It has produced 70% false eyelashes in the world, and the county town of Shandong is not satisfied.
A piece of false eyelashes as light as feathers has created the prosperity of Pingdu beauty industry. With the gathering of nearly 4,000 beauty eyelash enterprises, "70% of the world’s false eyelashes are made in Pingdu" has become the city business card of this small county in Jiaodong.
In the Pingdu beauty and eyelash industry of nearly 4,000 enterprises, a price war of "rolling up and dying" has already started quietly. Brand, e-commerce and "explosive products" are the key words of this fierce competition.
Small eyelashes, big mystery. The false eyelashes market has a unique business operation logic. How can Pingdu enterprises play the global market? Under the increasingly involution industry situation, how will Pingdu drive the regional brand of "eyelash capital" to "go out of the circle"?
Collective reflection of Pingdu beauty cosmetics enterprises;
Why is it so difficult to cultivate independent brands?
Among the 618 promotion banks, Qingdao Ruoman Eyelash Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Qingdao Ruoman") has received orders from downstream wholesalers, which has greatly doubled before. In Pingdu, there are about 3,895 false eyelash enterprises like Qingdao Ruoman, which have driven more than 50,000 local employees. At present, the annual output of false eyelashes in Pingdu accounts for about 80% of the country and 70% of the world.
Observing the current Pingdu, local beauty and eyelash enterprises are mainly engaged in processing on behalf of others. Although some local brands, such as Mengjieshangpin and Menglu, have broken into the head of the industry, among the nearly 4,000 Pingdu enterprises, only a few can do so, and the lucrative sales ends are still mainly concentrated in southern cities with developed e-commerce formats such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou.
Pingdu, which has mastered the "lifeline" of 70% false eyelashes in the world, has a production advantage and a larger profit margin at the sales end. Naturally, there are also local enterprises trying to regain the initiative in sales.
It is a good idea to extend the industrial chain to expand the profit growth point, but brand marketing is not a strong point for production enterprises. After trying, some manufacturers choose to return to the existing track.
Pingdu Nuofan Times Eyelash Crafts Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Nuofan Times"), which has been engaged in the processing of false eyelashes for 12 years, settled in Pinduoduo’s self-operated sales channel last year. "There is no profit, and finally it is found that it has lost money." Chen Dongliang, general manager of Nuofan Times, believes that "to be our own strength, our strength is OEM production. As long as the volume is large enough, we can survive safely."
Nuofan age production workshop
Yu Xiaoqian also tried the water. "It is difficult to set up a professional e-commerce operation team in Pingdu, and it requires a lot of capital investment. More importantly, the low industry threshold makes it easy for the trained operation team to go it alone and become a competitor." She concluded, "This is tantamount to a’ gamble’."
The high cost of trial and error and the lack of professional operators are the obstacles that hinder Pingdu false eyelashes enterprises from building brands. Under this premise, cooperation with professional organizations to "learn from each other’s strengths and make up for their own shortcomings" is becoming the solution for some Pingdu false eyelashes enterprises.
Yu Xiaoqian’s approach is to "cooperate with the’ store group’ to sell goods and wholesale them to small sellers who sell their own brands, thus increasing sales and expanding brand influence."
Wang Ming, general manager of Qingdao Yimei Eyelash Co., Ltd., explored a new way-contract brand contract system. Wang Ming told the reporter, "Sign an underwriting agreement with a third-party organization, set a sales volume, and achieve the proportion of reaching and failing to reach the agreement. In this way, the cost and inventory pressure are transferred to third-party organizations, and the profit rate of enterprises is lower, but the cost is reduced, and there is a guaranteed revenue. "
The collective reflection of enterprises to cultivate their own brands also reflects the "flaws" that need to be improved urgently in Pingdu’s beauty eyelash industry. In this process, Pingdu’s beauty eyelash enterprises have demonstrated their flexibility and innovation in coping with the market, and also laid a new foundation for the future "multi-flowering" of Pingdu’s beauty eyelash industry.
How to win the "self-killing" in the industry?
Pingdu set off an "industrial revolution"
"The current false eyelashes market is a’ self-killing’ market within the industry." Chen Dongliang, who has 12 years of experience in the production of false eyelashes, said with emotion that the industry threshold is not high, more and more people are entering the market, and the industry is involved. At the same time, there are still many self-employed people who have no operating costs to promote the "price war" situation, and the production pressure of standardized factories has increased sharply.
The production barrier of false eyelashes is not high, but the production process is complicated. A pair of false eyelashes must go through at least 7 processes and 9 workers in the foundry. For example, the labor cost of a box of 10-row "lazy trilogy" false eyelashes is about 3 yuan, accounting for more than half of the labor cost, in addition to logistics, operation, venue and other costs, while the retail price of this style in Pinduoduo has been as low as seven or eight yuan, and the profit margin is extremely compressed.
The low industry threshold and the continuous "price war" are followed by "homogenization". In the commercial world of false eyelashes, a newly developed "explosive product" has a dividend period of only half a month, and then many "imitations" came into battle and fought a "price war", and the price of the original "explosive product" was soon forced to reduce.
"Patent protection of false eyelashes is very difficult. First, enterprises are not sure which one will be’ explosive’, so it is difficult to invest in each patent application; Second, the scope of patent protection is limited, and it is difficult to define’ plagiarism’ if’ imitation’ slightly changes the degree of eyelash crossing. " Yu Xiaoqian told reporters with the experience of people around him. Paradoxically, when the responsibility of "imitation" was successfully investigated, many "imitation" disappeared together, and the popularity of this "explosion" quickly disappeared, and the life cycle was shorter.
False eyelashes produced by Pingdu
A simple lawsuit can’t summarize the unique business operation logic of the false eyelashes market. Obviously, a pair of "invisible hands" are needed to maintain the benign order of the market. To this end, Pingdu has started a new round of "industrial revolution" in this involution, and started the "first shot" of industrial transformation and upgrading.
In recent years, Pingdu has successively built a beauty online new economic industrial park, a beauty supporting industrial park, Dazeshan and old shop production bases, and opened up the upstream, middle and lower reaches of raw material production, processing and manufacturing, and e-commerce sales.
"From 2020 to now, the park and Zhejiang University Robotics Research Institute have jointly established a joint research and development center for beauty smart equipment to develop intelligent manufacturing equipment and digital workshops. The equipment such as card loading machine, card punching machine and glue coating machine has been put into trial operation and is expected to be put into use in 2026." Pan Xinyu, head of the operation of Qingdao Beauty Online New Economic Industrial Park, said.
In addition, pingdu city Beauty Eyelash Association plans to set up a "patent pool" with beauty eyelash enterprises to protect original designs and cooperate with enterprises to promote the standardized development of Pingdu eyelash industry.
At the beginning of this year, Pingdu issued a number of policies to support the development of eyelash industry, rewarding qualified "individual enterprises", enterprises above designated size and cross-border e-commerce enterprises, and issuing corresponding support policies for brands, talents, exhibitions and park agglomeration.
Pingdu beauty cosmetics online new economic industrial park under construction
There are various indications that Pingdu is transforming and upgrading through industrial agglomeration, branding, digitalization and standardization, creating a regional brand of "China Eyelash Capital Pingdu", trying to crack the internal volume of the industry and fight a "breakthrough war" to compete for strength.
Many false eyelash enterprises unanimously reached a consensus that the supply capacity is the "line of life and death" to test whether the false eyelash enterprises can survive for a long time, and the general amount of "70% of the world’s false eyelashes are made flat" is the strength and advantage of Pingdu beauty eyelash industry. In this increasingly fierce competition, thanks to the "industrial revolution" initiated by Pingdu, it is expected to further reduce costs and increase efficiency. In the future, Pingdu, how to make the regional brand of "eyelash capital" move around the world is worth looking forward to.
(Public Daily, public news client reporter Du Yanan)
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