Author |Chaotian pepper.
Title Picture |Visual China.
Cover Screenshot of the Refa commercial.
What used to be an expensive beauty artifact of one or two thousand yuan is now only 100 yuan.
Some time ago, the outdated Internet celebrity refa suddenly returned to people's attention with a strange attitude. There is no other reason, a few years ago, I had to ask someone to spend thousands of yuan from Japan's ** beauty artifact, but now it has fallen to the dust, and ** is as low as 100 yuan. Even in the brand's official channels, this ** is equivalent to a three-fold discount.
At the same time, the "face washing device" and "** stick", which were once known as the "beauty triumvirate" with REFA, have also fallen to the altar - one has been nominated as a "sensitive skin maker" all year round, and the other has long been mass-produced by Yiwu to sell only 9$9 giveaway.
The face-slimming artifact that costs thousands of yuan has been knocked down by Chinese factories. (Screenshot).
What is worse than the collective becoming the "tears of the times" is that these "tears" are still the kind that are not very valuable.
Relying on the pink tax, the "refa" made a lot of money.
Girls who have bought refa must still remember the pervasive trumpet-style marketing that started seven or eight years ago.
In those days, TV was enjoying the last rays of the sunset, the grass social platform had not yet become the mainstream, short** was still a niche track, and the major Internet celebrity bloggers were still using the slightly primitive way of long**, to a certain extent, to grasp the Internet celebrity and big V, it was about equivalent to grasping the Internet discourse power at that time.
It is in this context that Refa became popular, celebrities, Internet celebrities, big Vs and even TV variety shows, almost every channel that can be implanted, there is a figure of REFA. REFA's marketing strategy, which focuses on a saturation attack, is not clever, but it is quite effective.
The pervasive REFA, like a frequent "variety show", swipes the screen with a model worker-like attitude, and has laid a "thinking steel seal" in the minds of consumers. "Refa can slim down the face", just like "receiving gifts only for brain platinum", is deeply engraved in the minds of consumers.
As a former "die-hard fan", Aki was captured by the overwhelming marketing at the time, "I bought it in April 2018, and I was really carried away by marketing at that time, and several bloggers who followed me were recommending it, and I scoffed at it when I first brushed it, and I was skeptical when I swiped it for the fifth time, and when I brushed it for the tenth time, it was already in the state of 'don't stop me'."
AKI said that in 2018, REFA's ** has been reduced a lot, when the official price was close to 2000 yuan, but it has bid farewell to the earlier premium myth, ** generally only needs more than 1000 yuan, "I still thought I was **, now looking back, pure resentment."
In 2018, REFA** has already begun to "discount". (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
Of course, for REFA's audience, spending four figures on a beauty device may not be their primary concern, but the effect is the key.
If you take a closer look at the refa at hand, it's hard to believe how much of this thing is worth buying at a premium.
The design of the refa is very simple, the most classic style is a handle plus two rollers, and all the other product styles are just variations of this basic form, and the main effect has always been the "lifting and firming" claimed to the outside world. At this point, Refa's slogan is very confident - "It only takes 3 minutes a day to lift the face upwards and restore firmness".
But after careful consideration, this method of purely relying on roller physics to lift does not seem to be much different from the cow bone scraping board sold on the roadside. This leads to REFA's core technology and biggest joke - "microcurrent": according to REFA, this is the same microcurrent as human bioelectricity, which can "stimulate skin cells, improve metabolism, and promote collagen production".
In addition, REFA's charging method is solar charging done under daily light, which makes people feel that "REFA has something". In addition, Aki also mentioned a trick that seemed cool at the time to distinguish between real and fake Refa, "It is to see if Refa's head can slide the phone screen, but now, there is actually no technical content, after all, the touch screen pen can also do it."
This is indeed the case. Some bloggers once dismantled the refa, and it turned out that it was a solar panel and a few wires inside, and the internal structure maintained the same "minimalist style" as the exterior design. The so-called microcurrent is not as large as the current generated by the mobile phone when it is turned on, and its actual efficacy should also be a question mark.
Even earlier in 2016, some bloggers complained about Refa as the most useless beauty device they had ever bought, and there were many users with similar views.
In 2016, some users complained. (Screenshot of Weibo).
However, some people believe that "refa is useful, but you should keep using it", while others say that using refa requires massage techniques. This turns the debate about the usefulness of the refa into a "free mind". After all, if a user wants to prove that refa is useless, he must use it consistently before he can speak, and there are not many people who can use it on a daily basis and cooperate with it.
Aki was noncommittal about this, "I also fished for three days and dried nets for two days, and there was really no particularly obvious effect on my face, and then I sent it to a friend because I was too heavy to move."
If I have to say, compared to the core technology "microcurrent", which is difficult to verify, the real "core technology" of REFA may be design and marketing.
According to Opanlaw, REFA's parent company, MTG, has filed 15 IP and competition lawsuits in China, all of which were over design patent infringement lawsuits. At the same time, according to the data of the national intellectual property public service network, 60% of the 303 patents owned by MTG are appearance patents.
Before the founder Panasonic established MTG, he worked as a second-hand car dealer, and also sold health care products and ceramics. After MTG was established in 1996, the flagship product launched was the foot warmer, which has been tepid, and has also faced large-scale product recalls due to quality problems. It wasn't until 2009 that MTG finally became popular with the REFA beauty device.
Appearance is the main force of MTG's patent application. (Picture: Screenshot of patent documents).
As another major "core technology" of REFA, MTG also spends a lot of money, from 2016 to 2020 in just four years, the annual investment has increased from 580.2 billion yuan increased to 779.2 billion yuan.
Under the miracle of vigorous efforts, the marketing effect is also quite significant.
According to MTG's prospectus, in 2017, MTG's overseas sales, including the Chinese market, accounted for more than a quarter of the total, while domestic e-commerce platforms contributed nearly half of overseas sales. At the same time, REFA has also opened up a number of production lines in the Nagoya production base in Japan for sales on domestic e-commerce platforms.
If we say that the collapse of REFA is half because its effect is really difficult to verify, and the user's reputation is really not good, let alone repurchase;
The other half of the reason may be attributed to marketing failure.
With the development of social networking, the voices of "amateurs" have begun to be heard, and the right to speak on the Internet is no longer held by a few Internet celebrities and big Vs. And consumers who have been repeatedly deceived into "killing" by soft marketing have gradually clarified the trickiness and began to be wary of the so-called "sincere sharing" on the Internet.
Of course, in the end, it was the product that gave REFA a fatal blow - on August 3, 2020, the Shenzhen Consumer Council released a comparative test of beauty device products, and found that REFA's heavy metal nickel content exceeded the standard by 33 times.
So far, REFA's keyword has completed the transformation from "face slimming artifact" to "IQ tax", and its reputation and sales have plummeted at the same time.
According to Jiemian News, a consumer who bought REFA in November 2022 said that he bought a product produced in January 2018. The inventory that has not been cleared for five years has caused today's REFA** to take a big dive.
REFA's inventory for 2018 has not been cleared by the end of 2022. (Figure Interface News).
It is indeed embarrassing that the once valuable Internet celebrity items have fallen into the situation of "jumping off the building for sale", but this does not mean that this category will disappear.
On the contrary, the "refa" never left.
Expensive beauty device, is it really better to use?
The rout of REFA itself is the main reason, but it is also inseparable from the changes in the market.
The success of REFA has made other Japanese manufacturers and domestic merchants see business opportunities, and they have begun to focus on the beauty device market. According to data from Zhiyan Consulting, in 2021, when REFA has collapsed, the market size of China's home beauty instrument market has approached 10 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 30%. This year's "6.18" and "Double 11", there are not a few brands with single-day sales exceeding 100 million yuan.
The players who came from behind are more involuted in terms of function, marketing or **.
From the perspective of efficacy, the technologies used by latecomers are mostly focused on laser, intense pulsed light, radio frequency technology, etc., focusing on "wrinkle removal" and "anti-aging", each of which looks more technological than REFA.
At the same time, in terms of marketing, later beauty device players also have a better understanding of the characteristics of their audiences, and most of them position themselves as "cinema technology miniaturization", striving to create the effect that consumers can do medical beauty at home. At the same time, the aliases of the product are also more confusing, "collagen cannon", "big iron" and "small purple bullet", each of which looks like an "anti-aging weapon".
Lila once rented a fractional laser beauty device, which is also known as the "slap machine", and its core selling point is that it allows users to simulate non-ablative fractional lasers at home**. The actual effect is unknown, but the experience is very reductive, "it hurts so much that I grin," says Lila.
A single rental**240 yuan, focusing on a "medical beauty replacement". (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
The implantation scene of another domestic Internet celebrity beauty instrument brand in "Riding the Wind 2023" is that the sisters are using the product to "play grid" skin care in the rehearsal space. No matter the name of the product or the operation method of "playing grid" skin care, it is the same as the medical beauty and anti-aging project "ultrasound gun".
Compared with REFA, the technological content of these new beauty device brands looks much taller. However, in fact, the effectiveness of these new beauty devices is still difficult to be systematically and scientifically verified. In 2020, Little Wolf used a beauty device of a certain expensive brand in Japan for two months, "This one has red and blue light and radio frequency, I used it every other day, and after using it for two months, I did feel that my face was more transparent, and I didn't find other effects."
AKI, who abandoned REFA, spent more than 2,000 yuan to buy a facepump that also focuses on "microcurrent".
The ** of 2,000 yuan has now dropped to less than 700 yuan. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
This one has three gears, as well as red light skin rejuvenation, the effect is indeed more intuitive than REFA, but the price is also more painful, the maximum gear can be electric to the corner of people's mouths twitch, every time I use it, my roommate says that I am Nicholas Zhao Si. ”
Even though the experience is so restored, AKI also said that even this beauty device with visible effects is "disposable". If you don't use it for a day, it will immediately return to its original shape, and it will not be able to really achieve the effect of tightening and slimming your face at all.
Because of the main "anti-aging" and become the most popular beauty instrument of the radio frequency instrument, the unit price of its products ranges from 2,000 yuan to tens of thousands of yuan.
Moreover, the cost of RF brands is not only the instrument itself. To use the instrument, it is often necessary to match the gel or ** of the product, and the full set of use, **is not much more affordable than going to the offline medical beauty in person.
The brand's customer service said that 80g of gel can be used for 1-2 months. (Photo: Tmall***.)
More realistically, the effect is not always proportional to **.
According to the "China Medical News", Yang Rongya, director of the Seventh Medical Center of the Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital, once said, "Radio frequency is penetrating, and the power and energy of radio frequency home beauty equipment are much lower than those of large medical equipment, and only through clinical trials can we confirm whether the product really has its claimed effect."
Some beauty devices do have an effect. The evaluation blogger "Daddy Evaluation" has done a follow-up evaluation of several beauty instruments on the market, and after observing and comparing facial wrinkles and elasticity, it was found that some volunteers did improve their state to a certain extent after using the beauty instrument.
The effect needs to be visible under the observation of precision instruments. (Figure @老爸测评).
However, there are not a few manufacturers who fish in troubled waters, which makes the quality of RF instruments uneven.
In 2021, China State Grid and the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine carried out comparative tests on 8 radio frequency home beauty instruments, one of which had a maximum temperature of 63 when used7. There is a greater risk of burns;In July 2022, due to the potential safety hazard of burns in the product, a brand recalled more than 180,000 home RF beauty devicesComplaints such as "** burns", "cracks in the radio frequency head" and "radio frequency beauty device does not conduct heat" are not uncommon on the black cat complaint platform.
Some bloggers pointed out that RF instruments are mixed. (Screenshot of Weibo).
Public data shows that there are 8Of the 40,000 beauty instrument-related enterprises, more than half of them have been established for less than 3 years, and many of them are foundries. The beauty instrument catalogues and ** provided by many manufacturers show that the OEM OEM can be as low as 100-300 yuan.
The OEM beauty device will roll out of a new low.
The low price of the OEM manufacturer is very intuitive to draw a fairly low upper limit for the cost of beauty instruments.
You know, the beauty instrument market that is beginning to approach saturation, in the case of function and marketing can not open too big a gap, this year has begun to fight the first war, merchants not only cut prices sharply, but also began to "buy one get n free", all kinds of price reduction measures, enough to explain the profit margin.
Refa, which seems to have been eliminated for a long time, has never left, but has changed to a more high-end shell.
An era, an era of "refa".
Sooner or later, however, the years of wild growth will come to an end.
In 2022, the State Food and Drug Administration announced the adjustment of part of the "Classification Catalogue of Medical Devices". Among them, the announcement requires that from April 1, 2024, radio frequency instruments and radio frequency instruments shall not be produced, imported and sold without obtaining a medical device registration certificate in accordance with the law.
That is to say, there are less than five months to go, and those beauty devices that have not gotten the "machine number" will be reduced to "white label small household appliances" in the de facto sense.
At the same time, the main competitor of home beauty instruments, medical beauty, has also begun to fight a first-class war in the past two years, with ultraphotons as low as 199 yuan and Thermage at 5,000 yuan beginning to run rampant in the medical beauty market.
In this context, 2024 may really become a watershed for home beauty devices.
However, in fact, at the end of the day, there is a discussion about beauty devices every year. Every time the "refa" is proven to be an IQ tax, the attitude of consumers is to regret the mistake, but after that, people's attitude is still "know it, buy it next time".
Refa is indeed mushy, but the business of beauty devices will never be mushy. As long as anxiety about aging and appearance remains, there will always be a market for "refa".
After all, there is a generational "refa" for a generation.
Proofreader: Lai Xiaoni.
Operation: Lu Zirui.
Typesetting: Yang Fang.