Think Tank: China’s ‘Skintellectuals’ Raise the Bar for Beauty Brands

As the global skin-care industry undergoes a scientific revolution, vague promises of a younger-looking face are no longer enough for savvy Chinese beauty shoppers. A trend that has manifested in the U.S. through an influx of K-beauty products and indie brands like The Ordinary and Drunk Elephant, the rise of “skintellectualism” has also infiltrated China’s skin-care market. Called the “chengfendang” or 成分党 — which translates literally to something along the lines of “ingredient club” — in China, these increasingly confident and informed beauty shoppers are conducting extensive research on active ingredients and formulations. This has prompted a 331 percent surge in skin-care ingredient and related cosmeceutical keyword searches between October 2018 and January 2019 on search giant Baidu, according to a recent report by Gartner L2 on beauty product trends in China. Sales of beauty products listed with these keywords had 370 percent higher average monthly unit sales than the average of all beauty products on Alibaba’s B2C e-commerce platform Tmall in the fourth quarter of 2018. The report also finds that top beauty brands are adjusting their product offerings to meet demands for trending ingredients. Out of the top 10 best-selling ingredients on Tmall in the fourth quarter of 2017, nine were

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