False eyelashes that earn tens of billions a year are trapped in brands.

The competition of false eyelashes’ involution starts with the types.

False eyelashes, which were popular all over the country more than ten years ago, are handmade false eyelashes 216 in Taiwan, China. The advantage is that the root of eyelashes is made of cotton stalks, which are soft to the touch and low in price. Even in 2023, you can buy a box for only two or three yuan.

The shortcomings of this kind of false eyelashes are also obvious. Because there is no sharpening process, it looks fake, cheaper and inferior products, even on the eyes, stagger, but because of the single option in those years, it was used by celebrities and the general public. Now, 216 false eyelashes have basically withdrawn from Chinese’s makeup table and become a consumable for novice makeup artists to practice their hands.

In recent years, consumers pay more attention to eye products, and false eyelashes exceed lip makeup and exceed expectations.

At this time, the manufacturers put more efforts into research and development. At first, the types of false eyelashes were only referred to by letters, such as A-type, V-type and Y-type eyelashes. Later, consumers responded that it was troublesome to wear a whole shape of false eyelashes, so there appeared a single cluster of eyelashes with fairy hair, sandwich style and fishtail style. For example, the boxed false eyelashes developed by Princess Moon, a brand, integrated a variety of upper and lower cluster eyelashes, which gained a good reputation among consumers and formed word-of-mouth marketing passed down from everyone.

Recently, the popular false eyelashes belong to the white deer with red Yuetong magnetic attraction false eyelashes. It has only two small pieces, no glue, and the operation is simple. Merchants can only wear them in one second with a small clip, and the fool-like operation saves makeup time. However, consumers don’t buy it, and a large number of netizens said that improper operation will still lead to falling off.

At present, consumers’ requirements for false eyelashes are very complicated. They should be simple, quick and easy to operate, and they should not delay time. Because the daily replacement loss is large, the price cannot be too high, and the styles should continue to evolve with the change of makeup.

For example, offline consumer Xiaoyi gave up this makeup process and switched to Cosmetic Contact Lenses because the technical operation of pasting false eyelashes was too difficult. "I feel that it is too difficult to use, so it is unnecessary to paste false eyelashes".

Consumers’ high requirements on the technology of false eyelashes make manufacturers roll in the material of false eyelashes, ranging from animal hair such as mink hair and rabbit hair to chemical artificial fiber hair such as PBT and PET, as well as silk protein hair. Most manufacturers will use artificial fiber hair to save costs.

False eyelashes come to the sales field, and the competition in brand marketing is also fierce.

E-commerce platforms 1688, Taobao, Pinduoduo, Tik Tok, Xiaohongshu, etc. have emerged one after another, which further promotes the price involution of false eyelashes. The price of a single box of false eyelashes is lower, and the natural false eyelashes occupy the first place in the sales of shopping websites, but the unit price is only around 6 yuan. On the platform of Little Red Book, consumers can spend a single box of three rows of false eyelashes under 3.9 yuan by combining platform coupons.

Overseas platforms such as Amazon and AliExpress are constantly emerging, and false eyelash merchants are also targeting overseas. Offline sales of false eyelashes have decreased. With the help of the east wind of cross-border e-commerce, Wang Guoqing, a young man from Shandong Province born after 1990s, aimed at Amazon market, and his daily flow was six or seven thousand dollars.

By 2021, with a large number of domestic false eyelashes businesses collectively turning to cross-border e-commerce, false eyelashes were quickly rolled abroad, which made a small business like Wang Guoqing feel pressure. Because it was a small business, the advertising of $100 a day could not get the corresponding sales, so he had to switch to many cross-border e-commerce. A cat-eye shaped false eyelashes developed by the team was sold for more than two months, totaling more than 30,000 orders. Now, their company’s daily order volume has reached 2000 orders, accounting for 75%-80% of the company’s total business volume.

Zhang Chuanyu, who is also a native of Shandong Province, put the main battlefield on AliExpress and founded the FADVAN brand. In 2020, the company transformed and focused on false eyelashes, focusing on the Brazilian market. In 2021, the sales volume of a single store in the Brazilian market exceeded $1.6 million in the first year.

Zhang Chuanyu believes that his greatest advantage is that he can keep up with the needs of consumers. By studying the platform data, his team calculated the user’s preferences and improved the original "flowering" eyelash style into a false eyelash style between exaggeration and nature, which is more in line with the aesthetics of Brazilian women. This product is currently sold for 400,000 US dollars every year.

Wang Guoqing’s false eyelash craft was introduced by her parents and studied in pingdu city, Shandong Province, while Zhang Chuanyu was originally from Pingdu.

From domestic volume to foreign countries, the false eyelashes market is fierce, but it is always inseparable from pingdu city, Shandong Province. Where is this small town fierce?

Pingdu city is the capital of false eyelashes in China.

For every ten pairs of false eyelashes consumed by women all over the world, seven pairs come from Pingdu.

According to the official data of pingdu city, the current output value of false eyelashes in pingdu city has reached 10 billion yuan. When you look up in the street of a small town, you can see signs with the words "eyelashes" everywhere.

The development of Pingdu false eyelashes industry can be traced back to 1980s, when many Koreans were doing business in Shandong, and Korean-funded enterprises began to set up eyelash factories in Qingdao. A villager named Cui in osawa Town, pingdu city was engaged in foreign trade, and after learning false eyelashes technology from Korean enterprises, he set up a family-style workshop in the local area.

The rudiment of Pingdu false eyelashes has taken shape, and the key point is how to sell things. Local residents take stupid methods, run to the market manually, take false eyelashes with them in big bags, and carry human flesh all over the country.

Gao Shanmin clearly remembers that his annual income with relatives soared to 300,000 yuan by relying on false eyelashes.

The high profits aroused the local people’s fighting spirit, and false eyelash factories rose from the ground and became one in Pingdu for several years, which brought huge profits to the local area.

The most specific birthplace of Pingdu false eyelashes is located in Changle Town, Dazeshan, pingdu city. On this land, the legend of Pingdu false eyelashes was worn by the hands of local women.

But at the beginning, the shortcomings of flat false eyelashes were also obvious. They were made by hand, with rough appearance and immature technology. Therefore, after making a profit, the original Pingdu false eyelashes boss sent his employees to Europe, America, Japan and South Korea to learn skills. In the next few years, he collected the essence of false eyelashes from all over the world, and Pingdu false eyelashes gradually became excellent in quality and diverse in styles.

The rapid development of decades has made the false eyelashes industry in Pingdu form a huge scale, with 2,165 households engaged in the false eyelashes industry, which has driven more than 50,000 people to obtain employment. What outsiders can’t imagine is that Pingdu’s small eyelash factories have actually propped up most of the global sales of false eyelashes.

In Pingdu, most of the false eyelashes factories are family workshops. Usually, men are responsible for building the outreach market of production and sales channels, while women are generally responsible for the production of false eyelashes.

Ms. Fan has been a false eyelash worker for 20 years because this job is close to home, which is convenient for picking up and dropping off children and taking care of the family. Most workers in Pingdu entered the false eyelashes industry after starting a family.

When foreigners walk into Pingdu and sit in taxis of local people, and have no intention to ask about the development of false eyelashes industry, they will get the answers from relatives and acquaintances who are false eyelashes practitioners.

Lao Cui, a taxi master, said that his cousin built a factory from the beginning, learned from acquaintances to find goods and recruit people, and slowly formed a team of 20 people. Everything was facilitated by the mutual help of fellow villagers.

On false eyelashes, Pingdu has also developed a complete industrial chain.

In 2022 alone, 800 companies were added from the production, processing and sales of false eyelashes.

The chain of making false eyelashes is long, and a pair of false eyelashes about two centimeters needs to go through nine steps: pressing hair, combing hair, putting on the thread, cutting hair, winding tube, setting, peeling tube, supporting and packaging before leaving the factory.

Handmade false eyelashes are more exquisite, while mechanically produced false eyelashes are single and rigid.

Every female worker in Pingdu factory needs to be responsible for different processes. Take hair cutting alone, a female worker can complete five or six thousand pairs of false eyelashes by working eight hours a day. In order to improve efficiency, one process is often finished before the next.

When consumer demand changes with the market trend, the product program of Pingdu false eyelashes needs to be adjusted in time. However, due to the different styles and lengths of false eyelashes, the methods of "combing hair" and "setting" are different.

Restricted by a series of objective conditions, Pingdu false eyelashes factory is highly dependent on labor.

In addition, the semi-finished products, finished products, glue, cartons, packaging bags and other products of Pingdu false eyelashes are all made by enterprises, and the division of labor of the false eyelashes industry is more detailed, and the supporting industries are gradually complete.

How hot is the Pingdu false eyelashes market?

It can be said that in 2019, the sales of false eyelashes exceeded 10,000, which can reach the top three in the country, but now this figure is not surprising.

With a large number of young people entering the Pingdu false eyelashes industry, combined with the new background of e-commerce and cross-sea, merchants have also taken the initiative to invest in new business models such as live online stores. Under the wave of e-commerce, young bosses who know more about the "Z generation" join the e-commerce, while the old family workshops are marginalized.

In the live broadcast rooms of some fake eyelash online stores, you can often hear such words: "The No.1 link is higher than the No.2 link, and it will be more flattering, Barbie Eye, 24.9 yuan."

Now, the biggest embarrassment of Pingdu false eyelashes is the lack of well-known brands.

Because the link of Pingdu false eyelashes industry is too long, it takes two months for a worker skilled in complex processes to get started, but there are almost no all-round workers.

Pingdu’s false eyelashes factory can’t do all kinds of false eyelashes, and the standards of false eyelashes in each factory are different, so it is difficult to control the production conditions and quality, and it is impossible to form a big brand.

Most factories still make profits by OEM products, and the income of a false eyelash product is only a few cents.

If you can’t accumulate stable and long-term customers, you can’t raise prices and get high added value. You can only continue to be a foundry, and the fake eyelash factory without a brand falls into a vicious circle.

Therefore, in the domestic market, only two large eyelash brands have been created at present.

A company, WOSADO Yuetong, which recently became popular with magnetic false eyelashes, got an investment of 300 million yuan under the investment of Sequoia China Seed Fund, Gaoyou Venture Capital and Dachen Venture Capital, and its main product is magnetic false eyelashes which can be easily detached.

The other is MLENDIARY Milan Diary, which was established in 2020. The fist product is the "Flash-on" series of false eyelashes. The A round was led by Fengrui Capital and followed by Shengjing Jiacheng, and the A round investment of more than tens of millions of yuan was completed.

The operation of these two brands is off-line, trying to educate consumers in beauty collection stores and shorten the link between products and consumers in beauty salons.

However, the popularity of the two has never been out of the circle. Compared with Princess Moon and Dream Deer, which are famous for their word-of-mouth communication, their influence among consumers is slightly weaker.

In overseas markets, Pingdu false eyelashes are on a roll in sales volume. Although they can earn a certain profit, they are mainly sold by OEM, so it is difficult to form a well-known brand.

However, Pingdu false eyelashes have tasted the sweetness of the high-end market. False eyelashes sold to overseas high-end salons need professional glue and the skills of local technicians. The charge is about 200 US dollars. The salon-level false eyelashes produced by Pingdu Factory have the highest profit rate, even reaching 100%.

Unfortunately, it is still difficult for Pingdu false eyelashes to enter the high-end market. For example, the false eyelashes of large international beauty companies such as L ‘Oré al and MAC are mostly from Java, Indonesia, and the companies that provide false eyelashes to the British royal family are also in Indonesia.

As a labor-intensive industry, Pingdu false eyelashes have low barriers, easy homogenization of products, and difficult upgrading of industrial chain, which is difficult to help the growth of high-quality brands. People can only remember the flat false eyelashes, but they can’t find the familiar big brands.

In order to break the situation, the current Pingdu false eyelashes are in the industrial transformation period. The local government also provided policy support, investing 3 billion yuan to create a "beautiful online economic industrial park", integrating e-commerce, sales, logistics, brand and research and development, and began to cultivate a false eyelash industrial belt. In terms of target consumers, we will vigorously develop "her economy" and "Z generation" groups, subdivide new industrial tracks, and develop cross-border e-commerce.

This article is from: GPLP