November is a crucial month for global retail, as it marks the start of the holiday shopping season and features the world’s two biggest shopping events: China’s Double 11 and the US’s Black Friday-Cyber Monday.
With Euromonitor International’s new Passport: E-Commerce system, we can now analyze the online sales of over 500 FMCG categories in this key period. In this article, we examine how beauty and personal care (BPC) products performed online in China and the US in November 2023.
The online sales performance of color cosmetics diverges in China and the US
In 2023, the US economy worries consumers, as inflation is still high and spending is low. This affects the holiday shopping season. Some BPC categories in the US do better than others online. Oral care gains 1.5% share, while color cosmetics lose the same. In China, Double 11 is a huge shopping festival that reflects the consumer economy. In 2022, November sales were more than 16% of the annual sales of 12 FMCG industries online.
The BPC market in China is constantly changing, and two important trends stood out in November 2023. First, skin care products lost a lot of value share in the BPC e-commerce sales, falling by 5.3 percentage points from the previous year. On the other hand, color cosmetics gained a lot of value share, increasing by almost 3.6 percentage points. This shows that more people are interested in and buying color cosmetics, indicating a possible rise in the demand for make-up products.
However, it is clear that, in some other categories, brands and retailers are engaging in heavy discounting in a bid to lure shoppers. For example, the average prices of fragrance products purchased online in November decreased by 4% compared to the year before.
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In China, average prices across oral care surged by 24% in November 2023 compared to the same period in 2022
The main reason for this increase is that more and more Chinese consumers are buying power toothbrushes. On the flip side, the average price of skin care products went down by 12%. This is because the average price of moisturizers and treatments, which make up almost half of the skin care sales, also went down. This shows that skin care consumers are changing their habits, and choosing cheaper products in the category because they are worried about the economy.
Douyin and Amazon stand out as the most interesting retailers in BPC e-commerce in China and the US
Amazon was the big winner in the US BPC e-commerce market in November 2023. Its share of BPC e-commerce sales went up to 14%, from 7% in November 2022. Amazon did well in the holiday season because of one of its strengths; US consumers trust Amazon to deliver their gifts on time, even when other retailers fail. They learned this in 2021 when the global supply chain was in crisis. In 2023, they still remember this lesson.
Douyin was the fastest-growing BPC e-commerce retailer in China. Douyin is like TikTok in China, and it started selling products online in July 2021. Since then, it has grown a lot and competed with Tmall and JD.com, the big online retailers in China. Douyin uses short videos to help sellers show their products to users who like them. This means that Douyin users buy things because they are inspired, not because they search for them. Influencers also help with this. This model is very popular; Kanebo, a Japanese beauty brand, said that Douyin is the “best platform” to make people know their brand.
L’Oréal Groupe stands as the sales leader in BPC e-commerce in both China and the US
L’Oréal Groupe, the big beauty company from France, stayed on top of the US BPC e-commerce market in November 2023. It had 12% of all the online BPC sales in the US that month. L’Oréal was also the best company in Chinese BPC e-commerce, with 16% of the value of online BPC sales in China.
Lume was the fastest growing BPC company in the US in November 2023, among those with a significant size. The brand sells feminine deodorants and its sales went up by 481% from the year before. In China, the top five BPC e-commerce companies that grew the most in November 2023 had something in common — most of them were local. This shows that C-beauty (Chinese beauty) brands are doing well and growing in the market, as consumers trust domestic brands more.
