Author: Hai Rong
The incursion competition of false eyelashes starts with the type.
The false eyelashes that swept the country more than ten years ago are handmade false eyelashes 216 in Taiwan, China, with the advantage of using cotton stems at the root of the eyelashes, which are soft to the touch and cheap, even in 2023, you can buy a box for only two or three yuan.
The disadvantages of this kind of false eyelashes are also obvious, because they do not use the sharpening process, they look very fake, cheaper and inferior products, and even stick to the eyes and fall around, but due to the single option of the year, everyone from celebrities to the general public are using it. Now, 216 false eyelashes have basically withdrawn from the Chinese makeup table and have become consumables used by novice makeup artists to practice.
In recent years, consumers have paid more attention to eye products, and false eyelashes have surpassed lip makeup to sell more than expected.
At this time, manufacturers spent more effort on research and development, at first the type of false eyelashes was only referred to by letters, such as A-type, V-shaped, Y-shaped eyelashes, and later consumers reacted that a whole shape of false eyelashes was troublesome to wear, so there was a single tuft of eyelashes with fairy hair, sandwich and fishtail, such as the boxed false eyelashes developed by the brand Princess Yue'er, which integrates a variety of single tufted eyelashes, which has a good reputation among consumers, forming a word-of-mouth marketing that everyone has passed on.
The recent popular false eyelashes, to belong to the white deer with red Yue Tong magnetic false eyelashes, it only has two small pieces up and down, no glue, simple operation, merchants advertise that only a small clip can be worn in one second, fool-style operation to save makeup time. However, consumers did not buy it, and a large number of netizens said that the operation in place would still lead to falling off.
At present, consumers' requirements for false eyelashes are very complex, not only simple, fast and easy to operate, but also because the daily replacement loss is too high, and the style must continue to evolve with the change of makeup.
For example, Xiaoyi, an offline consumer, gave up this makeup process and switched to contact lenses because the technical operation of false eyelash paste was too difficult, "I feel that it is too difficult to use, and there is no need to apply false eyelashes".
Consumers' high requirements for false eyelash technology have made manufacturers involuted in the material of false eyelashes, from animal hair such as mink hair and rabbit hair to chemical artificial fiber wool such as PBT and PET, as well as silk protein hair, most manufacturers will use artificial fiber wool in order to save costs.
When false eyelashes reach the sales field, the competition in brand marketing is also fierce.
E-commerce platform 1688, **Pinduoduo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, etc. have emerged successively, further promoting the involution of false eyelashes**, a single box of false eyelashes** is lower, and the natural false eyelashes occupy the first place in the sales of shopping**, but the unit price is only about 6 yuan. On the Xiaohongshu platform, consumers can spend 3$9 under a single box of three rows of false eyelashes.
Overseas platforms such as Amazon and AliExpress are constantly emerging, and false eyelash merchants are also targeting overseas. Offline false eyelash sales have decreased, and with the east wind of cross-border e-commerce, Wang Guoqing, a young man from Shandong after the 90s, aims at the Amazon market, and the daily turnover is six or seven thousand US dollars.
In 2021, as a large number of domestic false eyelash merchants collectively began to turn to cross-border e-commerce, false eyelashes quickly rolled abroad, which made small businesses like Wang Guoqing feel pressure, because it was a small business, and the advertising of 100 US dollars a day could not be exchanged for the corresponding sales, so he had to switch to Duoduo cross-border e-commerce, and a cat's eye-shaped false eyelashes developed by the team were sold for more than two months, totaling more than 30,000 orders. Now, their company has 2,000 orders per day, accounting for 75%-80% of the company's total business volume.
Zhang Chuanyu, who is also from Shandong, put the main battlefield on AliExpress, and created the fadvan brand, and in 2020, the company will transform and focus on false eyelashes, focusing on the Brazilian market, and the marketing volume of a single store in the Brazilian market in 2021 will exceed 1.6 million US dollars in the first year.
Zhang Chuanyu believes that his biggest advantage is that he can keep up with consumer demand, and their team has studied the data of the platform, calculated user preferences, and improved the original "flowering" eyelashes to an exaggerated and natural false eyelash style, which is more in line with the aesthetics of Brazilian women, and this product is currently sold for $400,000 a year.
Wang Guoqing's false eyelash craft was introduced by his parents and learned Xi in Pingdu City, Shandong, and Zhang Chuanyu himself is a Pingdu person.
From domestic to foreign countries, the false eyelash market is very strong, but it is always inseparable from Pingdu City, Shandong Province
Shandong PingduThree-sevenths of the world's false eyelashes
Pingdu City, Shandong Province, is the false eyelash capital of China.
For every 10 pairs of false eyelashes consumed by women around the world, seven are from Pingdu.
According to the official data of Pingdu City, the current output value of false eyelashes in Pingdu City has reached 10 billion yuan.
The development of the Pingdu eyelash industry can be traced back to the eighties of the last century, when many Koreans did business in Shandong, and Korean-funded enterprises also began to set up eyelash factories in Qingdao Xi.
The prototype of the eyelashes on a flat vacation is there, and the focus is on how to sell things, and the local residents take stupid methods, manually run the market, carry the false eyelashes with them in large bags and small packages, and carry the human flesh to all parts of the country.
Gao Shanmin clearly remembers that he relied on false eyelashes, and his relatives' one-year income soared to 300,000 yuan.
The high profits aroused the morale of the locals, and the false eyelash factory sprung up and joined together in Pingdu for a few years, bringing huge profits to the local area.
The most specific birthplace of flat holiday eyelashes is located in Changle Town, Daze Mountain, Pingdu City, where the legendary flat holiday eyelashes are worn by the hands of local women.
But at the beginning, the shortcomings of flat eyelashes were also obvious, only handmade, rough appearance, and immature craftsmanship. Therefore, after making a profit, the first generation of flat eyelash bosses sent their employees to Europe, America, Japan and South Korea to learn art, and in the following years, they gathered the essence of false eyelash craftsmanship from all over the world, and flat vacation eyelashes gradually became of good quality and diverse styles.
Decades of rapid development have made the flat eyelash industry form a huge scale, with 2,165 families engaged in the false eyelash industry, driving more than 50,000 people to work. It is unimaginable to outsiders that the small eyelash factories in Pingdu actually support most of the world's false eyelash sales.
In Pingdu, most of the false eyelash factories are family-run workshops, and usually men are responsible for building the outreach market of production and sales channels, while women are generally responsible for the production of false eyelash products.
Ms. Fan has been working as a false eyelash worker for 20 years, because this job is close to home, which is convenient for picking up and dropping off children and taking care of the family. Most of the workers in Pingdu entered the false eyelash industry after starting a family.
When outsiders walk into Pingdu and sit in a taxi from a local, they have no intention of asking about the development of the false eyelash industry, and they will get an answer from relatives and acquaintances who are false eyelash practitioners.
Lao Cui, a taxi driver, said that his cousin started building a factory from the beginning, learned from acquaintances Xi found goods and recruited people, and slowly formed a team of 20 people, all of which was facilitated by the role of mutual help from fellow villagers.
In terms of false eyelash products, Pingdu has also developed a complete industrial chain.
In 2022 alone, 800 new companies will be added to the production, processing, and sales of false eyelashes.
The false eyelash production chain is long, and a pair of false eyelashes of about two centimeters needs to go through 9 steps of "pressing, merging, on-line, cutting, rolling, shaping, stripping, supporting, and packaging" before it can leave the factory.
Handmade false eyelashes are more elaborate, while mechanically produced false eyelashes are single and rigid.
Each female worker at the Pingdu factory is responsible for a different process. For example, a female worker can complete five or six thousand pairs of false eyelashes by working 8 hours a day, and in order to improve efficiency, one process is often completed before the next one.
When consumer demand changes with market trends, flat eyelashes need to adjust the product program in time, but due to the different styles and lengths of false eyelashes, the methods of "fitting hair" and "styling" are also different.
Under a series of objective conditions, the flat eyelash factory is highly dependent on labor.
In addition, the semi-finished products, finished products, glues, cartons, packaging bags and other products of flat eyelashes are all produced by enterprises, and the division of labor of the false eyelash industry is more detailed, and the supporting industries are gradually complete.
How hot is the eyelash market on weekdays?
It can be said that in 2019, the sales of false eyelashes were more than 10,000, which can reach the top three in the country, but now this number is no longer surprising.
As a large number of young people enter the flat holiday eyelash industry, combined with the new background of e-commerce and cross-sea, merchants have also taken the initiative to invest in new business models such as live broadcasting. Under the wave of e-commerce, young bosses who know more about "Generation Z" have joined e-commerce, while established family-run workshops have been marginalized.
In some false eyelashes** live broadcast rooms, you can often hear such words: "The No. 1 link is more warped than the No. 2 link, and it will be a little more charming, Barbie eyes, 24."$9. ”
Flat holiday eyelashes, can't break into the high-end circle?
Now, the biggest embarrassment of flat lashes is the lack of well-known brands.
Due to the long link in the eyelash industry, a skilled worker in the complex process needs to be trained for two months to get started, but there are almost no all-round workers.
Pingdu's false eyelash factory cannot make all kinds of false eyelashes, and the false eyelash standards of each factory are different, which is difficult to control in terms of production conditions and quality, and there is no way to form a big brand.
Most factories still make OEM products to make profits, and the income of a false eyelash product is only a few cents.
If you can't accumulate stable and long-term customers, you can't raise prices, you can't get high added value, you can only continue to be a foundry, and the false eyelash factory without a brand falls into a vicious circle.
Therefore, in the domestic market, only two larger eyelash brands have been broken out at present.
A company for Wosado Yuetong, which has recently become popular with magnetic false eyelashes, has received an investment of 300 million yuan under the investment of Sequoia China Seeds**, Hillhouse Venture Capital, and Dachen Venture Capital, and the main product is magnetic false eyelashes that are easy to remove and remove.
The other is Mlendiary Milan Diary, which was founded in 2020, and its fist product is the "Flash Joint" series of false eyelashes, which was led by Frees Capital and followed by Shengjing Jiacheng, completing a Series A investment of more than tens of millions of yuan.
The operation of these two brands is biased towards offline, trying to educate consumers about beauty in beauty collection stores, and shorten the link between products and consumers in beauty salons.
However, the popularity of the two has never been out of the circle, and compared with Princess Yue'er and Menglu, who are famous by word of mouth, their influence among consumers is slightly weaker.
In the overseas market, Pingfu eyelashes are unbeatable in sales, although they can earn a certain profit, they still mainly rely on OEM sales, and it is difficult to form a well-known brand.
However, Pingdu eyelashes have initially tasted the sweetness of the high-end market, and the false eyelashes sold to overseas high-end salons need to be combined with professional glue and the craftsmanship of local technicians, charging about 200 US dollars, and the profit margin of salon-grade false eyelashes produced by Pingdu factory can even reach 100%.
It is a pity that it is still difficult for flat eyelashes to enter the high-end market, such as L'Oreal, MAC and other large international beauty companies' false eyelash products, most of which come from Java, Indonesia, and the companies that provide false eyelashes to the British royal family are also in Indonesia.
As an artificially intensive industry, the industry barriers are not high, the products are easy to homogenize, and the industrial chain is difficult to upgrade, making it difficult to help the growth of high-quality brands. People can only remember the eyelashes on weekdays, but they can't find the big brands that are familiar to them.
In order to break the situation, the current flat holiday eyelashes are in a period of industrial transformation. The local government has also provided support in terms of policies, investing 3 billion yuan to create a "beautiful economic industrial park", integrating e-commerce, sales, logistics, branding, and research and development, and began to cultivate the false eyelash industry belt. In terms of target consumers, it will vigorously develop the "she economy" and "Generation Z" groups, subdivide new industrial tracks, and develop cross-border e-commerce.