grape coded the product, some consumers still found that the product referred to in the article was the new product "Orange Persimmon Big Orange Puff" by the British makeup tool brand Real Techniques (RT) through the comparison of brand color and product page detail pictures.
According to official information, RT was founded by British professional makeup artist Sam NIC in 2011, officially settled in China in 2016, and opened RT overseas on Tmall Since 2019, it has been ranked TOP1 in the Tmall beauty tool category import brand all year round. Its most well-known product is the RT Orange Egg, which has its signature beveled plane and uses ultra-fine hole technology.
How does an overseas brand's seasonal new products highly overlap with those launched by a local brand last year?The beauty wave found through combing that RT's new big orange flutter and its suit are only sold on the official *** of domestic platforms such as Tmall and Douyin, and have not been launched on RT's official website and its listed overseas *** such as Amazon USA, ulta, and boots, which can be regarded as a domestic special version.
RT's general distributor and trademark user in Chinese mainland is Yiwei (Shanghai)**
As mentioned at the beginning, as one of the most innovative FMCG industries, some beauty brands have the motivation to "borrow" from existing mature market cases in order to reduce risks and improve the controllability of products and marketing activities.
On the one hand, the rights protection of creative plagiarism is difficult and long-term, and even if it is discovered by the original party, in most cases, it can only get an "apology".On the other hand, the domestic operation team of some overseas brands is not mature, and it is easy to make operational mistakes when choosing to cooperate with the best businessmen.
In February this year, the cutting-edge brand Lifetime Research also issued an announcement saying that its advertising ideas were "1:1 plagiarized" by Unilever's skincare brand Murad. On Murad's Xiaohongshu, Douyin and other platforms, Lifetime Research and Development now has a number of product ideas**From copywriting to camera movement, background** have been "script-level copying", according to Lifetime Research brand, "The relevant ideas and scripts are from our brand department, which is an internal solution." ”
Subsequently, Murad responded to the incident through Xiaohongshu, saying that a company in Hangzhou was responsible for the content, and attributed the matter to the lax brand review.
In addition to the plagiarism of the short **, in April this year, the makeup brand Yanyi issued a statement saying that "the Funnyelves Fangli brand used the original soundtrack in the product ** released by Yanyi on November 30, 2022 in the product ** released by Yanyi on November 30, 2022, and the relevant ** has not been deleted after repeated written reminders from Yanyifang."
Some consumers bluntly said: "The current beauty content is becoming more and more boring, the content of beauty bloggers is becoming more and more similar, and the selling points of beauty products are becoming more and more unified." "It is true that in the era of information flow, the market has higher requirements for the "creativity" of vertical experts and beauty brands.
From the source, under the market operation of the fine division of labor, most brands do not own and do not need to have a complete ** chain, or even a complete product department. However, for most factories, "one product and one party" is not a good business, one party uses more, one side sells more is a sustainable business, research and development is not the focus of the factory, to ensure orders, to ensure supply, stability is the core.
The brand chooses a relatively reliable ODM foundry to ensure the best product capability, and only participates in part of the product, making permutations and combinations in the core selling points, formulas and product appearance, and handing over the remaining polishing part to the factory, focusing on market operation and after-sales.
In September last year, the two-year dispute between the makeup brand Hua Zhizhi and the holdlive brand came to an end, and Hua Zhizhi successfully defended its rights and was compensated 300,000 yuan, becoming another positive example of "original victory" in the beauty industry.
It is foreseeable that, on the one hand, under the high pressure of the market, "creativity" will be more and more likely to crash, on the other hand, the real originality is more and more worthy of being seen and respected by the market.