The Longest Single’s Day Ever for Beauty Brands

China has completed one of the longest Single’s Day e-commerce festival, and brands were all out to seek customers and sales. Started from October 14th, the first period of pre-sale, and expected to end on November 14th, the Single’s Day have been stretched to a month-long campaign, where consumers have plenty of time to decide on their purchases.

For beauty brands operating in China – this might have been the longest sales festival ever. Would it be longer? Maybe yes and maybe no. But underneath the glowing Single’s Day sales data, there are benefits and challenges brands are facing. Brands are still figuring out the strategy of cadence, and how to maximize their return from the events. 

The 15th Single’s Day Campaign is 30x the 1st Single’s Day

Originally started since 2009, the first Single’s Day in China lasted only 1 evening. November was considered a low season for sales prior to the age of e-commerce, but the emergence of Single’s Day campaign become one of the top marketing and sales event for brands. It is now the Chinese version of Thanksgiving sale, Black Friday sale, and boxing day. Many merchants bet half of their annual revenue on Single’s Day – because it is now becoming the time of year that consumers are most enthusiastic to buy.

The early campaign methods of beauty brands in Single’s Day is pretty simple. Chinese home-grown beauty brands such as AFU and Mask Family, developed a pre-Single’s Day marketing mechanism by sending out large numbers of free samples in advance to attract customers to come to the shop on the eve of Single’s Day. During the peak of Single’s Day traffic, brands offer limited discount, gift with purchases, and free-shipping to convert traffic into impulsive purchases. To be more accurate at forecasting and avoid out-of-stock, brands also developed a pre-sale model to forecast the units, and extended the delivery period to up to 14 days. 

It is really amazing to find out the Single’s Day campaign strategy 1.0 developed by early adopters of Single’s Day, still works for many brands nowadays. But obviously there are definitely more variations. 2024 Single’s Day campaign features a pre-sale period of 7 days the first wave of campaign ended October 24th, the second wave ending on November 11th, and a potential encore period after November 11. In different phases, brands can plan for various types of marketing activities such as pre-sale, livestream, social media hashtag campaigns, or even offline campaigns. 

Global Beauty Brands Embracing The Evolving Holiday Sales in China

For global beauty brands, the first real Single’s Day started in 2014, as global beauty brands such as Estee Lauder, La Mer, SK-II, Lancôme have launched their flagship stores in Tmall. Since the launching of Tmall Global in 2015, over thousands international beauty brands have joined Single’s Day to sell cross-border to China – without the requirement to set up a local entity, registering formulation or performing animal testing. 

The influx of global beauty brands quickly captured market share, squeezing the market share of Chinese home-grown beauty brands, and the international leading brands such as L’Oreal, Estee Lauder, Shiseido have always been top of the list of GMV. Global beauty brands took aggressive campaign strategy to launch large scale offline and online ads campaign, influencer campaigns, and hiring celebrities to join the Single’s Day Gala launched by Alibaba.

But not all beauty brands were used to Single’s Day’s aggressive discount campaign. Beauty brands, especially luxury beauty brands, used to leverage premium offline presence to attract high-income customer foot traffic. E-commerce and Single’s Day campaign were – to many brands – not an event to be exciting about, until the growth of younger generation consumers to a formidable mass, who prefer shopping online than offline. And brands started to embrace e-commerce. 

Among all the e-commerce platforms, Tmall and Tmall Global under Alibaba, have a significant advantage over other e-commerce platforms in China by hosting most beauty brands within the platform, both international and home-grown brands, and had always been one of the top choice for consumers to buy directly from the brands. 

However, the scattering of online traffic created more anxiety for beauty brands operating in China – nowadays consumers are no longer lingering on just one channel – they are everywhere. Customers can interact and shop from brands on platforms such as WeChat mini-program, JD.com, and social ecommerce channels such as Little Red Book, Douyin and even from overseas. The unique livestream ecommerce in China also created countless mini-Single’s Day sales campaigns through-out the year. Chinese consumers have unlimited choices to buy from brands, at any time they want.  

The Challenges from a Stretched Campaign

The booming of livestream ecommerce led by leading anchors such as Austin Li, Luo Wangyu is a double blade sword for the brands. Beauty brands want to have more certainties over their business growth, and rely less on major sales campaigns that concentrate in Q4. Single’s Day used to generate over half of the revenue for brands – but now it is probably evenly spread-out in a year due to more demands been consumed at the livestream campaigns. 

Beauty brands want to maintain brand equity, sell more without discount, sustain a price point where consumers can recognize their value. But the truth is – it is practically challenging in an environment where the brand’s competitors, both international and home-grown brands, are leveraging countless livestream campaigns and short-video ads to capture shrinking customer attention.

A stretched Single’s Day campaign means that – every day consumer visiting the brand’s flagship store, they may be able to see different price points. It may be the original price with gift-with-purchases, or a limited flash-sale price, or eligible with a special coupon. There is a growing distrust from Chinese beauty consumers whether brands can maintain their price points, and are hesitant to pay at full price. The idea that ‘maybe I can get a discount from live-streamer later’ persist in core beauty customers in China, and is one of the root-causes of inflating cancelation and return rate. 

Unstopping Innovation: Product’s lifecycles Under Pressure

Single’s Day had always been a great window for new product launch. According to FBeauty, an independent research firm showed that, over 100 leading beaty brands have released new formulation or products from August to October in 2024, such as the Prodigy Cellglowfrom Helena Rubinstein, 4th Generation Cream from OLAY, Precious Series from Clarins, and from Chinese beauty brands such as the Gen 3 of Original Repair from Proya, Recombinant Collagen Face Cream from Marubi. 

Image Source from Marubi’s Tmall Flagship Store

Chinese home-grown beauty brands are much faster at NPD compared with their western counterparts. Brands need to be prepared that their benchmark and target audience may change – because the market is hyper-active in terms of new product launches. For many brands starting to prepare for Single’s Day, the real battle is not really during October pre-sale or 1st wave sale, but from August to September – to stand out comparing with other competitors. In most cases the Single’s Day revenue is just the result of year-to-date market demand.

This may be an open question for many executives: should I steadily capture market share and grow organically with my hero products, or to sell as much as possible before my formulation meets a new challenger, who is cheaper and more popular. 

Single’s Day could be a fair judge. As we have kept telling our clients – Single’s Day is a test on the brand’s influence and market demands. But it is never an ending point – post-event analysis matter more to brand’s longevity in the China market. Beauty brand need to be really agile at marketing strategy, merchandising strategy and pricing strategy to be able to win the next campaign.