Text: Yangcheng Evening News, reporter Fu Chang, Sun Mu, intern Cheng Zhuocan.
Nowadays, any industry may face a situation where production capacity is higher than demand, and if we startups want to seek breakthroughs, we must jump into the whirlpool of 'volume' to find patterns and breakthrough points. When asked why he "rushed" into the fiercely competitive domestic beauty track without hesitation, Fu Yiliu, general manager of Guangzhou Yihua Biotechnology, a small and micro enterprise in the beauty industry in Baiyun District, Guangzhou City, said.
Since its establishment in 2020, Yihua Biotech has invested more than one million yuan in R&D, and obtained the first Class II medical device production license in Guangzhou in January 2023, becoming one of the few enterprises in Guangzhou with comprehensive production capacity of skin care, daily chemicals, and medical devices at the same time.
In 2016, coinciding with the first wave of iterations of domestic beauty and the rise of the e-commerce industry, Fu Yiliu resolutely resigned from his bank job and chose to start a business in Baiyun District. As a native of Baiyun, he has his own considerations.
As one of the most important gathering places for the cosmetics industry in China, Baiyun District has a complete beauty industry chain. When we need ingredients, it only takes 15 minutes for them to appear on the table, and it doesn't take more than half an hour at most. He said that Baiyun District has not only introduced the "Meiwan Nine" cosmetics special support policy, but also listed the "beauty and health industry" in the first place of the "6+6" modern industrial cluster, and now Baiyun District has become the first choice for cosmetics manufacturers in the country.
China's cosmetics companies have been facing the problem of 'lack of core', and this 'core' is the development of raw materials: at present, most of the domestic beauty efficacy raw materials still rely on imports. Fu Yiliu said frankly that there are now more than 1,300 cosmetics manufacturers in Baiyun District, and there are countless supporting factories.
In order to solve the problem of "stuck neck", he jumped out of the idea of low-cost competition of general cosmetics processing enterprises, and took innovation as the anchor point to focus on the development of upstream front-end scientific research plates.
Since 2022, Yihua Biotech has established two laboratories, the South China Dental Technology Development Center and the Cosmetics Development Center, and established a joint laboratory with Jiangnan University. In just over three years since its establishment, Yihua Biotech has not only become the seventh company in China to record NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide) raw materials, but also successfully obtained raw material invention patents and made technical breakthroughs in the anti-aging and wrinkle removal sector.
In addition, Yihua Biotech has also cooperated with the Guangdong Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine to conduct preliminary development research on the national first-class protected plant Jinhua tea to explore its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory functions in the fields of beauty cosmetics and oral toothpaste. "At present, we are working hard to apply for Jinhua tea to be included in the list of cosmetic raw materials to empower the formula. Fu Yiliu introduced.
R&D is a long and difficult process, but it is also an important part of the sustainable development of enterprises. Fu Yiliu said that after three years of hard work, the company has now built a basic platform, and will continue to make efforts in market development, talent reserves, new raw material development and the application of new technologies in the product side in the next three years.
Talking about the future, he is full of confidence: "For the development of the industry, we are full of confidence and passion, and we will invest more in research and development in the future, and further strengthen the belief of making the company bigger and stronger." ”