Interface journalist | Zhou Fangying
Interface News Editor | Lou Qinqin
According to the investment community, the pure makeup brand "RED CHAMBER Zhu Zhan" has recently completed tens of millions of yuan of financing, led by Xinyi Capital, followed by Shuiyang shares, and the old shareholder Pullman Venture Capital continued to chase after the investment. Sky-Eye Survey shows that in September, 2021, the brand received angel round investment from Pullman Venture Capital, and the specific amount was not disclosed.
This round of financing is alleged to be used to accelerate the research and development of pure formulas, stabilize the supply chain, and continue to drive brand building and promotion.
The parent company of RED CHAMBER was founded in 2020, but the brand was officially unveiled in 2021. The first tweet of RED CHAMBER’s official micro-signal shows that the brand will focus on natural and pure characteristics.
According to its tweet, RED CHAMBER eliminated 2,800 risky and controversial ingredients, such as talcum powder, alcohol, essence, and cyclic silicon, according to the China Cosmetic Safety Technical Specification (2015 edition) and the EU EC(2020 edition) list of prohibited substances in cosmetics, and then screened out less than 600 pure ingredients from more than 10,000 cosmetic ingredients that were allowed to be added, so as to ensure that the risks of product sensitization and pore blockage were reduced.
As RED CHAMBER said in its introduction, due to the limitation of available raw materials, the research and development time and cost of pure beauty cosmetics are several times higher than those of ordinary products, and the research and development process is tantamount to "dancing with shackles".
This has led to a corresponding rise in product prices. The price of a single-color blush eye shadow multi-purpose cream in RED CHAMBER is 119 yuan, and the price of 15ml liquid foundation is 218 yuan, which is equivalent to that of Estee Lauder liquid foundation. In addition, RED CHAMBER also has makeup items such as powder cake, loose powder, high-gloss repair, makeup brush, makeup remover and so on.
Different from the idea that general beauty brands choose lipstick, eye shadow and other low acceptance thresholds to open the market, RED CHAMBER’s first product is "liquid foundation for small bottles". The brand has said that it hopes to take the products with good makeup foundation as the origin and then present the possibility of other makeup effects. Its first product series also includes loose powder, powder cake, air cushion and other makeup products.
But perhaps beyond RED CHAMBER’s expectation, the series of makeup products it invested heavily in did not become an explosion, but a multi-purpose cream for lip and cheek eye shadow to make the brand remembered. Searching for RED CHAMBER in Xiaohongshu will find that many users are sharing how to apply a full-face makeup with a multi-purpose cream to simplify the makeup process and achieve a more natural makeup effect.
The monthly sales volume of RED CHAMBER Tmall Ship Store also shows that its sales volume of multi-purpose cream ranks first, with the purchase data exceeding 10,000, while the number of pre-makeup gel cream buyers ranked second is only over 800.
Although pure beauty is still a new concept in China, it has gradually gained capital attention in recent two years. Local beauty brands such as Yiyi, Lanlan, MOJA and YOKIA all received financing.
However, compared with the grand occasion of frequent financing news of beauty track in the previous two years, it is not easy for RED CHAMBER to refinance this time as the beauty market as a whole is recovering from weakness.
Clean Beauty first emerged from European and American markets, and its concept gradually evolved from the safety and non-toxicity of ingredients used to all aspects of the whole industrial chain, such as requiring brands to be animal-friendly, zero cruelty, environmentally friendly and sustainable development.
At first, the dilemma faced by some pure beauty brands in China is that market education is very difficult, because there is no clear definition of the concept and controversial components of pure beauty in the market. But now with the introduction of group standards, more standardized pure beauty brands will usher in spring.
On July 10th, 2022, the General Rules for Pure Beauty of Cosmetics initiated by MCL Huaxi Kou brand was certified by Guangdong Provincial Civil Affairs Department and published by Guangdong Cosmetics Society on the national group standard information platform.
"General Principles of Pure Beauty Cosmetics" officially defines pure beauty cosmetics for the first time: pure beauty cosmetics are cosmetics whose life cycle should be open, transparent and traceable, responsible for human health and safety, environmentally friendly and animal-friendly, and bear social responsibility and humanitarianism. This is also the first standard document for pure beauty in China.
But for pure beauty brands, standardized industry norms are only the first step. What is more difficult is how to make consumers accept the concept of "purity" and the high price that matches it.
