LVMH-owned beauty giant Sephora is reportedly carrying out a significant workforce reduction in China, a move aimed at mitigating financial losses in the challenging market. The company plans to lay off approximately 4000 employees, which represents 10 per cent of Sephora China’s total workforce.
Jaques Roizen, MD Consulting at Digital Luxury Group, said Sephora’s primary challenge lies in its value proposition as a one-stop-shop for cosmetics in a market where consumers have the convenience of Tmall at their fingertips, especially for regularly repeated purchases.
“Once Chinese consumers discover a brand, they have strong incentives to shop on platforms like Tmall, which frequently offer coupons and a more convenient shopping experience,” he explained. “For instance, why would a customer choose to buy a Dior lipstick at Sephora when they can easily purchase it directly from the brand’s official Tmall store?”
Since entering the market in 2005, Sephora has opened more than 300 stores in China and online channels, including an official Sephora website, mobile app, WeChat Mini Program and TikTok Shop, as well as a presence on TMall, JD, Meituan and JD to Home. The company appointed Xia Ding as its new MD in Mainland China and Hong Kong earlier this year.
The struggles of Sephora in China, however, reflect a broader trend affecting Western beauty brands operating in the market. The Chinese beauty market, once seen as a goldmine for foreign brands, has become a complex and competitive landscape where Western companies are finding it harder to maintain their previous levels of success and market dominance.
Estee Lauder anticipates its annual revenue growth to fall short of analysts’ projections, attributing this to persistent sales declines in the Chinese market. Similarly, L’Occitane en Provence and Beiersdorf’s La Prairie have experienced adverse sales in China.
Roizen said global beauty brands benefited from the spectacular growth of the Chinese market and the ambivalence of millennials towards domestic brands when they first started entering the market more than 20 years ago. However, the situation Western brands are facing today is much more complex because of two critical weaknesses.
“To further accelerate performance, many of them have relied on discounts and promotions, and kept going deeper, wider and more frequently. As a result, many global beauty brands have lost a lot of their prestige, brand equity and perceived value in China,” he said.
According to Roizen, major beauty brands such as La Mer, Lancome and Estee Lauder, have been engaging in aggressive pricing strategies during China’s shopping extravaganza, sometimes offering up to 50 per cent off their regular prices. These significant markdowns, while attractive to consumers in the short term, have potentially far-reaching implications for brand perception and long-term profitability in the Chinese market.
“Consumers have understood that it makes no sense to purchase them outside of their monthly promotions, with up to 60 per cent effective discount,” he said, suggesting that retail brands should gradually reduce the discounts offered to consumers.
“Promo-detox is very hard to implement, but the alternative is far more painful.”
The second issue, Roizen added, is that many global headquarters relinquished a degree of control over their digital presence in China, which they never would have done in other markets, due to the unique nature of the Chinese digital landscape. This decision, while seemingly justified at the time, had unforeseen consequences for brand management and pricing strategies.
“This has led many local teams to deviate from global guidelines and gradually cheapen their brand communication. As a result, many Tmall flagship stores have become almost exclusively transaction-oriented or discount-focused, barely resembling the global websites of the same brands,” he added.
“Douyin livestreams by luxury beauty brands are another example of Chinese teams showcasing their brands in ways unthinkable elsewhere in the world. These streams often have more in common with clearance outlets than the aspirational storytelling luxury brands should aim for, and frequently result in disappointing profit and loss statements.”
The expert said both of these issues can be addressed, but they will require a significantly higher level of collaboration between global headquarters and local China teams, and a new focus on optimisation and transparency.
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