Less than two years after becoming the darling of capital, the beauty collection store seems to have ushered in a collective retreat. Recently, it is reported that the beauty collection store brands THE COLORIST Colorist, WOW COLOR and Black Hole have all closed their stores to varying degrees in the near future, and some brands even reported that the proportion of closed stores was as high as one third. Although none of the above three brands have any formal response to this, the reporter from Nanduwan Finance Society learned from the insiders that since the beginning of this year, the three major beauty collection stores have indeed been related to store actions, but some of them were temporarily closed due to the epidemic, and some were permanently closed. At the moment when the epidemic situation is repeated, the beauty collection store is no longer considering scale expansion, but stopping losses in time and optimizing costs.
In addition, many beauty collection stores began to increase the proportion of skin care products, in order to counter the situation that the overall sales of cosmetics have slowed down since the epidemic. The beauty collection store, once thought to be a business model that can break the ceiling of a single-brand beauty store, seems to have reached a somewhat embarrassing situation in less than two years. After the industry "tide" fades, does the collective store model really work?
The early mode was too "heavy", and the store was closed in time to reduce the burden.
Compared with the blitzkrieg when the store opened in the second half of 2020, the closing behavior of beauty collection stores is more like a "quiet" protracted war. At the beginning of July, many consumers suddenly found that THE COLORIST had closed most of the stores in Beijing, and the only one left was in a state of suspension. In fact, in the past year or so, WOW COLOUR and Black Hole, two major collective store brands, have also closed a number of stores and withdrawn from some cities.
The reporter from Nandu Bay Finance Society learned from various brand owners and industry investors that the overall proportion of colorists who were told to close stores in a large area was around 10% ~ 15%. Affected by the epidemic prevention and control policy, Beijing is indeed a city with more closed stores, while others are closed to a small extent. On the whole, some closed stores were completely withdrawn due to the influence of the passenger flow in their shopping malls, but some closed stores were reopened after the local epidemic situation improved and the passenger flow resumed, and some closed stores were adjusted and upgraded.
In addition, according to franchisees, WOW COLOUR has actually been adjusting its store opening strategy since 2021. At present, dozens of stores have been closed, and there are still more than 100 stores that are still open. "It is mainly to close the shops that have problems in the return on investment due to the unsatisfactory site selection in the early stage. Some of them are closed by several shops that a franchisee is responsible for, and they will be closed together." The franchisee said that WOW COLOUR has now reduced the area of the main store to about 150-200 square meters, and is no longer blindly "seeking the big and the perfect" as before.
Black hole, which has a small shop base and focuses on "one city, one store", issued a notice to temporarily close five stores in early April this year, including Harbin, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Shanghai, and Chengdu Chunxi Road Store resumed business. Nanduwan Caishe reporter learned that some of the five closed stores were business adjustments, while others were permanently closed.
But at the same time, the black hole has recently landed new stores in Xi ‘an and Guangzhou. On the whole, the number of black hole stores maintains a relative dynamic balance. At present, there are 11 stores in official website, including 9 cities including Chengdu, Guangzhou, Harbin, Hohhot and Nanjing.
Some investors told Nanduwan Caishe reporter that since the beginning of this year, similar new consumer brands have closed their stores to a certain extent, in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency to the greatest extent, and stop the unprofitable stores in time, thus improving the overall resilience and risk resistance of the business. "Especially this kind of offline beauty collection store, in the early days, in order to pursue high face value, the decoration cost was very high, and it also pursued a large area, which became a common problem in the industry. Now it seems that it is not necessarily the right path."
BA return, the service is to increase the repurchase rate first.
As early as 2020, when the beauty collection store model was the hottest, almost all brands were overweight the layout of offline stores. At that time, the colorist set a goal of opening 500 new stores throughout the year, and WOW COLOUR set a goal of opening 600 stores throughout the year and breaking a thousand in the next year. Many brands are "enclosure" in the core business district of the core city regardless of cost. However, at present, most beauty collection stores have not achieved the original goal of opening stores.
Some investors said that the influencing factor that can’t be ignored at present is that the passenger flow of offline stores is almost halved, especially in the first-tier cities with serious epidemics. Because most of the collective stores are imported brands, the gross profit is not high. In such a big environment, it is particularly important to control the cost, so we can only stop the store in time or slow down. At the same time, in the early period of fierce competition, this model also buried hidden dangers. "In the early stage, in order to pay attention to the external appearance of the store, this led to the lack of’ internal strength’ in this rapidly expanding track, and did not run out of a good service model."
For the collective contraction of beauty collection stores, Wang Qinglin, a senior analyst of Ai Media Consulting, also said that in 2020, most beauty collection stores adopted an expansion strategy. Under this strategy, according to incomplete statistics, more than 80% of comprehensive shopping malls or business districts in large and medium-sized cities have at least one beauty collection store, which dilutes the coverage of single-room collection stores. At the same time, although the styles of beauty collection stores are not exactly the same, most of them adopt large-scale and warehouse layout mode. Too dense collection stores weaken the "online celebrity" scarcity attribute of the original beauty collection stores and reduce consumers’ curiosity about brand stores.
The superposition of various external factors leads to the collective store having to start to explore inward and change its management mode. Nanduwan Caishe reporter found that WOW COLOUR began to gradually abandon the most iconic "light BA (beauty shopping guide)" service model of the original collection store. According to the analysis of some brands, the target groups of collective stores are mostly young, and many of these consumers are still in a state of little knowledge about beauty. In fact, they need BA’s advice and services to help them find products that are more suitable for them. "Up to now, collective stores have begun to find that BA with professional knowledge can be the key to inciting business, which can better enhance customer stickiness and even be more conducive to the construction of a complete membership system."
In addition, collective stores began to pay more attention to the precipitation of private domain traffic, establish more channels for interaction with consumers, and shift more focus to the "service" link of stores. It is understood that the black hole, which has been focusing on big-name products, will hold offline salons, electronic music parties and other activities from time to time in combination with the characteristics of shops in various cities. In order to strengthen consumers’ genuine mind, an independent beauty testing laboratory has been built.
On the whole, a group of beauty shops seem to realize the "thunder" that this business model buried in the early stage of staking, and the actions such as pulling new products and expanding are no longer the key. How to ensure the product strength while maximizing the repurchase rate of consumers and leaving high-value users in limited resources is the focus they need to think about in the next stage.
Increase the proportion of skin care products to increase profits
For this reason, beauty collection stores began to adjust the category structure and increase the proportion of skin care products. Nanduwan Caishe learned from the brand merchants who have cooperated with the colorist that the stores are not only changing new brands, but also generally increasing the proportion of skin care products for stores located in community-based commercial bodies. Because there are many skin care brands in comprehensive large-scale commercial bodies and most of them are international brands, the competitiveness of the stores located in them in the skin care sector will be relatively weak, while the community-based commercial bodies are just the opposite. Therefore, in the eyes of brand owners, colorists can compete differently by adding skin care products to community-based commercial sports stores.
On the other hand, the positioning of WOW COLOUR has gradually changed from the early emphasis on "make-up" to more emphasis on "beauty", and the proportion of skin care categories in stores has increased to 30%. Some insiders told the reporter of Nanduwan Caishe that as early as the end of 2020, the brands of major beauty collection stores began to realize that the skin care products track will usher in higher growth. For collection stores, skin care products are an important part of enhancing the integrity of consumer experience.
According to the relevant data obtained by the reporter of Nanduwan Caishe, from the perspective of cosmetics and Tmall sales since 2020, the sales growth rate of the whole industry has shown a sharp downward trend since the first quarter of 2021. According to the "Beauty and Commercial Industry Tracking Report" issued by CITIC Securities, the total retail sales of Taobao cosmetics in March and April 2022 decreased by 20.3% and 22.5% year-on-year, of which cosmetics decreased by 24.8% and 35.1% respectively. At the same time, the data represented by Tmall makeup and skin care show that the growth rate of skin care products has been much faster than makeup since 2020, and it was not until the first quarter of 2022 that there was a slight overtaking phenomenon.
In fact, whether it is a beauty collection store or a single brand, in the past year, it has become an industry consensus to increase investment in skin care tracks. Take the perfect diary of domestic beauty head brand as an example. In the first quarter of this year, the financial report revealed that the total revenue of skin care brands increased by 68.5% year-on-year to about 180 million yuan, and the proportion of total revenue increased significantly from 7.5% last year to 20.5%. Huang Jinfeng, the founder, chairman and CEO of Yixian E-commerce, once stressed at an internal meeting that the strategic significance of skin care business is to help the company achieve profitability and drive the company’s next stage of growth, which is driven by real brand power and product power.
Generally speaking, the model of beauty collection shop has not reached the end of the road, but it is indeed experiencing a painful period in the industry. Wang Qinglin believes that in the past few years, collective stores have developed too fast and the degree of homogenization is too high, and the industry has quickly entered a relatively saturated state. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic on offline and the rise of live e-commerce, it is promoting the self-adjustment, iteration and elimination of the beauty collection store industry. However, after a period of adjustment, it is expected that some brands that can further explore and enlarge their own advantages and find new profitability will have new room for growth.
Written by Xu Bingqian, reporter of Nandu Bay Finance Society