618 is a major sales event in China, second only to Double Eleven. Roughly 10% of sales during this event are live commerce sales. In the cosmetics category, Japanese brands such as Shiseido and Kanebo have grown in prominence. Let’s look at some of the highlights of 618.

During this year’s 618 event (held from June 1 to June 18, 2021), gross merchandise value (GMV) on the event’s main platform grew by 26.5% compared to the previous year, to 578.5 billion yuan (US$89.5 billion). Of this, 64.5 billion yuan (US$9.9 billion) came from live commerce.

Odile Roujol, the former CEO of Lancôme, is an investor and founding member of FaB (Fashion and BeautyTech), a community of beauty and fashion industry entrepreneurs and investors. In 2020, she launched Fab Fund Co-Creation Ventures, LLC, which invests in beauty and fashion startup companies. We talked to her about her goals in establishing a venture capital fund, the fund’s philosophy, and the companies in which it is investing.

Roujol created Fab Fund Co-Creation Ventures, LLC (“Fab Fund I”) through an initial closing in May 2020. …

In recent years, many new brands have emerged in the fast-growing Chinese cosmetics market. In step with this flourishing of brands, is the appearance of one new Chinese retailer after another. Many of these new retailers were launched in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic.

The OMO Experience-Based Retailer “ONLY WRITE”

ONLY WRITE began operations on March 28, 2020. From its beginnings in Hangzhou, where its headquarters is located, it has now grown to 14 stores in locations such as Ningbo and Nanjing.

One of ONLY WRITE’s most prominent features is its OMO-based focus on the customer experience. Almost…

L’Oréal Research & Innovation (R&I) has established a product development approach for helping to reduce their impact on the environment. This approach is called “Green Sciences” and it is the driving force behind the comprehensive sustainability programs that L’Oréal Group is driving. Here we take a look at some examples of the initiatives they’re trying out both in Japan and worldwide.

In June 2020, L’Oréal Group announced their new sustainability program and 2030 vision “L’Oréal for the Future” based on their SBTs (Science Based Targets) that they established in respect of planetary boundaries. This program includes not only direct initiatives…

The concept of ‘clean beauty’ has an increasing presence in the South Korean market. This movement focuses on the sustainability of the planet, and particularly environmental protection. TOUN28 is a South Korean clean beauty company that has been gaining recognition in recent years. Unlike most companies, their quest to be environmentally focused and proactive is their purpose, rather than as a means to an end.

TOUN28 is a South Korean beauty startup that was established in August 2016. Their brand goes by the same name and is co-run by CEOs Joon Soo Park and Maria Jung. …

Compared to other countries, China’s cosmetics market is largely dominated by skincare products. Within that category, facemasks, which come in a wide variety of brands both domestic and foreign, account for a whopping 20%. Here, we take an overall look at China’s facemask market and in particular the specialty brand, “Mask Family”.

Gen Z leads China’s facemask market

The facemask market in China kickstarted in 1998 with SK-II’s expansion into the country. The market then expanded with the coming of Olay in 2002. …

International brands are competing for tooth and nail to enter the lucrative South Korean cosmetics market. Paving the way for these foreign big names to get a foothold in is CTK Cosmetics. With expertise covering all aspects and processes of the industry, they provide behind-the-scenes support from product planning to launch.

CTK Cosmetics is a company that started out in 2001 as a cosmetics container manufacturer. From 2009 they began achieving significant growth through their “Full-Service” offering for international cosmetics makers.

CTK’s “Full-Service” is a B2B one-stop solution that can support all the processes their client companies go through: from…

Since they officially released cosmetics recommendation app Viewty at the end of 2019, with its core technology of skin diagnosis AI, Japanese company Novera Inc. has also been providing a wide range of solutions for brands and other companies. Novera has overcome the issues that arose while trying to improve the accuracy of their skin diagnosis AI and has come up with a radical new solution — a patent for which was filed in March this year.

Novera, a company focused on developing AI for skin diagnoses, possesses a data set of roughly 30,000 patterns just for “skin quality types”…