On November 11, the Double 11 e-commerce festival took off in China. As the Chinese version of Black Friday, this festival’s influence has gradually become a bridge between Chinese e-commerce brands and overseas consumers, as well as Chinese consumers and overseas businesses. As one of the four major consumer industries in the online shopping field, the consumption power of cosmetics is as strong as ever. Data from JD.com Tmall shows that the cumulative turnover of 299 beauty brands during the promotion period exceeded 10 times that of last year. In the 4-hour brand report card released by TMall Beauty, international brands are still leading in sales, but the achievements of local Chinese brands were also very impressive.

In addition to winning in the local market, many new cosmetics brands have also expanded overseas. Chinese brand Flower Knows entered the Japanese market in early 2020. Through differentiated visual impact and "Chinese makeup" fashion elements, it received warm feedback on Twitter and captured the hearts of countless Gen Zers.

In 2021, Flower Knows entered the Southeast Asian market and began to operate on Shopee, Lazada, and other platforms. Flower Knows has begun to expand sales channels via direct-to-consumer channels in the European and American markets, and its annual GMV scale of the overseas market could reach RMB 10 million (USD 1.39 million).

Positioning cosmetics as art and beauty with Gen Z consumers

The internationalization of high-quality brands is an inevitable trend, but in the face of mature overseas markets, how can emerging brands enter the competition arena to establish their foothold? This is a problem that must be considered when entering the international market, and Flower Knows skillfully found the answer: find the inner child of Gen Z.

Flower Knows was founded in 2016 by two post-90s men. They have been exposed to a large number of beauty products and become active users of cosmetics because of their enthusiasm for cosplay. Over time, the idea of creating their own beauty brand became stronger as their friendship grew. At that time, Chinese cosmetics brands were limited by the supply chain and R&D capabilities, and the homogeneity of packaging materials, color palettes, and other aspects lacked originality. The two founders unanimously decided that the appearance must bring strong visual impact to users to create a different Chinese cosmetics brand.

Since its establishment, Flower Knows has polished its products to resemble personalized works of art. With holistic product design and a differentiated vision, it has won the hearts of a younger segment of consumers in multiple markets. Flower Knows uses the universal imagery of fairy tales, childhood, dreams, and European decorative arts combined with contemporary Asian youth culture to generate unique product packaging, brand style, and marketing methods.

Using its unique vocabulary to speak to consumers, Flower Knows creates a fairy tale world constructed through color makeup to make every user feel cared for and beautiful.

In the face of the hard-to-impress Gen Z, Flower Knows hopes to provide something different

Compared with other famous international brands, Flower Knows’ new products are continuously updated and released at a pace that can keep up with or even exceed the changing tastes and fads of Gen Z. New products are launched three times a year, and they are different from the traditional local Chinese cosmetics brands. Flower Knows does not promote popular products alone but instead launches whole series. For example, a full set of gift boxes brings greater visual impact as a whole and strengthens the brand impression on consumers, who are also given more choices.

The strawberry rococo series, a late Summer collection of 2022, uses a large number of classic rococo materials, such as exquisite and gorgeous golden reliefs and shell patterns, and matches with the main colors of mint blue and light pink, bringing an unprecedented classical and gorgeous impact. The series has a total of 21 products, covering four categories of lip cream, powder blusher, eye shadow, and perfume, as well as supporting hand mirrors, hairpins, and cup storage boxes.

It is a high-cost investment to insist on personalized original design while updating at high frequency. Flower Knows also creates exclusive molds in the millions. In addition to requiring the brand to have strong research and development capabilities, this is also a test of the production skills of the manufacturer.

Precise social marketing is the icing on the cake

Flower Knows’ journey overseas has been smooth, and the first series of cooperation with Japanese dealers has been popular on Twitter in Japan.

“Because vision is the easiest to embody, it does not need education, translation, or understanding of his culture,” explained Baozi, a founder of Flower Knows. "Whether in Japan or in China, we use very strong visual language to launch our products. If you put our products on social media, it will stand out from everyone else.”

Now Flower Knows is on Tiktok and in the Beauty Collection Store, making advancements both online and offline. Last year, Flower Knows announced that Yusakura Miyagi would serve as the ambassador of Asian brands. With the help of local celebrities, Flower Knows effectively reached young people to strengthen brand awareness. At present, Flower Knows has nearly 1,000 offline stores in Japan, and the positive feedback from the Japanese market has greatly improved its popularity abroad.

(By Sam Overholt, Dan Huang)