Beauty care in the time of Corona: “No-touch” retail and staff-hosted live streams in lockdown China look set to stay
In order to suppress the spread of COVID-19, China has been thorough in implementing “no-touch” retail, which aims to limit physical human contact in transactions. We looked at some examples in the beauty industry to see exactly what this has entailed.
Across a wide area of China, many stores have had to close and citizens have been barred from leaving their homes. Under such conditions, delivery services have played a supportive role in people’s everyday lives. Users have been ordering and paying via smartphone apps, and delivery people have been leaving the goods at designated spots around apartment complexes. Once they receive a notification that the goods have been delivered, users go to pick them up. In other words, products can be received without any face-to-face contact whatsoever.
When one door shuts, a live stream window opens
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, total retail sales of social consumer goods within January and February experienced a 20.5% drop from the same period in the previous year — down to 5.2 trillion yuan (US$733 billion) — reflecting the serious impact COVID-19 has had. On the other hand, online retail sales grew by 3% to 1.4 trillion yuan (US$203 billion). Beauty-related products, although not entirely ‘necessities’, have also seen steady demand. One reason for the spike in online sales is that the difficulty of selling at brick-and-mortar stores has led companies of brands to concentrate more on selling over the internet.
Most of Perfect Diary’s real stores were closed, however, beauty staff from 50 of their stores were put to work streaming live videos via a WeChat mini-program. In these videos, the staff showcased special techniques for applying makeup with Perfect Diary products, answered users’ questions, and even held a lottery.
Perfect Diary set up different accounts for different stores, to localize to the region’s dialect and environment. The streams weren’t simply for showing off products and doing PR either — the staff also encouraged users to maintain hygiene and safety, and sometimes staff and users supported each other and cheered each other on, as they were all going through the same experience of being confined indoors.
Perfect Diary’s e-commerce sales were also good, with their flagship store on Tmall reaching around 100 million yuan (US$14 million) within February.
Live from the factory production line
Skincare brand Gooben, in a campaign celebrating International Women’s Day, streamed a video of their factory production line via a WeChat mini program. By 10 pm that day, their sales had reached over 6 million yuan (US$54,480).
While Gooben’s stores were closed, they organized for experts to give online lectures to store owners on how to deal with the sudden drop in customers. They also encouraged representative and franchise member stores to stream the live videos as well through a mini-program.
Among overseas brands, YSL was active in using online platforms. Across seven days from February 20th, YSL ran a sales promotion for their new perfume Libre via a mini-program. In this promotion, if you could get five of your friends to purchase a product, you could receive a specially-made YSL bracelet. This was no easy task though, as the friends had to purchase a product worth 790 yuan (US$109), but there was nevertheless a huge response and 800 customers ended up acquiring the bracelet.
YSL also ran a promotion on the live stream shopping platform Taobao Live. With the participation of popular influencer Viya, the promotion introduced Libre and included giveaways such as a choker and lipstick. Over 33 million users tuned in and the featured goods were sold out within six minutes.
Live stream shopping helps compensate for the retail slump
As most residents in the urban areas of China spent February cooped up in their homes, viewers of live stream shopping grew like never before, and in response, streams by influencers quickly increased. One influencer Li Jiaqi, who we introduced in our article on Chinese men’s cosmetics , began vigorously streaming videos right when COVID-19 became serious, and repeatedly ranked among Weibo’s hottest search words.
For example, Li’s February 10th stream was viewed by just under 15 million people and achieved surprising sales of 30 million yuan (US$4.174 million). Also, in the 27 days between February 5th and March 2nd, Li recorded sales of close to one billion yuan (US$137.8 million).
Live stream shopping is also being enthusiastically applied to retail brands. Shanghai shopping center New World City streamed live video for 38 hours on International Women’s Day through Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. From the shopping center, the stream showcased 60 brands, involved close to 100 staff members, and introduced over 300 different products in stores.
This was watched by over 30,000 people and total sales from live stream shopping grew tenfold over the previous weekend. The Shiseido store within New World City made close to 50,000 yuan (US$6,900) in sales in the space of just one hour.
Meanwhile, for the Intime Department Store chain under Alibaba Group, within just less than a month’s time over 5,000 female consumers across China signed up for Intime’s account on the Taobao Live platform. These women weren’t strictly influencers, and some who were particularly outstanding sellers — and who remained anonymous — racked up over 100,000 yuan (US$13,880) in sales from just one stream.
Although the Intime branch in Hangzhou City couldn’t remain open between February 14th and 19th, live stream shopping sales covered just under 50% of sales from the same period in the previous year.
“No-touch” consumer-style set to stay
The threat from the coronavirus has without a doubt changed the consumer behavior of the Chinese. Tmall Global pointed out that on International Women’s Day, sales of hair removal devices grew remarkably by 1,140% over the previous year. The reason for this: as treatment clinics and salons were closed, more and more women attended to their hair removal needs by themselves at home. Another area of changed behavior was with elderly people, who despite having been averse to using the internet before, had begun to use online delivery services more.
With the number of new cases of the virus has decreased in China, people are starting to regain their normal lives again, if gradually. Businesses are reopening, including Shanghai Disney Resort, which partially reopened recently. However, opening the WeChat timeline still shows images of mask-wearers and posts advertising online fitness classes and portable thermometer devices, proving that the impact from the disaster is not completely recovered from. Even if stores return to business as usual, it’s unlikely people will flock to them straight away.
Rather, the psychology of consumers, which now knows the convenience and safety of making everything “no-touch”, may have changed forever. We can expect that the way of consumption COVID-19 has brought about will go on to take root among consumers.
Text: Ching Li Tor
Original text (Japanese): Team Roboteer
