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"S is thin, M is beautiful, L is rotten, XL is rotten, and XXL is rotten." There is also a small line on the size table, "Only for girls aged 18-35, please consult customer service first according to your figure". Recently, a suggested size table for women’s wear in RT Mart shopping malls caused controversy. In response, its official Weibo statement said that improper wording in publicity materials would strengthen internal management to ensure that such incidents would not happen again.

To be honest, I thought it was a spoof at first. I can’t figure out how a publicity board full of malice towards women got green light all the way to the wall. Wen Wenjun, who thinks that playing homophonic terrier is very humorous, used just two lines to account for all the discrimination against women’s age, gender and figure, and there is really no one.

According to the clothing size, the female compatriots, who account for three fifths of all women, are all in the queue of "worse than bad". Also coincides with the "Double Eleven" period, so the IQ and EQ are not online, offending the gold owners and sisters who are the main force of "buy buy Buy". I’m afraid this business will really be "broken up".

It’s 2020, but the mainstream aesthetic of women still stays on the long legs with black silk. Every once in a while, there are female stars who are hung up on hot search because of their "expansion". It seems that women can only be equated with self-discipline if they are white, young and thin, chopsticks legs, A4 waist and paper people.

Even actress Gong Li, who was named "Gong Huang" by the domestic entertainment circle, was not spared. In August this year, a street photo of Gong Li and her husband caused a heated discussion among netizens. In the photo, Gong Huang wore a pink floral dress, and the whole person looked natural and graceful. However, in the netizen’s message, the words "the waist of the bucket is full of fat, and the unicorn arm is raised" are still very heartfelt.

Top female artists who are over 50 years old and internationally renowned have to be humiliated by their bodies. It also makes female compatriots realize that in the world ruled by deformed aesthetics, women never seem to escape the fate of being examined, evaluated and humiliated by their bodies.

A female star in the spotlight should take a scale with her when eating a meal. If you eat a little fat, you will be ridiculed by the whole network. Some people argue that the harshness of actresses’ figure has industry particularity, because they belong to the representatives of traffic and attention. You can think about it carefully. Is being fat or thin the only criterion to judge an artist’s quality? Don’t you see, how many red flowers are there, and there is a good skin, but I don’t know where the face value is higher than acting. After many years of debut, acting will only be silly and sweet.

Not only stars, but also ordinary women are kidnapped by the abnormal aesthetic of "one fat destroys everything", which is both a victim and a perpetrator. Under the single aesthetic effect of being thin and young, the standard of beauty becomes thin and thin again.

The popular "BM style" this summer, the once popular "A4 waist", "keeping goldfish on the clavicle" and "touching the navel with the backhand" all made the "fat girl" feel ashamed. In order to become beautiful, some girls go to great lengths to soak in Chili water, induce vomiting, and even shrink their stomachs to lose weight. Others are addicted to plastic surgery, leaving serious sequelae.

It’s easy to get rid of the brand of "XXL corresponding to’ broken’" in shopping malls, but it’s difficult to break the hidden rules of female body humiliation.

The beauty of women should not be confined to the standards defined by others. Beauty is a lot of money. Only by establishing healthier and diversified aesthetic standards can women have more self-confidence, not be shackled by the standard of "white and thin", accept the traces left by years and love their bodies, live high.

At this year’s "Talk Show Conference", a remark made by star agent Yang Naizhen is worth reflecting-"Girls should not be defined by standards, there is no standardized beauty and ugliness, just like yourself."

Let more women stop criticizing themselves for the eyes of strangers, have the right to health and beauty, and break the shackles of stereotypes and concepts. There is still a lot that the whole society needs to do. Let’s start with something like "XXL corresponds to’ breaking up’".

Source: The Paper.

The contest between domestic brands and international brands has always been a hot topic in the beauty industry.

In the past double 11, domestic brands finally won a staged victory: Polaiya won the first place in the beauty industry of Tmall and Tik Tok, and the first place in the beauty industry of JD.COM, which is the first time that domestic brands have topped the beauty list of Tmall double 11 since 2018. Earlier in October, Polaiya released the third quarter financial report, and the company’s revenue in the first three quarters reached 5.249 billion yuan, ranking first among cosmetics listed companies in China. From these perspectives, the industry pays attention to and studies Polaiya not only to find an answer for its success, but also to find the direction of the evolution of domestic beauty products.

At the same time, international brands are still aggressive. L ‘Oré al China’s double 11 Battle Report shows that it is the beauty group with the largest number of short-listed brands in the TOP list of Tmall, Tik Tok and JD.COM, and maintains a leading position in high-end beauty, high-end dermatological skin care, make-up, hair care and so on. During the 6th China International Import Expo(CIIE), many beauty giants announced the launch of new products and new skin care technologies, showing their attention to the China market.

As important industry weathervanes, double 11 Dapromotion and China International Import Expo(CIIE) represent the "offensive and defensive" strategy and evolution direction of beauty enterprises. It is difficult for us to draw any conclusions from the short-term ranking changes and new trends in enterprises, and we need to lengthen the cycle to look at it, but perhaps we can find the frontier trends of the beauty industry and the development opportunities of domestic beauty.

On the ups and downs of domestic beauty cosmetics from double 11

The performance of domestic brands is not a new topic in double 11 this year. Taking stock of previous double 11, there are many domestic brands in the beauty industry, but compared with international brands, the ranking of domestic brands is unstable, and there are many "one-round tourists". Taking the Tmall platform as an example, the domestic beauty products shortlisted in the TOP10 list have experienced the iteration of Amoy brand, local big brands and a new generation of domestic brands. Taking 2020 as the boundary, the domestic brands in the head have been greatly replaced, and only Winona has been shortlisted in the TOP10, ranking steadily and rising; Polaiya has made great efforts since last year and has become one of the representatives of new domestic products.

This year, the beauty category was affected by multiple factors, and there were not many surprises in the overall transaction performance. The domestic beauty products rose obviously and became one of the highlights. Among them, Tmall’s head beauty brand pattern has undergone a major renovation. SK-II and Shiseido fell out of the TOP10 due to the Japanese nuclear pollution incident, and Polaiya pushed a number of foreign brands to the top. From the perspective of brand types, comprehensive beauty brands occupy the mainstream, and functional skin care brands represented by Polaiya, Winona and Xiulike gradually rise.

In Tik Tok, another important position of beauty cosmetics, the brand pattern is different. Before that, some international brands didn’t enter Tik Tok, but domestic brands took advantage of the traffic bonus to win some opportunities. In the face of international big-name competition this year, domestic brands still have comparative advantages, achieving breakthroughs with high cost performance and refined channel operation. It is worth noting that the beauty instrument brand is outstanding in the beauty category in Tik Tok, which may be due to the live e-commerce gene of the platform, and the anchor can convey the complex principle, function and use experience of the beauty instrument to consumers.

The change of brand pattern is only the appearance, and behind the replacement of domestic brands, there are some phenomena worthy of attention.

On the whole, in addition to the cost-effective advantage, the rise of domestic brands is largely due to the accurate understanding of the needs of local consumers and the targeted launch of large single products. This feature is particularly evident in the category of skin care products. Domestic brands focus on consumers’ anti-aging anxiety and popular skin care concepts such as formula skin care, morning C and evening A, and barrier repair, and launch large single products that focus on maintaining stability, anti-aging and anti-wrinkle, contributing an important sales share to the brand. Winona Soothing and Repairing Freeze-dried Mask, Quaddy Essence, Kanshuhong Waist Suit, and Polaiya Early C Late A Suit have all appeared on the list of explosive items in double 11 on the e-commerce platform. Guoji Feigua’s 2022 double 11 Yuehaowu Power Saver Data Report shows that Polaiya’s early C late A combination contributed about 35% of its sales in double 11, Tik Tok in 2022 (from October 15th to November 11th, 2022).

Hot topics related to skin care on social platforms, image source: Fruit Collection "Insights into Accurate Skin Care Crowds on Social Media Platforms in 2023"

Large single products help domestic brands occupy a place in the list, but whether the brand stands stably enough and rushes high enough depends on whether the product iteration and category expansion can be carried out around the core efficacy to extend the product life cycle. Take Polaiya as an example, its core product series has been iterated for 2-3 generations, and many categories such as essence, water emulsion, cream and eye cream have been introduced. This helps the brand to enrich the sku portfolio, continuously create a "freshness" and increase the customer unit price. Before double 11, Polaiya released Ruby Cream 3.0 series, which contains three textures of lightness, moisture and lightness to meet the needs of different skin types. This product is also the best-selling product of brand Tmall flagship store in the past year. According to the official list of Tik Tok, Polaiya’s Early C Late A Essence Cream Set was shortlisted in double 11’s beauty explosion list. The price of this group member is close to 700 yuan, which greatly improves the price range of the product.

Compared with the field of skin care, the overall competitiveness of domestic brands in makeup is still not as good as that of international brands, especially in the high-end price band. The reason is that domestic cosmetics are mostly designed innovatively around "Chinese aesthetics", and the advantage lies in color-related categories, but the fashion trend of cosmetics changes rapidly, which is difficult to bring high consumer loyalty to brands. Domestic brands still need to make breakthroughs in skin feeling and makeup effect in order to break the situation dominated by international big brands and explore the high-end price. Perfect Diary, which was criticized for focusing on marketing, gradually paid more attention to the functional attributes and technical barriers of products. Before double 11, the brand released its "bionic membrane" essence lipstick, which is the research result of "integration of makeup and nourishing", focusing on the combination of red makeup effect, lip essence effect and lip membrane, to show the brand’s breakthrough in scientific research and innovation.

Another obvious feature of the great promotion is that the pattern of domestic beauty cosmetics is moving towards differentiation. Judging from the performance of domestic brands in different stages of Tmall double 11, many brands have become "dark horses" with the help of the initial promotion atmosphere, super-anchor delivery and other factors, but they often have bright short-term performance and insufficient stamina, and few of them can continue to lead in the whole cycle. Under the trend that Japanese and Korean brands are cold and consumers are disenchanted with international brands as a whole, the development of domestic brands is welcoming, but it is still necessary to continue to precipitate the normal operation ability and cultivate brand endurance on the basis of explosive power.

Generally speaking, domestic beauty cosmetics have ushered in a "reversal" moment during this double 11 by accurately understanding the needs of local consumers, constantly expanding the matrix of large items, high cost performance and refined channel operation.

More than "big items"

Relying on the explosive strategy to meet the current hot demand, domestic beauty brands have the opportunity to "go to the table" and gradually narrow the gap with international brands. However, from the results, it is difficult for domestic beauty products to obtain long-term growth momentum by relying on explosive products. Only by creating a "big single product" and developing a "big brand" can a brand resist a round of shuffling and sit at the poker table for a longer time.

It is not without trace that domestic brands represented by Polaiya and Winona have won great victories. They benefited from the rise of the component party and the efficacy party, and implemented the strategy of "big single product", but they did not rely on this strategy. As mentioned above, the three series of Polaiya Double Antibody, Ruby and Yuanli have been extended from essence to different categories. This year, Polaiya launched a new energy series for the anti-aging needs of mature muscles, and its three-piece energy set, which cost more than 1000 yuan, entered the live broadcast room in Li Jiaqi during its stay in double 11, which shows the brand’s intention to push this series. Winona, Kerfumei and other brands are also constantly expanding their category matrix and reducing their dependence on a single big item. After verifying the heat of recombinant collagen components with collagen rods, Kefumei accelerated the pace of promoting new products, supplemented the categories of emulsion and mask, and its water supply line and oil control line also launched different types of products one after another.

The richness of brand category structure, on the one hand, represents the life cycle and anti-risk ability of brand products, on the other hand, represents its coverage of different levels of consumer demand and different scenarios. The application of patented ingredients to the technical threshold such as essence and cream with higher premium ability also helps domestic brands to gradually get rid of the image of relying on low prices and explore high-end prices. According to Polaiya’s financial report, the average selling price of the company’s skin care products increased by 57.05% year-on-year, mainly due to the year-on-year sales increase of essence and cream products with higher unit price.

From the above results, we can see that domestic beauty cosmetics are taking enhancing product research and development capabilities as a strategic goal and tearing off the label of "emphasizing marketing and neglecting research and development". Local beauty companies have increased the proportion of R&D investment, and focused on components, raw materials and other links that can help enterprises build barriers. In recent two years, synthetic biology, molecular biology and other technologies have been accelerated to be applied to skin care products, and "skin care+biological components" has become a high-growth concept of beauty track, which requires enterprises to carry out collaborative research on basic research, functional raw materials and formula system. According to Zhongxin. com, there are currently 121 research and development projects on raw materials and synthetic organisms in Huaxi Bio. Double 11’s outstanding Fumei brand, its parent company Juzi Bio has four collagen medical beauty products under research, two of which are expected to be approved in 2024, becoming a new source of growth for the enterprise.

Image source: CBNData《2023 Oriental Beauty Valley Blue Book "

Another dimension that domestic brands have been examined for a long time is the ability to operate omni-channel. This batch of new domestic brands have risen online. When the traffic dividend is gradually divided up, on the one hand, brands need to treat online channels in a refined way to improve profit margins. On the other hand, they begin to respect traditional channels, return to offline and near-field e-commerce, and even enter duty-free shops to find new growth opportunities. However, with the new channels, there are new ways of playing and brand logic, as well as powerful opponents. Domestic brands still have a long way to go.

Grouping proposition

From the perspective of single brand, domestic brands initially have the right to speak in the beauty industry with big names. However, from the perspective of the group, there is still a big gap between the comprehensive strength of domestic brands and international beauty cosmetics. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, almost half of the seats in double 11’s e-commerce platform beauty list this year belong to L ‘Oré al’s brands. Although the performance of Estee Lauder Group declined in fiscal year 2023, the main brands of the same name, Estee Lauder and Hailan Mystery, are still relatively strong in the high-end price band.

"L ‘Oré als" have achieved the coverage of different categories, price bands and sub-groups by virtue of top-class, high-end, Volkswagen, cinema and other brands, and better enhanced the Group’s ability to resist risks. No matter how the external environment and consumer demand change, there are corresponding sub-brands in the group to undertake.

However, domestic beauty cosmetics have not yet owned their own "L ‘Oreal" and "Estee Lauder". Although Polaiya, Huaxi Bio and Juzi Bio take the multi-brand route, at present, their dependence on a single brand is still relatively high, or the differences between sub-brands are not obvious. Although the ingredients and focus areas of Fumei and Kelijin under Juzi Bio are different, the brand needs to further formulate differentiation strategies in order to make consumers clear about their differences. According to the data of Polaiya’s financial report, in the first three quarters of 2023, the main brand contributed about 80% to the Group’s revenue, and Caitang accounted for about 10% of the total revenue. The sub-brands such as Off&Realx and Yuefushi made little contribution, and it remains to be seen whether they can become the "N-th growth curve". At the brand’s 20th anniversary strategy conference, Polaiya said that she would innovate the strategic planning, from "troika" to "6*N strategy", and broaden the multi-category matrix of skin care, make-up, toiletries and high-efficiency categories.

In addition to self-incubation, some brands refer to L ‘Oré al’s acquisition strategy to build their own brand matrix. Take Yixian Group as an example. Since 2019, it has successively acquired cosmetics brand Odin, French high-end skin care brand Kelanli, British high-end beauty brand EVE LOM, and functional skin care brand DR.WU (business in Chinese mainland). On the one hand, it has improved the layout in the field of skin care, on the other hand, it has told high-end stories. Increasing the proportion of skin care business has indeed improved the financial situation of Yixian e-commerce. The financial report shows that Yixian e-commerce has maintained an upward trend in gross profit margin in the past four quarters, with a gross profit margin of 74.7% in the second quarter, up 11.9% year-on-year, the highest in a single quarter since listing.

In addition to the width of demand, the gap between domestic brands and international brands lies in the depth of brand value. Beauty has always been regarded as a category with great emotional value, and emotional skin care is also a hot topic on social platforms. Polaiya has recently made intensive speeches on gender equality, mental health and emotion to show the social value of the brand. On the basis of brand-level vocalization, domestic beauty cosmetics are also integrating emotional concepts into products. During the 6th China International Import Expo(CIIE), Yixian E-commerce unveiled the Shanghai Global Innovation R&D Center, and "emotional skin care" is one of its four major R&D fields in the future. EVE LOM brand bears the realization of this concept. It launched the fragrance candle of "Manor after Rain" in China International Import Expo(CIIE), and tracked and analyzed the emotional changes of users when they experienced the SPA through the AI brainwave emotional test instrument to show the brand’s emotional skin care technology.

From supplementing research and development, creating large single products, enhancing brand power in multiple dimensions and developing towards collectivization, domestic beauty cosmetics are constantly evolving. However, compared with international brands that have experienced long-term accumulation, there are still many gaps that need to be filled. At present, China consumers’ recognition of domestic products has increased, and Japanese and Korean brands have given up some market share in the cold, so domestic beauty products have ushered in new development opportunities. This year’s double 11 can be said to be the best performance of domestic beauty products. Jumping out of the promotion atmosphere and price advantage, domestic brands need to make more efforts to prove their unique value. As consumers, we may wish to give more opportunities and patience to domestic beauty cosmetics, so as to wait for the brand to hand over better answers.

Cover image source: unsplash

When it comes to the beauty industry, few people associate it with the traditional high-tech industry. But behind the beauty industry, it is indeed constantly colliding and merging with high technology. With the continuous deepening and application of high-tech such as big data and AI, the relationship between them has gradually become prominent.

Not long ago, L ‘Oré al held a cloud conference to announce the official launch of the first "BIG BANG Beauty Technology Creation Camp" in China. It is understood that this "Creation Camp" is in the form of a start-up challenge, and "Cloud invites" national technology start-ups to participate in exploring and incubating revolutionary beauty technology solutions. This is the first cross-border collision between the domestic beauty ecosystem and the science and technology ecosystem, but can beauty giants really have fun when they get involved in the field of science and technology? Why does the high-tech circle attach importance to the beauty industry?

First, it is not the "technology factor" added to beauty cosmetics, but the return to "the truth of technology"

In which direction science and technology grow, it depends on demand; How much room to grow depends on the market.

The consumer industry has always been a necessity for people’s lives, and beauty cosmetics is one of the industries with the highest innovation vitality and the most stable demand. In recent years, China’s beauty industry has developed rapidly, and the market scale has been expanding. The internationally renowned brands that settled in China in the early years and the rising local brands in recent years have, to a certain extent, shared the dividends of the overall rapid development of the industry.

As consumers become more and more mature, their preferences in product use, ingredients and brand positioning are also more subdivided. Concepts such as hydrating, moisturizing, whitening, protection, anti-aging, firming and cosmetic feeling will be more and more recognized by consumers, and subdivided products including eyes, lips, cheeks and neck will be closer to the needs of consumers. At the same time, the transformation of consumer core groups, the rise of Z generation consumption power, the awakening of men’s skin care awareness, and healthy living have all injected new strength into the domestic beauty industry market and promoted the development and improvement of the industrial chain.

According to the latest retail data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first quarter of 2019, the total retail sales of social consumer goods was 9,779 billion yuan, an increase of 8.3% year-on-year. Judging from the retail sales of cosmetics, the national retail sales of cosmetics in the first quarter of 2019 was 75.3 billion yuan, an increase of 10.9% compared with the same period last year. It can be said that the current domestic beauty market has a very broad development space. Both the consumer’s choice and the new opportunities brought by consumption upgrading have promoted the expansion of the beauty market in China.

In addition, the continuous upgrading of beauty consumption affects not only the beauty industry, but also the emerging industries associated with it when the consumer demand of users is infinitely diversified, personalized and rapidly changing and the market activity is high. You know, the vast majority of consumers are not beauty experts. They need to know more about their skin condition and product information quickly, so as to choose the products that suit them, and they should wait for them. Therefore, the future beauty industry will not only provide a single beauty product, but also provide an overall solution of product+service+experience. For example, AI skin care programs help consumers analyze skin needs and formulate skin management programs; Beauty brands regulate the balance of skin micro-ecology through biotechnology to enhance the efficacy of skin care products; Technology companies develop hand-held beauty equipment with electromagnetic pulse to help skin care products penetrate the skin better.

The beauty industry is constantly moving towards technology, digitalization and convenience, which can drive the development of new technologies such as biotechnology, agricultural technology and entertainment technology around it and broaden the industry. In recent years, the beauty market share of international brands is rising sharply, and the domestic beauty market is gradually becoming high-end. It can be seen that it will be the core trend of the beauty industry in the future to help people with professional skin care, health and beauty with scientific and technological means and concepts.

Moreover, in a sense, beauty care itself is based on scientific practice, but in the era of underdeveloped technology, it is more like "experience talk." Nowadays, after thousands of years of development, mature technical means have not only solved many "skin care mysteries", but also greatly helped more people, especially those who don’t know much about beauty care, how to conveniently put on makeup and healthy skin care. Therefore, to be more precise, it is not the "technology factor" that is added to the beauty industry, but the return of the beauty industry to the "technology truth".

It can be predicted that the beauty industry will bring broad market space and application scenarios for innovative technology, and the deep integration of technology start-ups and beauty will "explode" unlimited potential for its own development, the development of the beauty industry and the lives of consumers.

Although we know that innovative technology is promising in the beauty market, how to integrate these two "different styles" elements and open up a road of sustainable development is still very challenging for beauty companies.

Since last year, beauty KOL live broadcast has become increasingly popular. Whether it’s Li Jiaqi, the "first lipstick brother", Viya, the "one product links 80,000 orders", or tens of thousands of cosmetics KOL behind them, they are all guiding consumers’ purchasing orientation greatly. Interestingly, beauty technology seems to have little to do with beauty KOL, but in essence, it helps consumers to judge whether the product is suitable for them by explaining the product in detail and "trying it" in advance, except that beauty KOL is an anchor real person trial, and the increasingly popular virtual color test application allows consumers to match independently through technical means such as AR and AI.

After a thorough study, the analysis results detected by the senior scientific research team with the help of big data, AR and other high-tech technologies are, to a great extent, more professional and valuable reference data than many cosmetic KOL trials, but at present, the influence of cosmetic technology on consumer decision-making is not as good as that of cosmetic KOL. This has to make beauty companies think deeply. On the road of beauty technology transformation, in addition to improving the technological attributes of products, whether it is necessary to think more about transformation strategies, user connections and technological depth.

Second, beauty technology needs intensive cultivation and a global vision.

Imagine that if a company defines itself as a "beauty enterprise", its entire corporate image, products and beauty attributes will be greater than the scientific and technological attributes; However, if you define yourself as a "beauty technology enterprise", then the two attributes must be "equally divided". For example, Xiaomi, although it originated from the Internet mobile phone, has always been an innovative technology enterprise, not a mobile phone brand.

Therefore, to improve the scientific and technological content of products, we must first improve the scientific and technological content of enterprises, that is, to achieve a 360-degree comprehensive transformation in the fields of research and development, marketing, operation and management.

On January 5, 2020, at CES in Las Vegas, L ‘Oré al first demonstrated a brand-new beauty technology equipment called Perso. This AI-supported home system developed by L ‘Oré al Technology Incubator can complete the on-site formula of skin care products and make-up products through a concise four-step process, and it can become smarter with the increase of usage times over time, and truly realize the direct delivery of personalized technology to consumers.

Before Perso, L ‘Oré al also introduced the first portable skin environment detector "Small Needle Probe" without batteries, Lancome’s new generation of small black bottles, customized liquid foundation and customized essence formulator, and other high-tech and even cross-border innovative products.

In addition, L ‘Oré al also organized a C2B "Zero Cream" campaign with consumers. This activity, aimed at exploring consumers’ reverse channel innovation, adopted an innovative mode of user demand-led and technology-assisted output. It took 59 days and 1,000 consumers participated, and more than 100,000 products were sold on the same day.

At present, L ‘Oré al China has set up "3S" and "3D" directions in product frontier research and development. "3S" means Green Science, Material Science and Life Science, and "3D" means digitalization, instrumentation and Diagnosis.

It is easier to understand that technology empowers R&D, so how can technology empower production, operation and management?

In recent years, L ‘Oré al has upgraded pillar departments such as information technology, operation, finance and human resources to strategic departments, and started to carry out technological and digital transformation. Develop and apply the most suitable brand-new solutions for each business field, including 3D printing, artificial intelligence, collaborative robots, virtual reality, Internet of Things and so on.

For example, L ‘Oré al applied software robots to financial reconciliation and online shop operation, and completed a lot of repetitive work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Using artificial intelligence technology to assist the retail team in store location; Reduce inventory and shorten the overall supply chain time by 30%; A new networked production line has been developed and a new method combined with the Internet of Things platform has been implemented, which can switch from the production of one product to another in a few minutes. At present, five factories are already using this networked production line technology, and another 20 new production lines will be installed and used in factories all over the world.

L ‘Oré al has naturally put a lot of effort into the most intuitive consumer experience scene of scientific and technological attributes display. Maybelline 360-degree AI intelligent color selection, exclusive "virtual hair dyeing and color testing" by L ‘Oré al Paris Salon, and "multifunctional intelligent detection application of scalp hair quality" by Paris Karsch ….. For girls who love beauty, the advent of these intelligent technology products not only enriches their own shopping experience, but also greatly simplifies the process from selection, makeup trial to purchase, and greatly solves the problem of choosing makeup.

In addition to the digital upgrade in the external business chain, L ‘Oré al has also adopted a new way of working internally, releasing the speed and efficiency of innovation.

L ‘Oré al has previously established a global multipolar organization, namely, three global centers in France+six regional hubs (China, Japan, India, South Africa, Brazil and the United States) +21 R&D centers. Mobile office and digital applications are widely used in the company. During this epidemic, the internal IT system of L ‘Oré al supported the telecommuting of nearly 3,400 users every day, including sending and receiving emails, accessing the company’s intranet resources, and video and audio conferences. The evolution of IT team’s working style is rapid iteration and continuous delivery, and all IT services have not been affected by this special situation. In addition, terminal sales data such as online and offline retail, virtual makeup test, software robot, chat robot and retail location with artificial intelligence are all stored in L ‘Oré al China Hybrid Cloud. This platform can support more than 2200 servers, 1800T of data, and more than 400 application systems, websites and small programs running on it.

Wu Sheng, founder of Scene Lab, said: "L ‘Oré al’s transformation of beauty technology running through the whole value chain inside and outside just represents the practice of’ scientific brand’ driven by data science, process science and value science. When L ‘Oré al is committed to the innovation of beauty technology, it believes in the digital beauty of this era and accelerates the digital life of this era. This essential change requires the evolution of ideas and also calls for a larger-scale co-creation. I look forward to L ‘Oré al becoming a real’ beauty infrastructure’, empowering and achieving each other with innovators. "

The three dimensions of scientific brand mentioned here, data science represents the power of data analysis and application technology such as big data and cloud computing; Process science refers to the transformation of 360-degree full value chain and the establishment of internal and external ecological circle; Value science represents the responsibility of science and technology to be good. For example, since 2007, L ‘Oré al has been working hard to reduce the impact of cosmetics packaging on the environment, and jointly developed the first environmentally-friendly paper tubular packaging with the upstream packaging company Albéa a.

Nowadays, beauty companies are constantly exploring in the direction of science and technology, and many technology companies have also set their research direction in the field of beauty and skin care. But in any case, the benefits of "beauty+technology" can only be the vast number of consumers. At present, the beauty technology of most enterprises is still in the stage of auxiliary tools, so it is necessary to truly regard technological transformation as the "top-ranking project", let more innovative technologies flood in, integrate into the strategic transformation thinking with a more overall view, and more thoroughly open up the internal and external ecological circles, so as to provide solutions that are more in line with the immediate needs of consumers and make "beauty+technology" a road of sustainable development.

Third, the next step: build an ecological circle and make the beauty infrastructure.

As a company with a history of 100 years, L ‘Oreal, a French beauty giant, has always advocated open innovation and strong alliance with many start-up technology companies.

Cooperation as the axis, technology as the wheel.

In 2016, L ‘Oré al invested in five beauty technology companies, which have core technologies in private customization, smart manicure and Internet content marketing. In 2018, L ‘Oré al Group acquired Canadian digital supplier Modify, which integrated AR technology into beauty retail and launched black technologies such as virtual makeup test and hair color test. Then the venture capital fund BOLD was launched. The first investment target was French startup Sillages Paris, an Internet company that mainly used artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to create customized perfume. In addition, at the same time, L ‘Oré al has established open cooperation website prices with start-ups around the world. By 2018, 23 start-ups have been supported under the framework of L ‘Oré al’s cooperation with Founders Factory and Station F.

At the 2019 Paris Viva Technology Exhibition, L ‘Oré al and Alibaba Group jointly released the first mobile artificial intelligence detection application for acne-EFFACLAR SPOTSCAN in la roche-posay. Effica can help consumers who are troubled by acne skin but can’t ask for help, carry out professional skin self-test anytime and anywhere, and get personalized scientific nursing plan. Wu Hanwen, chief digital marketing officer of L ‘Oré al China, once said at the exhibition: "Open innovation will help us effectively explore the application potential of cutting-edge technology in the field of beauty."

At present, China has the most demanding and sophisticated consumer groups in the world, and the most dynamic technology and innovation ecosystem in the world, which together constitute the original intention and foundation of L ‘Oré al’s first "Beauty Technology Creation Camp".

"One battalion creates more" and "one person has thousands of faces"

L ‘Oré al’s "BIG BANG Beauty Technology Creation Camp" has opened three tracks, namely, playing with new beauty experience, leading new operation and foreseeing new production and research, focusing on three key areas of beauty technology innovation, namely, consumer experience, supply chain operation, and future products with new forms, new effects and new experiences.

"We look forward to working together with technology start-ups to achieve common transformation and transformation, create more high-tech and beautiful consumption solutions for consumers, create new growth points for the vigorous development of the beauty industry, and contribute beautiful innovation to the prosperity of the consumer market in China and even the world in the post-epidemic era." Fabry, President and CEO of L ‘Oré al China, said: "The Beauty Technology Creation Camp is also the first step for L ‘Oré al to build a beauty technology ecosystem in China, and it is our co-creation and tolerance in implementing the new strategy of ‘HUGE Good Plan. We are confident that China will surely become a leader in the new round of global beauty technology explosion. "

From the perspective of participating enterprises, the "Creation Camp" horizontally covers the key links of the beauty industry chain, and the short-listed start-up technology enterprises can get different forms of win-win cooperation and support from L ‘Oreal at different stages of development. Such as market insight, product positioning, marketing strategy, media communication, incubation budget and other all-round support. L ‘Oré al, which covers more than 130 countries and has more than 110 years of experience in beauty operation, can provide a strong enough operating platform to accelerate the incubation, commercialization and scale of innovative achievements, and provide promotion opportunities and market landing in other markets around the world based on local applications in China.

Previously, in 2014, L ‘Oré al and Canada’s artificial intelligence augmented reality technology company Modify jointly created a virtual makeup trial technology, and Modify provided professional technology. L ‘Oré al can give more than 100 years of professional experience in beauty to help Modify fine-tune each makeup trial effect, and gradually from small to large, from the initial virtual makeup trial scene, it was successfully extended to virtual hair color and skin detection. At the same time, L ‘Oré al has a local team in each country to customize the planning, so that product technology can quickly land in the local market.

From the perspective of industry and market, in the post-epidemic period in China, technological innovation is an important engine to promote consumption recovery, and then promote market and economic recovery, as well as the beauty industry. Technology start-ups are the birthplace of innovative technology and the backbone of economic recovery in the post-epidemic era. Led by L ‘Oré al, a beauty company of a magnitude, bringing these forces together to achieve common growth and transformation will not only help a new round of "big outbreak" in the beauty industry, but also contribute to the market and economic prosperity after the epidemic.

The broad voice platform and efficient operation platform can provide more commercial guidance and added value for technology start-ups, and also make the overall solution of L ‘Oré al’s products+services+experiences more mature. When more and more technology companies are deeply integrated with beauty, more potential of the beauty industry will be stimulated, and the era of "one person and thousands of faces" may not be far from us.

On December 3rd, the Youth Badminton International Challenge held in South Korea ended, and the China Badminton Team achieved gratifying results.

This competition is divided into four age groups, namely U19, U17, U15 and U13. Among them, the China Badminton Team only participated in the competition of U19 age group.

Happily, China U19 badminton players joined the finals of men’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles, and won the first and second place in these four events.

In the final, Wang Zijun 2-1 Pan Yinlong won the men’s singles championship; Hu Keyuan/Lin Xiangyi 2-0 Chen Yongrui/Chen Zhehan won the men’s doubles championship; Chen Fanshu/Jiang Peixi 2-0 Liao Lizhen/Liu Yuanyuan won the women’s doubles championship; Hu Keyuan/Liu Jiayue 2-1 Lin Xiangyi/Liu Yuanyuan won the mixed doubles championship. Among them, Hu Keyuan won two championships and Liu Yuanyuan won two runner-ups.

However, U19 is also the epitome of the adult team. An Xiying, the women’s singles player of South Korea’s adult team, dominated the world in 2023. In U19 team, the women’s singles player of South Korea still dominated, and their Kim Min-hyun 2-1 Japanese player Yasukawa Shachuan won the women’s singles championship.

For the China Badminton Team, the problem of how to beat An Xiying has still not been solved. U19 players also lost to South Korean players, which means that it is impossible to defeat An Xiying by promoting young people.

In other age groups, the winners are basically Korean, Japanese and China Taipei players.

Generative AI is getting more and more popular. Is this really a good business?

Recently, AI painting is on fire.

By inputting some words, AI can generate an image that matches the words in a few seconds. These images are wild, and some are even bizarre. For example, people have extra fingers on their hands, and their fingers bend unnaturally. Even, AI can generate some meaningless billboards and alphabets that humans have never seen before.

Although AI painting is outrageous, it has set off a wave of science and technology: the spring of generative AI has come.

David Beisel, a venture capitalist at NextView Ventures, said that in the past three months, the word "generative AI" once became a hot word. Moreover, the generative AI technology has developed rapidly and the market enthusiasm is so high that many people even quit their jobs to start a business in this field.

There is no doubt that AI has been in a prosperous stage in the past five years or so, but most of these past advances have to do with understanding the existing data-for example, the AI model has been able to quickly and efficiently identify whether there are only cats in your mobile phone photos. However, the generative AI model generates something completely new that has never been seen before. In other words, generative AI is not just about analyzing existing data, but creating.

Boris Dayma, founder of Craiyon generative AI, believes that "generative AI is not only creating old images, but also creating many new things, which are completely different from what we have seen before."

Sequoia Capital also said in a blog post on its website: "Generative AI has the potential to create trillions of dollars in economic value." Sequoia Capital predicts that generative AI may change all industries that require human beings to create original works, from games to advertising to the legal profession. It is worth mentioning that Sequoia Capital also pointed out in its blog post that this message was partly written by GPT-3 (GPT-3 is a generative AI capable of generating text).

Working principle of generative AI

In the past, deep learning technology was widely used to train the model on large data sets. When the program understands the relationships in these data, the model can be applied to actual scenes, such as identifying whether there is a dog in a picture or translating text, and so on.

The working principle of the image generator is to reverse this process. For example, instead of translating English into French, it translates English phrases into images. Specifically, it usually has two main parts, one is to process initial phrases, and the other is to convert data into images.

At first, generative AI was based on a method called GAN, that is, the generative adversarial network. In essence, this method is to make two artificial intelligence models compete with each other to better create images that meet the target.

At present, generative AI is usually based on Transformer, such as image generator DALL-E and so on. DALL-E was first created by OpenAI in 2021, and in 2022, OpenAI released DALL-E 2.

Christian Cantrell, a developer who focuses on generative AI, said: "With DALL-E 2, we can really cross uncanny valley." (The Valley of Terror theory is a hypothesis about human perception of robots and non-human objects. It was put forward by Japanese robot expert Masahiro Mori in 1970. )

Another commonly used AI-based image generator is Craiyon (formerly known as DALL-E Mini), where users can enter phrases in the browser and see the illustrations it generates within a few minutes.

According to Dayma, since its launch in July 2021, Craiyon has produced about 10 million unprecedented pictures every day, which adds up to 1 billion. Earlier this year, the use of Crayon soared, and Dayma also took Crayon as its full-time job. In addition, Dayma has created a Twitter account to post the weirdest and most creative pictures generated by Craiyon. For example, ketchup comes out of the tap on the Italian sink.

In addition, Stable Diffusion has also received wide attention. The project was released in August this year and has been open source on GitHub. Developers can run the project on computers, not just in the cloud or through programming interfaces. For example, Stable Diffusion can be integrated into Adobe Photoshop by plug-in, allowing users to generate backgrounds and other parts of images, and use layers and other Photoshop tools to operate in applications.

Cantrell, the developer of the plug-in, said, "I want to meet these creative professionals, so that they can introduce artificial intelligence into their creative work, instead of destroying their work."

It is understood that Cantrell has worked for Adobe for 20 years. After leaving in 2022, Cantrell focused on the direction of generative AI. Cantrell said that Stable Diffusion has been downloaded tens of thousands of times, and artists told him that they used this plug-in in many unexpected places, such as making Godzilla animation or creating pictures of Spider-Man.

Start-up companies get together

Some investors regard generative AI as a potentially transformative change, just like the early development of smart phones or the Internet. This kind of transformation has greatly expanded the potential market of this technology.

"Before that, artificial intelligence was not unprecedented. Before 2007, we were not without mobile devices, "said Beisel, a seed investor." But at this moment, everything came together. The final consumer can experience and see something different from before. "

Cantrell believes that machine learning is similar to a more basic technology: database. "Machine learning is a bit like a database, which opens up a whole new world for network applications. All the applications we have used in our life are built on the database. But no one cares about how the database works. People only know how to use it. "

Michael Dempsey, managing partner of Compound VC, said that in the past, it was "very rare" for laboratory technology to enter the mainstream, but at present, generative AI has attracted wide attention of venture capitalists. Nevertheless, he warned that the current generative AI may be in the "curious stage" near the peak of the hype cycle, and the companies established at this stage may fail because they don’t focus on the specific uses that enterprises or consumers are willing to pay for.

Others in the industry believe that startups that can apply new technologies such as generative AI today may challenge technology giants such as Google, Meta and Microsoft in the future.

At present, many companies applying generative AI technology have already received large amount of financing, and their valuations have also risen. For example, earlier this year, Hugging Face was valued at $2 billion after receiving investments including Lux Capital and Sequoia Capital; OpenAI has also received more than $1 billion from Microsoft and Khosla Ventures.

In addition, according to Forbes, Stability AI, the developer of Stable Diffusion, is negotiating with investment institutions to raise up to $1 billion in venture capital.

Cloud vendors and chip vendors will benefit.

Besides start-ups, cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google can also benefit from it, because generative AI may require a huge amount of computation.

Meta and Google have also taken action and started recruiting talents. In September of this year, Meta released an artificial intelligence application called "Make-A-Video", which can generate videos, which makes the generative AI technology a step further.

"This is a great progress," Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, posted on his Facebook page. "It is much more difficult to generate videos than photos, because besides correctly generating each pixel, the system must also predict how they will change over time."

Recently, Google matched with Meta and released a program code called Phenaki, which can also convert text into video and generate several minutes of footage.

This craze may also boost chip manufacturers such as Nvidia, AMD and Intel, because the advanced graphics processors produced by these companies are ideal for training and deploying artificial intelligence models.

At a recent meeting, Huang Renxun, CEO of Nvidia, emphasized that generative AI is the key use of the company’s latest chip, and he said that this kind of program may "revolutionize communication" soon.

At present, there are not many uses of generative AI that can generate commercial benefits. Many exciting breakthroughs today come from free or low-cost experiments. For example, some writers have tried to use image generator to generate images for articles. An example of Nvidia is to use a model to generate new 3D images, including people, animals, vehicles or furniture, which can be filled into the virtual game world.

Ethical issues can not be ignored.

While generating AI excites the industry, the ethical issues it brings are also worthy of attention.

The first is employment. Compared with professional illustrators, generative AI is obviously cheaper. Therefore, generative AI is likely to rob artists, video producers and other people engaged in creative work of their "rice bowls".

In addition, there are complex problems in originality and ownership of the content created by generative AI.

Generated AI is trained on a large number of images. Therefore, it is still controversial whether the creator of the original image has copyright requirements for the generated new image.

Some time ago, an artist won an art competition in Colorado, and his winning image was created by a generative AI named MidJourney. After winning, the artist said in an interview that he selected one image from hundreds of images generated by himself and post-processed it in Photoshop.

It is worth mentioning that some images generated by Stable Diffusion are watermarked, which indicates that some of the original data sets are copyrighted. Previously, Getty Images (a picture trading company based in Seattle, USA) announced that it was forbidden for users to upload generated AI pictures to its picture library, because the company was worried that there might be some copyright problems in such pictures. .

With the improvement of image generation software, generative AI may also deceive users, make them believe false information, or display images or videos of events that never happened.

In addition, developers must also deal with the possibility that models trained on a large amount of data may have biases related to gender, race or culture contained in the data, which may cause the models to show such biases in their outputs.

Original link:

Source: AI Frontline, author: Kif Leswing. If there is any infringement, please contact to delete it.

Analysis of industrial chain, market demand potential and enterprise layout of domestic smart speaker industry in 2022 [Figure]

Smart speaker, the product of a speaker upgrade, is a tool for home consumers to surf the Internet by voice, such as ordering songs, shopping online, or knowing the weather forecast. It can also control smart home devices, such as opening curtains, setting the refrigerator temperature, warming up the water heater in advance, etc.

Basic functions of intelligent speakers

Source: Collation of Common Research Network.

Intelligent speaker industry chain includes traditional acoustic-related OEM/ODM suppliers, chip suppliers, voice technology service providers, content providers and channels.

Intelligent speaker industry chain

Source: Collation of Common Research Network.

In 2019, China’s smart speaker market experienced explosive development, with the shipment of smart speakers reaching 45.89 million units, up by 109.7% year-on-year. In 2020, affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the sales volume of smart speakers reached 36.76 million units, with a cumulative decrease of 8.6%. In 2021, the market shipment of smart speakers contracted by 2.50% year-on-year, dropping slightly to 35.841 million units.

2018-2021 China Smart Speaker Market Shipment Trend

Source: Collation of Common Research Network.

In 2021, China’s smart speaker market was 7.885 billion yuan, up by 14.99% year-on-year. With the continuous integration and improvement of intelligent speaker artificial intelligence technology, the potential of smart speaker consumption market in China will be released in the future, and the industry is expected to usher in rapid growth.

2018-2021 China Smart Speaker Market Scale Trend

Source: Collation of Common Research Network.

At present, the main functions of smart speakers in China are voice interaction, content service and home control. Voice interaction is a voice interaction technology based on voice recognition and semantic understanding, which provides a more natural man-machine interaction mode. Content service and life service are streaming media resources such as high-quality music and audiobooks, and third-party service resources such as take-out and taxi service. Home control is connected to the cloud through networking, becoming a home control center and interconnected with other smart home products. With the development of voice interaction technology, smart speaker products can not only provide content entertainment services and life services, but also connect to smart homes, realize scene intelligent control, and become the control center of smart homes. In the future, the Internet of Things will take voice as its population, resulting in a new business model.

Domestic layout smart speaker manufacturers can be divided into five categories.

Source: Collation of Common Research Network.

What is the market prospect of smart speaker industry? The 2023-2029 China Smart Speaker Market Survey and Investment Strategy Report published by Gongwang has analyzed in detail the relevant definitions of smart speaker industry, the global smart speaker industry market development status, the development environment of smart speaker industry in China, the operation of smart speaker industry in China, the monitoring of the operation data of smart speaker industry in China, the market structure of smart speaker in China, the demand characteristics and trends of smart speaker industry in China, China smart speaker industry regional market situation, China smart speaker industry competition, China smart speaker industry development prospect analysis and forecast, China smart speaker industry development strategy and investment suggestions, etc., to help enterprises and investors understand the smart speaker industry market investment value. If you want to have a systematic understanding of the smart speaker industry or invest in the smart speaker industry, this report is your indispensable and important tool.

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