Beauty devices are leading the personal care small appliance market. What are the brands’ growth strategies?

In the past few years, consumers' demands for beauty and personal care products have become more and more refined, and many subcategories have emerged. After more than a decade of market education, what do consumers want from beauty devices? What kind of competitive situation has the beauty device market developed to? Beauty devices lead the personal care small appliance market. What growth strategies do brands have?

Personal care small appliances are definitely one of the most resilient categories in the small appliance market.

First, in the past few years, consumers' personal care needs have become more and more refined, which has created more and more opportunities for subdivided categories. From 2017 to 2022, the e-commerce penetration rate of China's personal care equipment market has increased from 43.8% to 62%. Water flossers, waist and neck massagers, hair dryers, skin scrapers, facial washers, hair removal devices, beauty devices... the overall personal care category is moving towards a more convenient, smarter, and more comfortable experience.

In particular, beauty and body care devices such as beauty devices and hair removal devices have shown very good growth performance in all channels. From 2019 to 2022, the sales of beauty and body care devices in traditional e-commerce channels such as Tmall and JD.com increased from 7.6 billion to 11.9 billion yuan, with a compound growth rate of 16.35%. Taking Douyin as an example in live e-commerce, its sales of beauty and body care devices reached 3.269 billion yuan in 2022, and its sales in Q4 2022 increased by 102.22% year-on-year.

Beauty devices entered the domestic market around 2010. After several product iterations and consumer education, they have now entered a stage where domestic substitution has become the mainstream and the dominance of overseas brands has loosened.

The explosion of beauty devices in recent years is also due to consumers' more stringent appearance management. Research from Dingxiang Doctor and iResearch Consulting shows that a large proportion of consumers who have anti-aging needs or have had some experience in medical beauty will choose beauty devices as a regular anti-aging product.

So, after more than a decade of market education, what do consumers want from beauty devices? What is the competitive situation in the beauty device market? In such a category with high technical barriers and high average customer orders, what opportunities do domestic brands have to overtake others?

1. What are the driving factors for home beauty devices to become a star category of personal care small appliances?

Personal care small appliances have been one of the fastest growing home appliance segments in the past five years, especially during the three years of the pandemic.

According to Euromonitor, the market size of small personal care appliances will reach RMB 27.7 billion, RMB 30.9 billion, RMB 34.3 billion, RMB 35.9 billion, RMB 36.7 billion and RMB 38.9 billion in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively, with an average annual compound growth rate of 7.04%.

In the market of personal care small appliances, beauty devices, hair removal devices, and hair dryers are the categories with the largest market capacity and the fastest growth rate. In 2022, beauty devices accounted for 51.75% and hair removal devices accounted for 33.1%.

Source: Magic Mirror Market Intelligence Research

Unlike small cleaning appliances, which are also growing rapidly but have relatively rigid demands, small personal care appliances are a type of upgraded demand product (not a rigid demand) designed to improve the quality of life, driven by the fact that consumers pay more attention to appearance management.

In the personal care small appliance market, take beauty devices as an example. They have the largest market capacity and the second fastest market growth rate after hair removal devices. Because beauty devices have the attributes of skin care products + small appliances, they were the only subcategory in the beauty and personal care sector that maintained an increase in food share during last year's Double Eleven period.

At the same time, whether for actual efficacy or in consumers' perception, existing home beauty instrument products will generate joint consumption with common skin care products/light medical beauty products, which is a manifestation of consumers using more comprehensive and refined means to manage their appearance:

1. Consumers with anti-aging needs will use beauty devices as an upgrade and supplement to skin care products

The demand for anti-aging is becoming younger and more common. The anti-aging crowd is mainly between 18 and 35 years old, but 25 years old is a watershed. The youthful skin population under 25 years old (those born after 1995 and 2000) has a growing awareness of anti-aging, while those over 25 years old mostly have mild and mature skin, and the rate of facial collagen synthesis slows down. Wrinkles, yellowing, sagging and sensitivity are the main skin problems they face.

Source: Dingxiang Doctor

According to Dingxiang Doctor's "Survey on Home Beauty Devices Awareness and Anti-Aging Consumption Behavior", for consumers with anti-aging needs, 85% will choose functional skin care products, and 20% will try home beauty devices.

2. Consumers who have the habit of undergoing light medical aesthetics regularly will use beauty devices as a means of maintaining and nourishing their light medical aesthetics.

What is light medical beauty? According to iMedia data, non-surgical light medical beauty projects include injections (hyaluronic acid, botulinum toxin, collagen, etc.), lasers (photorejuvenation, Thermage, thermal lifting), and others (skin/body care, thread sculpture). These projects have less trauma and faster recovery. In 2021, non-surgical medical beauty projects accounted for 52%.

According to iResearch Consulting, the most preferred product science information among users who are considering purchasing home beauty devices includes: 20% want to know whether/how medical beauty and beauty devices can be used in combination, 48% want to know under what circumstances/skin conditions beauty devices cannot be used; and more than 36% of medical beauty consumers purchase beauty devices as a countermeasure to skin aging.

In fact, when the epidemic caused a huge impact on the offline beauty service industry, it also stimulated consumers' demand for using beauty devices at home. Combined with more refined facial management and anti-aging needs, home beauty devices have successfully become the small household appliances/skin care consumer products segment with the most growth potential.

Source: Dingxiang Doctor

2. As beauty devices are a category with high technical barriers and high customer orders, how can brands tap into the market potential?

From the above, it can be seen that home beauty devices themselves have category genes such as strong functionality (mainly focusing on specific beauty functions: anti-aging), high technical barriers (involving skin, photoelectric, chemical, and bioengineering technologies), and high customer orders (mainstream prices are between 2k and 5K). At the same time, they are also personal care needs that are stimulated by the appearance economy and improve the quality of life.

1. Radio frequency beauty devices with comprehensive functions have become mainstream, and there is still room for product technology iteration

From the perspective of industry development history, since Panasonic's beauty instrument entered the Chinese market in 2010, beauty instruments have gone through the stages of market education and market popularization, but beauty instrument products still have a lot of room for iteration (whether it is technical optimization or satisfying user pain points).

At present, home beauty devices are mainly equipped with three mainstream technologies: radio frequency, microcurrent, and light. Among them, radio frequency technology has been proven by the medical community to have the effect of achieving facial rejuvenation. Radio frequency beauty devices with a customer unit price of more than 2,500 yuan have occupied more than 80% of the market share. According to Gfk, basic skin care electronic beauty devices are no longer popular among consumers in recent years, and comprehensive skin care radio frequency devices are the main trend.

The principle of radio frequency beauty instrument is that radio frequency acts on the skin, and the heat energy generated by electromagnetic waves can heat the dermis. After heating, the collagen under the skin will shrink and tighten, and promote the regeneration of collagen cells.

Another technology that can address the problems of collagen loss and skin sagging is EMS microcurrent technology: it uses weak electric current to stimulate muscles and lymph to achieve muscle contraction, remove edema, and lift and tighten skin. Its representative product is the facial massager.

In addition, to solve different skin problems of consumers, common technologies and corresponding functions used by home beauty devices on the market include: laser (hair removal), LED phototherapy (yellow light to lighten spots, blue light to remove acne, red light to remove wrinkles), steam/atomization (cleaning pores, hydrating and moisturizing), sonic waves (deep cleansing, maintaining skin elasticity), and ion import/export (promoting the absorption of skin care products and promoting the discharge of dirt).

2. The industry structure shows a trend of domestic substitution, and the mainstream price range is concentrated upward

In addition to changes in products and technology, the beauty instrument industry is also reshuffled, with emerging domestic brands gradually breaking the monopoly of overseas brands.

Although overseas brands, led by YAMAN, dominate the electronic beauty instrument market due to their brand positioning and technological barriers, in the 1.5-5k price range where market competitors are concentrated, domestic brands are gradually increasing their contribution to this price range due to their cost-effectiveness. According to Magic Mirror data, after 2021, the competitive price range of beauty instruments has been more precisely concentrated from 1.5-5k to 3k-4k, and consumers are more inclined to high-priced products.

Among them, there are emerging domestic brands such as FLOSSOM, AMIRO, and Ulike. According to Mojing data, the market share of domestic brands has increased from 21.8% to 35.8% in 2021-2022. During the Double Eleven period last year, domestic brands occupied three of the top five sales of home beauty devices.

3. Core strategy for brand growth: increasing R&D investment and communicating with users

From the perspective of market strategy, brands not only need to increase investment in research and development, but also can start from the following directions: improving efficacy in specific facial areas, ease of use, intelligent experience and other dimensions to enhance technical barriers.

For example, there is a model called YAMAN YJFS16RF, called the Golden Five Rings Radio Frequency Device. This product occupied a market share of 10.2% in the electronic beauty device market from July to December 2022. As an upgraded version of YAMAN PRO, it has more comprehensive and powerful functions: it can target facial areas including fading forehead wrinkles, fading wrinkles around the eyes, and lifting the jawline, which can comprehensively deal with the problem of loose/sagging/wrinkled skin.

At the same time, two skin care modes are designed to meet consumers' "lazy skin care" needs: the 6-minute lazy mode can gradually build up skin tolerance, and the 10-minute POWER mode can adjust the output energy waves according to different skin conditions.

The above-mentioned powerful skin care functions and intelligent temperature control technology have enabled the Golden Five Rings Radio Frequency Device to achieve a market share of 22% in the 3k-5k price range.

On the other hand, the beauty instrument technology field is unfamiliar, the customer order is high, and there is no rigid demand, which makes users take a long time to make decisions. Brands need to strengthen communication with users, transform the working principles of home beauty instruments across multiple disciplines such as dermatology, clinical medicine, optoelectronic physics, biology, etc. into easy-to-understand popular science information, establish industry standards for consumers to distinguish between good and bad products, establish a professional brand image, and reduce their decision-making costs.

For example, live streaming e-commerce is the most frequently mentioned channel for consumers to promote products. In addition to the low prices or gifts in the live streaming room, the host’s own aura of trust will further reduce consumers’ decision-making costs.

A very interesting phenomenon is that during last year's Double Eleven period, the star products of the leading brands such as the Miguang six-level radio frequency, Ya-meng max second generation, and Chupu Miracle S+ eye-lifting radio frequency beauty device were mainly contributed by influencers, and Ya-meng, which had the highest proportion of brand self-broadcasting contribution, only accounted for 33%.

However, unlike the usual marketing strategies of the skin care industry, as a medical-like beauty device, in addition to the conventional promotional activities on Xiaohongshu, Douyin, etc., some health and medical KOLs such as Dingxiang Doctor will be selected for promotion to enhance the professionalism and safety of the product.

Source: Community Marketing Research Institute (ID: Community_Marketing), insights into community consumption