The influx of capital into the olfactory economy makes it cool, white and white, and domestic perfume wins by "feeling"?

Text "Financial World Weekly" Chen Chang

Editor Yang Jie

When the lipstick economy was hit hard by the epidemic, the smell economy gained business opportunities.

With the rise of "national fashion", the fragrance market has changed the tonality of "luxury goods" in the past and is no longer monopolized by international brands. From "Liangbaikai" to "Twelve Flowers God" in the Forbidden City, a series of perfume products with "Chinese flavor" have become popular online celebrity products among young people. Capital has also poured real money into this field, including domestic fragrant brands such as Wen Ku, Guanxia, Scentooze and so on.

Recently, SCENT LIBRARY, a perfume brand, completed tens of millions of dollars in Series B financing, which was exclusively invested by PUIG (Puyg), a Spanish perfume beauty giant. The fragrance series products produced by Smell Library include perfume, home fragrance, body care and so on. Among them, the "200" series products are the most famous.

Can domestic perfume become the new "wealth password"?

The birth of "smell bank" originated from the perfume brand agency business. After returning from New Zealand in 2008, Lou Shinan, its founder, set up a smell library in Hong Kong in partnership with friends, won the agency right of Demetri perfume brand in the United States, monopolized their products and opened the first store in Beijing. Later, the odor library sold several brands such as MOR and TOTHESCENS one after another, and finally established its own exclusive brand odor library.

During the period of 20 14-20 16, some floral products such as Lady Daisy, Lavender, Sage and Water Lily were introduced in the Smell Store, but it was not until the key of "national marketing" was found that this brand focusing on "national feelings" was well known by consumers. At present, Wen Ku has opened dozens of offline stores in cities such as Beishangguang, Chongqing, Wuhan, Chengdu and Hangzhou.

Take the online celebrity product "Liangbaikai" perfume produced by Smell Library as an example. The official introduction was inspired by the scene of boiling water in aluminum pot, China decades ago. It is about home, about someone's memory, about taste, so it can be called "a glass of water with a story".

Wang Bolun, a perfumer and brand manager of Grapefruit Planet Fragrance, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that the "Smell Library" mainly connects the fragrance with the memories in the minds of Chinese people through this marketing method, inciting the collective cognition of an era and giving the "fragrance" a memory.

Therefore, after 20 17 went on the market, "Liangbaikai" perfume achieved good sales results. In addition, the Smell Library also invited red people from Weibo, Tik Tok, Xiaohongshu and other platforms to "plant grass" for promotion. It is reported that this perfume sold more than 400,000 bottles during the 20 18 Double Eleven period, and the cumulative sales volume for the whole year exceeded one million bottles, accounting for more than 30% of the total sales of the brand.

After tasting the sweetness of "China flavor", a series of products such as ginger cola, green tea and white rabbit in the smell library came out one after another, and the category of the company's products gradually expanded to the whole care products, including perfume, care products, hand care, car fragrance, home fragrance and other products. Lou Shinan once said: "The whole perfume and essence consumption market in China is not large, with a scale of about 20 billion yuan. The best situation for the company in the future is to achieve a share of 65,438+05%, so it is necessary to expand the category. Among them, toiletries are very high-frequency (consumer goods). "

However, there is always a certain gap between the sales of other series of fragrance products and Liangbaikai perfume. "Caijing Tianxia" weekly searched the Tmall flagship store in the "Smell Library" and found that the top two stores are "Liangbaikai" fragrance bath lotion for men and women, with monthly sales of more than 6,000 copies; The fragrance of "Liangbaikai" moistens the body lotion, and the monthly sales volume exceeds 3,000 copies. In contrast, the monthly sales of other product lines are 2000 and 1000 respectively.

Wang Bolun said that in her experience, users' cognition has different "emotional concentrations", even for national fashion items. For example, users have a say in the concept of "cool and white" in the smell library, and generally recognize its faint smell; But the sweet white rabbit is different from the tomato series with strong "gourmet tone". According to her observation, some consumers don't like to use smells that are too similar to food on their bodies.

This means that there is still great uncertainty in the marketing strategy of creating "explosive models" in the smell library, and not every one can be a great success.

Li Jing, a visiting lecturer in perfume at Paris International Fashion Institute of Shanghai University, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly: "A mature brand can never survive by just one explosion."

He believes that throughout the successful perfume brands in Europe and America, there are at least a few popular items that can continuously maintain sales, and the product lines will be increasingly refined according to market changes, so that more consumers at different levels can get a better olfactory experience. However, domestic brands are still in the process of exploration and development, which requires managers and capital behind the brand to clarify their goals and brand concepts and continue to exert their strength.

Wang Bolun also gave the same view. She said that the products of the odor library are still relatively reproducible at present. After its series of products such as Liangbaikai and White Rabbit were launched, a large number of products focusing on the "childhood memories" of Chinese people immediately appeared on the market, such as the "Light of Hours" series of Youth of the Beast. Similar brands will soon use low-price strategies and other channels and angles to "cut off" the original brands and divert users' attention and purchasing power.

For the odor database, not only the durability of the manufacturing ability of "explosive" is in doubt, but also some unfriendly voices are always lingering around it: some consumers do not recognize this new perfume brand, and social media often question "cheap", "low quality" and "not perfume but essence".

The uniform price of the perfume in the smell bank is 285 yuan /50ml, while the price of many big-name perfumes, such as Chanel Classic No.5 perfume, is 1 100 yuan /50ml. In contrast, the products of odor database are much cheaper, but in the eyes of many perfume lovers, this means that its "cost performance" is not high.

An industry insider explained to Caijing Tianxia that most perfumes have three colors: front, middle and back, with distinct levels, which requires perfumers to master the levels of perfume skillfully when designing perfumes, but most perfume products in the odor library can't do this-most of them have a single taste, some imitate scenes, and some imitate specific items, such as a certain flower fragrance, a certain food, or snow dust.

Some consumers also said that they had been told by the shopping guide in the smell store that a product could last for a whole day, but after actual purchase and use, they found that the fragrance could only last for about two hours.

Li Jing believes that Wen Ku's low-price strategy considers the real purchasing power of China consumers. Actually, it's true. Most domestic perfume brands, such as Beast Youth, Guanxia and Feng Chun Shili, are not too expensive. Take 50ml perfume as an example. Youth of the Beast has two different price points: 139 yuan and 159 yuan. The price of Feng Chun Shili is 258 yuan, and the more upscale Fauvism and Guanxia have sold for more than 600 yuan.

In order to distinguish it from European and American perfume brands, Smell Database launched the brand "Feelings" for marketing. There is nothing wrong with this book, but in Jing Li's view, the "sentimental card" has one of the biggest problems-the generation gap. People of different ages and cultures may not understand its theme creation at all. This also puts a higher test on the market and creative department behind the brand.

After completing this latest financing, Wen Ku said that the financing will be used to develop original fragrance products based on contemporary China culture, strengthen online and offline linkage to enhance the consumer experience, optimize and integrate the international supply chain, and build a talent team.

"It is said that after getting new financing, the smell library will reshape the brand image and create different perfumes." Li Jing revealed to Caijing Tianxia Weekly.

Behind the popularity of odor database, "odor economy" is also in full swing, and domestic brands appear together.

According to the Research Report on Evaluation of Competition Pattern and Investment Prospect of internet plus Perfume Industry in China from 2065438+07 to 2022 released by Zhiyan Consulting, international brands occupy more than 70% of the perfume market in China. But because of this, domestic perfume brands still have a lot of room for growth. According to iResearch's research on the user experience of China perfume product NPS 202 1H 1, the average annual growth rate of China perfume market has reached 26.8% since 20 17.

"But the olfactory economy is not the same as the perfume business," Wang Bolun emphasized. In its view, perfume, perfume, aromatherapy and so on. Both of them are members of the "olfactory economy" army, and the latter two can be extended to household and toiletries, so there is more room for market imagination. Mintel Consulting predicted that the average annual growth rate of indoor air freshening products market in China will reach 7.2% from 20 16 to 202 1 year, among which the retail sales of scented candles and scented lamps are the fastest growing in all categories.

Among the many cutting-edge domestic brands that came into being in the big environment, the smell library is far more than one favored by capital.

Only in 202 1 year, fragrance brands such as RE Blending Room, Scentooze three rabbits and Plustwo Plus rabbits were successively financed, and the financing amount generally reached tens of millions of yuan. Looking back, the fragrance brand Guanxia was established on 20 18, and received the A round of financing from IDG Capital, Zhenge Fund and Sequoia Capital China; Yu Fan completed the latest round of financing at the end of 2020.

Why have consumers and capital become "fragrant" in recent years? Wang Bolun believes that the reasons are diverse. "First of all, the trend of' perfuming' in public space has risen. From the hotel lobby, airport lounge to high-end shopping malls, more and more people are beginning to notice that the surrounding "smell environment" has been upgraded; Secondly, the trend of consumption upgrading has also unlocked the interesting marketing of fragrance. Many brands have added perfume elements to their marketing. For example, Apple's accessory manufacturer made a candle that tasted like an "out-of-the-box Mac computer", and it has been snapped up. Starbucks has also launched its own fragrance products, and even LU ZHOU LAO JIAO CO.,LTD Co., Ltd. has produced perfume of the same name, which can help the original brand break the circle; Thirdly, because modern people are under increasing pressure and pay more attention to emotional management, fragrance products can play a role in reducing pressure; The fourth is that more and more people buy fragrance products as gifts. "

However, in the view of Li Jing and others, despite the active capital, the domestic "olfactory economy" is still in a very primary stage of development.

He also said that products related to olfactory economy are very different from products such as make-up and skin care. When it is impossible to experience the product offline, consumers can only imagine it through words, pictures, images or sharing with others, but the fragrance is abstract and needs emotion, especially in the sinking market, which is very strange to people who have no or little perfume experience. Consumers in different regions and cultures have their own olfactory experience, which also increases the difficulty of perfume sales. The so-called "a thousand faces are fragrant" is the truth.

Wang Bolun added from an industrial perspective that the supply chain capabilities of domestic perfume brands are still lacking, and the quality of domestic perfume products needs to be improved, especially the control of product details is still far behind that of overseas brands; Second, there is a shortage of talents. Most people have no professional research on fragrance products and lack industry experience, which will inevitably affect the development of domestic fragrance industry. At the same time, Wang Bolun also mentioned that the key to the breakthrough of domestic brands lies in "people".

Wu, CEO of Shenzhen Siqisheng Company, pointed out that due to the high artistry of perfume products and the difficulty in research and development, domestic brands can consider paying more attention to the artistry of perfume and the sense of value it brings to consumers in marketing, endowing the products with inner souls and stories, and also co-branding with well-known IP according to the positioning of brand groups to expand customer base and popularity.

One fact that must be admitted is that "domestic brands have only developed with the confidence of China culture in recent years, but they are not as good as international brands in terms of channels, marketing, brand planning and market." Li Jing said: "No matter how big or small domestic brands are, no matter how much capital they have, the key to winning the market is to make original products and apply limited funds to continuous creation."